OTHER KEi^OURCES OF MICHIGAN 83 



and smiling fields, light and air and long vistas from 

 farmstead to farmstead. That was good. If it was 

 wasteful, it was also necessary, if civilized life were 

 to subsist in the haunts of wild beasts and savage 

 men. As the people gained a foothold in the land, 

 the product of their saw-mills went forward to regions 

 which had already suffered from forest depletion or 

 where the forest had not existed in historic times. 

 That also was good and necessary. But as time 

 progressed, the agencies of forest devastation got out 

 of bounds, and they have continued to the present 

 moment. They have undermined the legitimate and 

 necessary utilization of forest products, until Michi- 

 gan has arrived at the point when it is yielding less 

 wood than it requires, is importing forest products 

 from other states and covmtries, is losing wood-using 

 industries to regions better supplied with forest re- 

 sources, and is face to face with serious inconvenience 

 and deprivation from its own improvidence and over- 

 consumption of this most imperative necessity. 



If the wasteful removal of the forest in the agri- 

 cultural sections of the State was excusable, the per- 

 sistent devastation in those areas where there was 

 little hope of replacing timber with farm crops can- 

 not be extenuated. Here in the process of deforesta- 

 tion, the young growth was shattered and destroyed 

 with the mature trees. A relatively small portion 

 of the felled trees was economically utilized. Those 

 cast off were carelessly left on the ground to cumber 

 it with del)ris and to afford every facility for the 

 ignition and spread of wild fire throughout great 



