10 



MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



time was that lumbermen should donate a 

 large amount of land for forestry pur- 

 poses. One of the lumbermen said that 

 he would be glad to donate 100,000 acres, 

 and another said he would donate 11,000. The 

 act was passed in 1897 and we have ac- 

 quired under it just exactly 1,000 acres. The 

 boom in the prices of lands all over the coun- 

 try so affected the values of these lands that 

 we got almost nothing out of it. But we have 

 a board that is interested in these matters and 

 is organized for work, and they have land that 

 has been acquired in other ways to the amount 

 of 41,000 acres. 



Minnesota Holds Timber Lands. 



The state of Minnesota holds a large amount 

 of timber land that belongs to the school fund 

 or som'e other fund, school, university or some- 

 thing of that kind. The income must be in- 

 vested and the land sold for no less than $5 

 an acre. That amounts to about 2,500,000 acres 

 held by the state. There is a lot of 'that land 

 that wouldn't sell for anything the granetic 

 ridges. There is no expectation of its ever 

 being used for agriculture. The board is a 

 strong board. I think the board marks an 

 epoch with us. It is one of the points that we 

 are going to look back to in the development 

 of this forestry work. 



The state has set aside land on the head 

 waters of the Minnesota river to the amount 

 of about 22,000 acres for a state park, about 

 five by seven miles, for the agricultural college 

 for its demonstrations in forestry, with a nice 

 little fund to manage it, also money to ac- 

 quire some private property along the road to 

 buy timber for aesthetic purposes this year. 

 In the first place this was a recognition by the 

 legislature. 



I think the way to get at this whole forestry 

 matter is by beginning with the young people; 

 that is where the great forestry problems are 

 to be solved ultimately. Our attendance of 

 young men at the forestry school has jumped 

 from 20 students to 55 or 60 this year. I be- 

 lieve there is going to be employment in for- 

 estry for all these young men. I feel like 

 President Northville, who said that he would 

 look upon the fact that we had a large number 

 of young men well trained in forestry as a 

 healthy situation. It marks an epoch in our 

 whole forestry question that is fundamental 

 and on which the future development of for- 

 estry will largely depend. I thank you. 



NATIONAL FORESTRY. 



Government Had Hard Time Getting It Estab- 

 lished, Says Mr. Levitt. 



Clyde Levitt, of the United States forestry 

 service at Washington, was then called upon 

 for a short talk. He said: It gives me a great 

 deal of pleasure to be here today because I am 

 interested in Michigan. I was born and 

 brought up over in Antrim county, and am 

 watching with a great deal of interest the de- 

 velopment of forestry in this state, as also is 

 Mr. Pinkham, who is also very much interest- 

 ed, especially in regard to Michigan. If there 

 is anything that we can do for forestry in this 

 state we will foe very glad to co-operate and 

 do anything we can in any possible way. 



It seems to me the time is certainly ripe for 

 the adoption of some scheme of state forestry. 

 The national government had a pretty hard 

 time getting national forestry established. One 

 of the greatest obstacles was the ignorance of 

 the people themselves, the ones for whose 

 benefit forestry was designed. The second 

 great obstacle was the people who were finan- 

 cially interested, the great lumber interests, 

 who were taking the timber and stone claims, 

 homesteading them and then selling them to 

 the syndicates. The opposition to the forestry 

 surveys has been almost entirely overcome 

 now, and there is very little objection being 

 made. The only thing we will have to oppose 

 is the ignorance or apathy of the people them- 

 selves. 



We have heard a good deal about the inex- 



haustible supply of timber that was found in 

 the United States. Statements have been made 

 and it has been brought out a number of times 

 already during the progress of this convention, 

 that the people first regarded the forest as an 

 enemy; that the timber supply was regarded as 

 inexhaustible, and that there was no effort 

 made to preserve the supply until after the 

 great timber sections of the west had been 

 tapped and were falling into the hands of pri- 

 vate owners. After the prices of timber had 

 rapidly gone up people began to see that the 

 story of the inexhaustible timber supply was a 

 myth. 



162,000,000 Acres Reserved. 



The federal government 'has withdrawn from 

 entry the greater portion of the timber land 

 still remainnig in the hands of the government. 

 Those lands embrace 162,000,000 acres. These 

 national forests do not embrace the most valu- 

 able portion of the timber lands. The most 

 vauable part of the timber land went into the 

 hands of private owners; so what timber is left 

 on those 162,000,000 acres is practically the 

 core of the apple, the best part is in the hands 

 of private owners and are being devastated 

 ruthlessly by them. Within the last year about 

 40,000,000 acres have been added; on March 1 

 the president added by proclamation 12,000,000 

 more. 



The national forestry department has about 

 1,500 men in its employ. There are 13 or 14 

 rangers. There are stations where they can 

 reach all parts of their districts readily. They 

 are supposed to guard against fire. Timber is 

 granted free of charge for local use. When 

 timber is used for commercial use it is sold at 

 a reasonable price. And then there is the 

 grazing business. It is coming up under the 

 new feature of regulation of the government 

 range. In addition to the supervisors there are 

 in the neighborhood of 100 technical men. 



