400 RURAL MICHIGAN 



resources. The fatal flaw has been defective person- 

 nel or defective resources for such personnel as was 

 capable of achieving anything. 



In 1909 the Public Domain Commission was cre- 

 ated. The Secretary of State, Auditor-General, the 

 Commissioner of the State Land Office (after 1914 

 the Superintendent of Public Instruction), and per- 

 sons appointed by the governor from the Regents of 

 the University of Michigan, the State Board of Agri- 

 culture, and the Board of Control of the Michigan 

 College of Mines on nomination of these bodies them- 

 selves, composed the 'T. D. C," as common parlance 

 styled it. The office of Immigration Commissioner 

 was attached to this new body, which in 1915 also 

 acquired the appointment of the State Game, Fish 

 and Forestry Warden, whose designation later be- 

 came the State Game, Fish and Forest Fire Com- 

 missioner. There was also to be a State Forester 

 to have charge of the forests, and a Chief of Field 

 Division to attend to cases of trespass and in general 

 look after the real estate operations of the Commis- 

 sion. The secretaryship of the Public Domain Com- 

 mission might have become an office of great impor- 

 tance in the work of conservation which evidently 

 had been in the minds of the sponsors of these altera- 

 tions in the organic acts related to this subject. But 

 scarcely any will claim that the secretaryship was 

 ever held Ijy any one of aggressive tendencies or 

 possessed of a well-defined progressive policy, so the 

 position has continued to be largely clerical. 



Since the creation of the Michigan Forestry Com- 



