MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



.ton .nd M.chigM Fottwy Auocunon 

 DETROIT. MICHIGAN 



Frank E. Carter Editor 



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MICHIGAN'S NEW HIGHWAY ACT. 



The new highway act recently enacted into 

 the law of the state has some new features 

 which will prove interesting on examination. 

 This law is known as Act No. 108, of the 

 Public Acts of 1907, and is the result of some 

 twelve years of constant agitation in accom- 

 plishment. 



By its provisions the ancient makeshift for 

 evading the payment of highway taxes by a 

 contribution of alleged labor thereon, usually 

 performed on the thirty-second day of the 

 month, has been expunged utterly from the 

 statutes, and hereafter professional tax dodgers 

 will be compelled to disgorge in coin of the 

 realm their just proportion of taxes for the 

 support of public thoroughfares. 



The tax thus collected in money will be 

 divided into two funds, to be known as the 

 highway improvement fund and a road repair 

 fund. The former is. to be assessed on all 

 property of the township, and the latter is 

 to become a burden upon all the assessable 

 property 'within the township, outside of the 

 limits of incorporated villages. 



The next most important feature is the man- 

 datory requirement that, before beginning any 

 permanent improvement upon any highway in 

 the state of Michigan, a survey of the high- 

 way shall be made by a competent surveyor, 

 and a profile of such survey, showing the 

 grade lines of the centers of the highway and 

 the bottoms of the ditches, and indicating 

 thereon a grade line showing the cuts and fills 

 which, in the opinion of the surveyor, should 

 be made in order to establish a good grade, 

 shall be made and placed on file with the 

 township clerk. The attorney general's de- 

 partment has recently held that no part of 

 this improvement fund can be expended le- 

 gally upon any highway before this survey 

 and profile has been made and filed with the 

 township clerk. 



This will absolutely prevent one highway 

 commissioner from undoing the work of his 

 predecessors, or from making undesirable 

 grades, and insure hereafter, in Michigan, the 

 building and improvement of roads intelli- 

 gently and in accordance with the plan of 

 a competent engineer. This feature of the 

 law will eventually bring the township high- 

 ways to a high grade of perfection and an- 

 nually save the wasteful expenditure of thou- 

 sands of dollars. 



While dirt is about the cheapest commodity 

 of any township, it is one of the most ex- 



pensive things to handle, and the highway 

 commissioner who can work to profile will 

 annually save his township hundreds of 

 dollars. 



This law also brings the whole township 

 into one district, creates but one overseer, and 

 repeals the road machinery law so far as road 

 districts are concerned, permitting road ma- 

 chinery hereafter to be purchased only by the 

 township board. 



The state -highway commissioner, Horatio 

 5. Earle, has worked hard and long for the 

 final enactment of this measure, and has done 

 a great service to the state in securing the 

 passage of the best highway law the state 

 of Michigan has ever had. 



Now comes an opportune time for the people 

 who annually pay the township taxes to rise 

 up at the approaching spring election and de- 

 feat all professional office holding barnacles, 

 and especially to force that type of township 

 officer who imagines himself greater than the 

 law of the state into an effective but con- 

 tinued retirement. This type of officeholder 

 is getting generally well identified in every 

 community. He is one and the same with 

 the class who opposed rural telephones, rural 

 free delivery, interurbans, and each and every 

 improvement that would increase generally the* 

 value of farm property. He is the sort of 

 curbstofie legal luminary who, when a needed 

 public improvement is asked by ninety per 

 cent of the people, wants to know if the law 

 providing for the improvement is "constitu- 

 tional." The opportunity is now ripe to retire 

 him by putting up live, intelligent and up-to- 

 date opponents. Force him to promise to 

 give needed improvements, or defeat him at 

 the polls. 



THE LAND COMMISSIONER NEEDS 

 CURBING. 



