10 



MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



Michigan Forestry Association. 



The Michigan Forestry Association was organized in Grand Rapids August 30, 1905, having for its object the promotion of a rational system ot 

 forestry in Michigan. The society is managed by the following roster of officers : President, John H. Bissell, of Detroit, Vice-President, C. S. Udell, 

 Grand Rapids; Secretary, Henry G. Stevens, Detroit; Treasurer, J. J. Hub bell, Manistee. Board of Directors, Mrs. Francis King, Alma; L. L. Hub- 

 bard, Houghton; S. M. Lemon, Grand Rapids; H. N. Loud, Au Sable; Thos. B. Wyman, Munising; Mrs. J. C. Sharp, Jackson; C. D. Lawton, Lawton. 



The State Forestry Commission Charles W. Garfield, Grand Rapids; Arthur Hill, Saginaw; William H. Rose, Lansing. 



COMMERCIAL ASPECT 



OF FORESTRY PROBLEM 



It is not an easy matter to account for or 

 explain the apathy and indifference of the men 

 who are directing the industrial interests of this 

 country towards the problem of the forests as 

 nature's conservators of the water supply, 

 whether it be required for irrigation, for navi- 

 gation or for water power. 



And towards the same problem of the for- 

 ests as great natural reservoirs and regula- 

 tors of the How of streams, constituting the 

 only enduring safeguard against the constantly 

 increasing menace of floods in the great val- 

 leys on the lower reaches of our large rivers. 



And towards the problem of the perpetua- 

 tion of the forests as the source of the nation's 

 supply of wood and timber for industrial uses. 



These three branches or departments of the 

 forestry problem are separately stated, because 

 each of them affects the commercial interests 

 of the country in a different way, and in a 

 way which it is better to study and consider 

 separately. 



An illustration may serve to emphasize and 

 bring forcibly to the mind the unwisdom of 

 such indifference. If a man who made a liv- 

 ing sitting at a table and using his hands, were 

 attacked with gangrene in one of his feet and 

 should say: "Never mind! Let the feet go! I 

 don't need my feet any way., I earn my living 

 with my hands." 



That man, blind as he would be to the in- 

 evitable death that would result from his neg- 

 lect, would be no more short-sighted and blind 

 than are the people of the nation who allow 

 the forests of the country to be gradually 

 wasted and destroyed. Illustrations of this 

 may be found on every hand among the ruins 

 of past civilizations. 



It is known beyond question that many sec- 

 tions of the earth's surface, once fertile and 

 productive and supporting a dense population 

 in comfort and plenty, have been turned into 

 desert and uninhabited wastes through the de- 

 struction of the forests. 



In North Africa, in Palestine, and over other 

 great areas in Western Asia this process of 

 forest destruction, followed by human destruc- 

 tion, has gone to the last stage, and immense 

 territories where industry and commerce once 

 ministered to the wants of a vast multitude, 

 have become irreclaimable and irredeemable 

 deserts and arid wastes. 



The ancients cannot be charged with the 

 same stupidity and entire neglect of the for- 

 ests that must be laid at the door of the peo- 

 ple of modern nations, because they had not, 

 asa we have, the warning of the past to guide 

 them. That warning is constantly before us 

 in this modern age, and like Banquo's ghost, 

 it will not down. 



In many of the regions of the ancient east 

 once densely populated, their ruin is directly 

 and positively traceable to forest destruction. 

 In other places other causes may have contrib- 

 uted to that end, but notwithstanding all such 

 other causes, the most probable explanation 

 of the final utter destruction of the vast irri- 

 gation systems that once fertilized the great 

 plains of the Valley of Mesopotamia, is that 

 the gradual destruction of the forests on the 

 head waters of the great rivers which were the 

 source of their water supply, intensified the de- 

 structiveness of the floods from year to year, 

 and generation to generation, and finally 

 utterly destroyed the stupendous systems of 

 irrigation works that were necessary to the 



maintenance of agriculture and human life in 

 those regions. 



Nature moves through the ages slowly with 

 her gradual processes of destruction. We may 

 look to Asia now and see a race and a nation 

 that has survived into modern times, occupy- 

 ing a land which is gradually passing through 

 this same slow process of destruction along 

 a road that is strewn with frequent famines, 

 with tremendous floods, with enormous de- 

 struction of property from each successive 

 flood, and the ultimate goal, from which there 

 is no escape, of eventual complete destruction 

 of population. That country is China. The 

 people living on the lower reaches of her 

 great rivers were as blind as the people who 

 now live on the lower reaches of the Missis- 

 sippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers. They never 

 thought of protecting themselves from flood 

 by preserving Nature's reservoirs, the forests, 

 over the great water sheds that fed the rivers. 

 They thought only of a dike to protect them 

 from the great deluge of water as it finally 

 swept by them through the channel of the 

 lower river. They built levees to protect 

 themselves from those rushing and destroying 

 waters. Year by year the bed of the river 

 was raised by the silt. Year by year the 

 levees were raised higher and higher, and to- 

 day there are places in China where the river 

 is confined on both sides by huge earthen bul- 

 warks, and flows in a channel that has been 

 raised so high the bed of the river is above 

 the level of the surrounding plains. 



