MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS 



11 



confusion of authority, no shifting of responsi- 

 bility, there is no game warden, putting off on 

 a fire warden, and the latter claiming lack of 

 authority, there is no $50 limit for a whole 

 township as is the case in Michigan, to the 

 contrary, when a fire breaks out in a French 

 or German forest, the citizens are called out, 

 the police and foresters direct the work and 

 the fire is fought till it is put out. Fire is 

 treated as a common enemy and is fought 

 by the people, irrespective of effort, until 

 checked. The people are not paid $2 per day 

 and thus tempted to have more fires, as is the 

 cast with us. but they are compelled by law 

 to help and to work. Thus the cillage. the town 

 and county and -state all held themselves 

 :>trictly responsible for the protection of for- 

 est as of other property and the taxpayer 

 in a German state or in France knows what he 

 is paying his taxes for. 



8. Laws regulating the traffic in timber. 

 This is tariff legislation, is quite general and 

 is based on the same economic principles as 

 is other similar action. The forests of the 

 state, forestry and also the manufacturing 

 interests and usually considered. 



9. Special and clearly defined treatment 

 of timber or the products of the forest on 

 all public systems of transportation. By this 

 means the timber market and with it the 

 timber business or forestry are on a simple 

 well known and staple basis as far as trans- 

 portatii n is concerned, much to the benefit of 

 forester and consumer. 



10. Laws relating to "protective forests," 

 That is declaring large areas of woods to have 

 sufficient influence on the welfare of the sur- 

 rounding country by regulation of water sup- 

 nly. etc. .si that the treatment of these woods 

 becomes a matter of public concern and war- 

 rants police or state interference and supervi- 

 sion. 



11. Last and least come a number of vari- 

 ous state actions which may be grouped under 

 the general head of "encouragement" laws. 

 Strange to say this line of action is rather new 

 in Europe, it varies from state to state in kind, 

 amount and consequent value. In keeping 

 with the modern belief in education, laws of 

 this kind are becoming more numerous. In 

 some cases the state provides, free of charge, 

 lectures and advice to land owners, free plant 

 material, etc.. in other cases the state goes 

 farther and assists with money and men in 

 project of reforestation, and in several of the 

 states encourages such reforestation by re- 

 lieving the owner of paying taxes for 10-20 

 years or usually such a time as is necessary 

 to make the trees of a plantation of some 

 market value. 



Present and Past State Action in U. S. 



When we remember that the per capita con- 

 sumption in the U. S. is 6 times as great as 

 that of other progressive people, that our 

 National consumption has reached the enorm- 

 ous amount of about 40 billion feet of timber 

 alone, that most of our forests are in private 

 hands: that they are largely devastated, and 

 that the remaining supplies are gcing just as 

 fast as human ingenuity can convert them into 

 marketable goods, and that there is no relia- 

 ble, satisfactory adequate source of supplies 

 for this large people to draw upon in the 

 future, when all this is considered, the needs 

 for state action must be apparent to anyone. 



And yet compared to the magnitude and the 

 seriousness of the problem all of our state 

 action appears as nothing. 



State action in our country thus far has 

 followed four somewhat distinct lines: 



Protection of tlu- forest against trespass. 



Protection of the forest against fire, as a 

 special enterprise. 



Promotion of forestry by various means. 



The establishment of state forests and forest 

 organizations charged with their care. 



The. laws against forest trespass form part 



of the general code of each state; they were 

 carried from state to state and were original- 

 ly borrowed from the Old World and modi- 

 fied to suit. In our older states these laws 

 have been in force a long time; they are gen- 

 erally quite simple and direct, and usually 

 prescribe rather severe penalties, one of the 

 many reasons of their none-enforcement ac- 

 cording to Lest. 11749: Thus, for instance, 

 in Michigan, a case of wilful or criminal tres- 

 pass, though it consist merely of cutting $30 

 of timber can be punished by five years peni- 

 tentiary and a fine of $2,000. 



Usually treble or double value maybe sued 

 for, an ancient custom of the Old World. 



These laws are not uniform, they differ in 

 fcrm and severity for different states, but in 

 practically all states they are quite sufficient. 

 But they are not enforced and never have 

 been in any state. The machinery for their 

 enforcement is wanting. If the owner or his 

 agent catches a man taking timber he can 

 prosecute through the proper office, bring the 

 case into court, and if he can get the jury to 

 convict, he can get the evil doer punished. 

 It is a matter between owner and court and 

 m t one of proper police. 



For a farm owner who occupies his 160-acre 

 lot, this may be quite sufficient but for the 

 man who lives in Detroit and owns 25 different 

 parcels of forest scattered over several coun- 

 ties of the Upper Peninsula this machine does 

 not suffice and in his case he must either pro- 

 vide his own police or leave the law unforced. 

 Neither town, county nor state concern them- 

 selves about the matter, though all three 

 share in the taxes which are paid by the 

 forest owner. This is one of the causes of the 

 peculiar attitude of the local people toward the 

 non-resident forest owner. Though in truth, 

 these resident people often make their living 

 from the tax money of the non-resident, and 

 though he always pays for every rod of road, 

 and every schoolhouse and other improvement, 

 yet he is treated as if he were a wrongdoer, 

 he is taxed unmercifully and in addition a 

 trespass on his land or forest, is excused and 

 it is almost impossible in many places to get 

 conviction. This has led in most forest states 

 to peculiar conditions. 