The commission of inquiry as to state tax 

 lands and forestry, which was created by the 

 Michigan legislature at its last session, is 

 making excellent progress. In making in- 

 quiry into present methods of dealing with 

 the state tax lands it has discovered some sur- 

 prising conditions. The state holds 545,000 

 acres of tax lands in the auditor general's 

 office, title to which has been forfeited by the 

 former owners, but which have not yet been 

 deeded to the state, and 567,000 acres of tax 

 homestead land in the land department, title 

 to which rests in the state. Both classes 

 of land are subject to sale, and the latter to 

 homestead entry. The investigations thus far 

 made show that with annual sales of 200,000 

 to 250,000 acres the state -has been receiving 

 on an average of but $1.08 an acre, and if 

 the homestead entries are included the aver- 

 age is about 81 cents an acre. The land in 

 many instances is taken, for the timber to be 

 found on it, and it is usually abandoned as 

 soon as stripped. A few repetitions of this 

 process leaves the land absolutely worthless. 



In other states the policy is to hold the 

 tax lands as forest reserves and to protect 

 them from fires. In this manner their value 

 is conserved, and in time they become an 

 important asset; each year of greater value. 

 If this policy were adopted in Michigan the 

 greatest average of state land in any one 

 county would lie" 1-7 per cent of the total aver- 



age; in but two counties would the state land 

 equal 20 per cent of the total average, while 

 in twenty lower peninsula and ten upper pe- 

 ninsula counties it would not exceed 2 per 

 cent. The 54,000 acres of forest reserve held 

 by the state in Ro.scomrnon county represents 

 but 16 per cent of the total average of that 

 county. 



The commission will be ready to make an 



j exhaustive report to the next session of the 



legislature, which convenes next year, and 



undoubtedly its recommendations will be 



enacted into law at that session. 



The commission has given notice that any 

 person interested will be heard by it at a 

 time and place convenient to such person, 

 at which hearing he will be given an oppor- 

 tunity to present or make such statements 

 of fact or arguments as he may desire touch- 

 ing the question, What is the best use to which 

 the state can put the state tax lands? It 

 is the desire of the commission to give ^very- 

 body interested full opportunity to be heard. 

 The hearings will be at any time and place 

 desired. 



The commission has adopted resolutions 

 which recite the fact that it was undoubtedly 

 the intent of the 190T legislature, which cre- 

 ated it, to have the state tax lands remain 

 in the possession of the state pending action 

 on the report of the commission by the 1909 

 legislature, and says: 



"It is evident from official reports and official 

 figures that the activity displayed in the state 

 land office in the matter of disposing of tax 

 homestead lands has in no measure been 

 abated by the evidence of legislative intent 

 aforesaid, but, on the contrary, very large 

 areas of state tax lands are being pushed upon 

 the market and rapidly disposed of for sums 

 that are seemingly inadequate under any view, 

 and absurdly inadequate if the thought back 

 of the act of 1907 has any basis of fact to 

 rest upon. 



"If the legislature of 1909 shall hold the 

 opinion manifested by the legislature of 1907, 

 that a change in the state's land system is 

 demanded in the interest of the public, whereby 

 the policy of the state as to its tax lands 

 shall cease to be a policy of sale, and be- 

 come a policy of holding and utilizing state 

 tax lands for forest reserves, stream protec- 

 tion and other purposes of general public bene- 

 fit; it will find that the disposition of immense 

 areas of land since the adoption of the act 

 of 1907 and prior to the time when the next 

 egislature can act has materially interfered 

 with such action by the state as will in largest 

 measure promote the public good. 



"In our judgment it is clearly and manifestly 

 detrimental to the true interests of the state 

 to continue to dispose of the tax homestead 

 lands promiscuously and at wholesale, as has 

 been done in the past and as is now being 

 done; which' practice, if continued as in the 

 past, will certainly afifcct injuriously the in- 

 terest and position of the state in the solution 

 by the next legislature of the problem of 

 how best to utilize state tax lands. 



"Now, therefore, the commission of inquiry. 

 tax lands and forestry respectfully presenting 

 these views to the consideration of the state 

 land office, recommends that as far as possible 