And every few years, the raging torrents 

 that sweep into the head waters and tributary 

 streams of those great rivers from the barren 

 and denuded mountain sides that have been 

 swept clear of trees, raise the flood level so 

 high that it pours over the tops of the levees. 

 Huge breaks are made, the flood tears through 

 them and pursues its raging course of destruc- 

 tion out over the farms of the unfortunate 

 people on the adjacent plains. Crops are de- 

 stroyed, famine follows, millions are threat- 

 ened with death by starvation. An appeal is 

 made to the world for food. Charity tempo- 

 rarily relieves to some extent the suffering. 

 The sufferers are tided over for a year or two. 

 They return to their dismantled homes, repair 

 as well as they can the damage that has been 

 done, and lead a precarious existence in yearly 

 terror of another similar catastrophe. If the 

 process goes on through the jtncounted cen- 

 turies that are to come the ultimate fate of the 

 great valleys of China will be the same as that 

 which finally overtook the peoples who once 

 lived in plenty upon the fertile plains of Mes- 

 sopotamia. 



We do not need to go beyond the confines 

 of America for an illustration of a similar 

 catastrophe overtaking the human race and 

 exterminating the population. 



In the Salt River Valley in Arizona an an- 

 cient race constructed a vast irrigation system 

 which served to fertilize a larger area than is 

 now cultivated by our own people who have 

 inherited it from the unknown irrigators of 

 the past. Those ancient irrigators were finally 

 exterminated or driven from the land of their 

 home by some great catastrophe. 



Now, what waas that catastrophe? What- 

 ever it was, it occurred centuries ago. The 

 native races that inhabited the country when 

 the white man first went there had no mem- 

 ory, record or legend of the people that built 

 the ancient canals. They knew not whence 

 they came nor whither they had gone. That 

 great Valley of the Salt River, now so green 

 and beautiful as the eye follows the carpet of 

 spreading alfalfa fields out over the plain, once 



contained seven cities. Whether they were 

 the seven cities of Cibola, we do not know; but 

 that the ruins are there to be seen today, easily 

 traceable by the mounds that lift themselves 

 above the surface of the plain, strewn with 

 myriads of pieces of broken pottery that glisten 

 and glitter in the sunshine, anyone can see 

 who cares to go and look. 



The great canal systems of that ancient race 

 practically paralleled the main line canals of 

 the irrigation system of today. The intakes 

 of the ancient canal* were at almost the iden- 

 tical point on the river where the early white 

 settlers took out the modern canals. The 

 Krcat consolidated canal of the south side of 

 the river that irrigates the country around 

 Tempe, Hows today through the same rock- 

 cut through which the waters rippled under 

 the sunshine of past ages as they flowed gently 

 past and through the forbidding rocks of the 

 desert until they reached the green fields that 

 the ancient irrigators cultivated. When the 

 white settlers first went into the Salt River 

 Valley, one could walk for miles through these 

 ancient canals,- and see them as plainly defined 

 across the desert as though they had been 

 built but yesterday. 



A most interesting pamphlet, with notes and 

 charts, by H. R. Patrick, of Phoenix, has been 

 published describing "The Ancient Canal Sys- 

 tems and Pueblos of the Salt River Valley, 

 Arizona." 



What was it that exterminated those an- 

 cient people, or caused them to abandon that 

 fertile valley? Some say war. Some say pes- 

 tilence. Some say it was a migration 

 prompted by religious belief. There are other 

 theories, but none of them are supported by 

 known facts. 



The most reasonable explanation is that the 

 same identical processes which for the past 

 twenty years have been gradually sweeping 

 away the forests, denuding the mountain sides, 

 destroying the natural reservoirs, pouring the 

 water from the sudden storms into the' rivers 

 in destructive torrents, and increasing the vol- 

 ume of the floods year by year, are but a rep- 

 etition of the same process that went forward 

 through the years of the forgotten centuries 

 when the Salt River Valley was tilled by the 

 ancient irrigators that are extinct today. Those 

 floods finally reached a volume of sudden de- 

 structiveness, caused by the deforestation of 

 the mountains, so great that in the end they 

 swept away beyond hope of repair, the head- 

 gates and dams of the ancient primitive irriga- 

 tors and so lowered the bed of the river that 

 they were unable to repair and maintain a 

 diversion dam sufficiently strong and high to 

 withstand the annually recurring forces of 

 destruction that came down the river with the 

 roaring floods. They could no longer lift the 

 water permanently to a point high enough 

 above the channel of the river in its dry per- 

 iods to carry it into the head-gates of the 

 canals. 



For those reasons the canal systems were 

 left dry, and the land could not be irrigated, 

 and drought and famine forced the people to 

 flee from the country, if death did not first 

 claim them. If there was a final migration of 

 the remnant, there is no doubt that gaunt 

 famine stalked among them and claimed many 

 victims before it finally drove them from their 

 homes. The same identical processes of de- 

 struction are at work today in Arizona, and in 

 the last twenty years they have worked ruin 

 almost beyond belief in the destruction of 

 Nature's conservators and regulators of the 

 flow of Arizona's streams and rivers the 

 mountain forests and the mat of heavy grass 