Right here I want to say that it is a very 

 encouraging sign to see so many of the young 

 men of the country going into forestry schools 

 at Yale, Harvard, Michigan university and the 

 agricultural colleges throughout the country, 

 and these institutions are turning out a good 

 many men. The work is growing much faster 

 than the forces. The forestry service is one 

 of the hardest worked bureaus of the govern- 

 ment service, not only the men in the office, 

 but also those in the field. The rangers are 

 rushed in the same way in their field work. 



Not on Money Making Basis. 



The national forests are not being run pure- 

 ly on a money-making basis. Five hundred 

 thousand dollars has been appropriated by con- 

 gress for permanent improvements, part of it 

 is in telephone construction. In cases of fire 

 the ranger will telephone for such help as he 

 needs and the government will send it. The 

 reports of the supervisors now show that less 

 than one-third of the annual percentage of the 

 national area are burned over. Before that the 

 amount burned was a great deal larger than 

 that used by the lumbermen. 



Stumpage prices are increasing all over the 

 country. The main reason that they have been 

 so low in the west is that we disposed of the 

 timber lands for practically nothing. One of 

 the reasons for the men taking up the claim 

 was to sell the timber. Stumpage in the west 

 has been very low until recently. 



I was glad to hear Mr. Mershon speak of the 

 brush burning in Arizona. There has been a 

 good deal of complaint about the forestry de- 

 partment taking up the proposition of burning 

 brush work. This year the government is 

 spending about $60,000 in burning the brush. 

 Of course it is necessary to burn when there is 

 very little danger. The plan is to burn when 

 the light snows come with the beginning of 

 winter. It is expected that a great deal will 

 be done before winter really sets in. 



I presume something like 50 per cent of the 

 162,000,000 acres is timbered. Out of the 162,- 

 000,000 acres there are large holdings of rail- 



road lands. It doesn't mean there is that much 

 public lands. ^ 



OUR STATE TAX LANDS. 



Prof Filibert Roth Illustrates Subject With 

 Maps. 



"Our State Tax Lands" was the next topic 

 introduced, Prof. Filibert Roth, of the Uni- 

 versity of Michigan, taking the platform. Mr. 

 Roth displayed some maps, and after explain- 

 ing them, said: Pretty nearly half of our 

 whole state, 80 per cent of it, is not even 

 settled, and over 96 per cent of the land un- 

 improved. That looks pretty strong to the 

 average citizen, and sounds like a good story. 

 I wondered what was the matter with those 

 unsettled lands when I came here. I had al- 

 ready traveled over some of them and found 

 they were pretty wild lands. Some of our 

 friends claimed they were not fit for farming 

 lands. It became necessary when I began to 

 U-11 my story to get some pretty good argu- 

 ment. I was looking around to get informa- 

 tion to substantiate my statements. One of the 

 first things that I ran into to substantiate my 

 theory was the story of the tax lands. When 

 a man does not pay his taxes in this state his 

 land is sold for him. The local authorities 

 turn the matter over to the auditor-general in 

 Lansing, and the auditor-general reports it 

 from year to year. 



Since I came to this state and began to take 

 up this question I have been hauled over the 

 coals as 'being a man rash in his statements, 

 and very uncertain and very unreliable. I was 

 told those were not tax lands at all. In 1905, 

 at the time this association came into exist- 

 ence at Grand Rapids I was told the tax lands 

 are not those million or whatever was adver- 

 tised as being delinquent for taxes, but they 

 are certain other lands which we call tax lands 

 in the auditor-general's office recorded in par- 

 ticular kinds of books; the difference between 

 them anyone can see. They are lands that 

 have become delinquent for taxes. Some of 

 them may have been longer in the soup, been 

 a matter of big expense to the state, but in 

 their character they are the same thing. These 

 lands, have been a burden to the state of 

 Michigan, have been advertised year after year, 

 and cost in the way of advertisement and book- 

 keeping over a million and a half for the ten 

 years ending 1905. We had in 1875 nine million 

 acres of these. If you keep in mind these 

 figures you will see that it means 50 per cent 

 of all the lands in the north half that were in 

 soak for taxes. And they stayed in soak for 

 taxes. The book was shown to the forestry 

 commission at one time, in which we can see 

 that those lands remained in the auditor-gen- 

 eral's office for more than 25 years, until the 

 advertisements ate up those lands three or four 

 times over. We have one of the most con- 

 clusive prices of evidence of the character of 

 these lands. Besides that, they are not settled, 

 and the American farmer has passed judgment 

 upon them. You see this is the most convinc- 

 ing arguments in the world of their real char- 

 acter as forestry lands. 



Plenty of Room for Forestry. 



We are not here to run down any county. 

 There are some good lands in all those coun- 

 ties. There is plenty of room for forestry. 

 The state of Michigan has any amount of land 

 by which it could do better than to leave it 

 idle and waste, and these tax lands are part of 

 them. These tax lands have been an immense 

 burden to the people of the state. They have 

 led to no good whatever. They have not led 

 to settlement, as undoubtedly those people 

 who first possessed those lands thought they 

 would or might. These tax lands from time 

 to time pass into the hands of men for the 

 purpose of speculation, and they afterward go 

 through the same' mill, the same hopper, they 

 are sold for taxes. Our present policy has not 

 led to any settlement, and it has not been fair 

 to the real owners. 



This whole tax land policy has been expens- 