Thus in Michigan and other states, the 

 state itself gets no protection from the local 

 authorities, the system of government is en- 

 tirely perverted, the sheriff and the town 

 official may even share in trespass en 1 state 

 lands and the state is driven to adept a make 

 shift and police system in the form of state 

 trespass agents whose business it is to guard 

 the interests of the state. We have here 

 literally one part of government of the state 

 organizing against another or at least to do 

 the work of the other, the part properly estab- 

 lished by constitution for this purpose elect- 

 ed under this constitution by the people. But 

 no one is obliged to do his duty. And here 

 lies the weakness of all forest protection by 

 our states. 



Protection Is Necessary. 



That this lack of protection against tres- 

 pass has not helped to conserve forests is easy 

 to see. The owners of forest lands have been 

 involved in endless litigation; where the sit- 

 uation was very bad, they cut the timber. 

 In many cases timber stealing was hidden 

 by setting fire to the slash and thus wiping 

 out the tell tale evidence of their cutting. 



Generally speaking the trespass laws have 

 helped; they have protected against large and 

 continued trespass, but their general non-en- 

 forcement by the proper authorities them- 

 selves has done serious and lasting harm to 

 forests and forestry. 



Usually with the first code adopted by each 

 state came laws, derived like the laws on 

 forest trespass, dealing with the prevention of 

 fires in forest and on prairies. Like the laws 

 on trespass these earlier effort are simple, 

 direct and severe. In Michigan as earlv as 

 1846 the law provided a penalty, for wilfully 

 burning the woods of another, amounting to 



as much as five years in state prison and a 

 fine of $500. 



Quite early and in seme cases as parts of 

 the first protective acts came provisions mak- 

 ing the fighting of forest fires a special duty 

 of the supervisor, the justices of peace, the 

 highway commissioners or some other offi- 

 cial, giving these officials power to call out 

 the citizens and making it obligatory, under 

 severe penalty, upon this citizen to obey such 

 summons and to help in the fight against fire. 

 The responsibility of the local authorities was 

 thus clearly recognized at an early date. But 

 there was a prescribed only for the citizen 

 and not for the officer, and so the officer found 

 it to his political interest never to call people 

 out. 



Thus these laws even more than the laws 

 of trespass remained dead letter. The diffi- 

 culty of catching the evildoer, the ease of 

 finding excuses in having to clear land, burn 

 brush, cook food on camp fire, etc., and thus 

 establish some reason for the existence of 

 fire; then also the matter of accident, the 

 pipe, cigar, match and torch all allowed in 

 the forest at any time and season; the general 

 permission of any one to travel, camp, hunt 

 and fish on other people's lands, all these 

 made it practically impossible for the owner 

 or his agent to bring the matter before court 

 and secure conviction. And even if conviction 

 could be had, it would have been of little 

 value, for it is prevention of fire and not 

 merely conviction of the fire bug that is 

 wanted. And here again, state, county and 

 town did nothing, and with this the sense of 

 individual as well as corporate responsibility 

 disappeared. No one raised a hand and the 

 evildoer, the low. shiftless do-nothing, who 

 maltreats his family and his animals under the 

 guise of being a pioneer settler, and who is 

 ever ready to see it burn, he could fire to his 

 heart's content. He could vent his spite 

 against the thrifty neighbor, he cculd right the 

 wrongs, which his vicious imagination made 

 him believe to have suffered at the hands of 

 the lumber company and he could tell of the 

 "two men with guns," whom he saw; the 

 "city guys" who camped there, or invent any 

 other of the multitude of cock and bull stories 

 which are circulated regularly and given em- 

 phasis by the press and the townspeople who 

 know precious little of the situation. 



It was in this way that the hundreds of 

 fires were started every spring for the last 

 forty years, and it is in this way that hun- 

 dreds of fires spring up in dangerous dry sum- 

 mers like that of 1908 and rapidly eat up the 

 forest cover over millions of acres of land. 



After a number of really great calamities, 

 like the fires of 1871, 1881 and 1894 in the 

 Great Lakes region, where hundreds lost their 

 lives, thousands became homeless and where 

 the damage ran well up in the millions, the 

 situation became positively intolerable. The 

 people clamored for action and the legislature 

 reluctantly enacted a series of laws all of 

 which were more or less modifications of the 

 older fire fighting laws already in existence 

 and collectively perhaps best termed "fire 

 warden" laws. Like the trespass agents and 

 game warden laws they are a make shift, a 

 duplication and interference in what should 

 and could be the proper administative body of 

 the state government. The Michigan law, 

 copied and modified from that of New York, 

 and Minnesota and again copied by Louisiana, 

 etc., will illustrate this phase of state action. 

 The state had a gocd, simple, though some- 

 what incomplete forest fire law, with a provi- 

 sion which made it the duty of the supervisor, 

 justice and road commissioner to call out the 

 people and fight forest fires. Beyond this the 

 state never spent a cent in protecting its sec- 

 ond greatest natural resource and its second 

 industry. After enormous losses and years 

 of agitation the legislature in 1903 made the 

 state land commissioner a state forest com- 

 missioner (and this in spite of the fact that 

 he already was a member of the state forestry 

 commission), gave him power to appoint a 

 state fire warden. This man with a salary of 



