DEVELOPAIEXr OF MICIIlGAy WASTE LANDS 433 



rapid enlargement of the cultivated area on each 

 farm, when it can be done economically, is the first 

 and most important agricultural problem in this 

 district and the one that has the widest and most 

 general application." ^ 



It has been shown statistically that there is no 

 labor income on farms with a large area unimproved. 

 To operate such a farm involves a disproportionate 

 outlay for taxes and interest on lands yielding small 

 or no return. Thus in the 801 farms under investi- 

 gation as above noted, whose average acreage was 

 108, it was ascertained that farms with less than 

 forty tillable acres had a minus labor income, while 

 only those farms possessing a tillable area of eighty 

 acres or more had a labor income above $100. Mani- 

 festly, then, it is uneconomic to hold large areas of 

 unimproved lands, except where new and favorable 

 developments can be anticipated. This is the ra- 

 tionale of the vigorous campaigns for stump re- 

 moval that has characterized some of the cut-over 

 districts of the State since the war period. In the 

 summer of 19"^ 1, it was planned actively to promote 

 land clearing in the Upper Peninsula under expert 

 guidance through the extension department of the 

 Michigan Agricultural College. 



The Department of Agriculture investigators re- 

 ported a lack of crop rotation on the newer cut-over 

 farms under review, while the more successful of the 

 older farms had developed it definitely. The rota- 



* "Farming on the Cut-over Lands of Michigan," etc., 

 supra, !), 10. 



