OF the forest legislation to be asked at the hands of the 

 next Legislature, none, possibly, will be of more im- 

 portance than the bill submitting a constitutional 

 amendment under which non-agricultural state land now idle 

 in Minnesota, may be reforested and made to yield a revenue. 

 The first annual report of the state forester, covering the 

 period of 1911, says: 



"Millions of acres are of such character that the land 

 should be kept permanently growing timber. Those mighty 

 hills of massive rock and gravel, covered with pine and 

 spruce and birch those rock-bound, island-studded lakes 

 those rushing streams winding to the Mississippi, tumbling to 

 the St. Lawrence or wandering off northward to Rainy river 

 and Hudson Bay constitute the wildest playground and hunt- 

 ing ground in the Northwest. Much of this region is un- 

 suited for farming. It would be unfair to expect a settler to 

 make a living on the rocks. The best interests of the state 

 as well as the settler, require that this rocky land be used 

 as our woodlot, to produce timber for ourselves and for the 

 future." 



Opportunity For Obtaining Another Great Fund For the State. 



Under the present law, the state land cannot be sold for 

 less than $5 an acre. Yet there are hundreds of thousands 

 of these acres on which nothing of value except trees can be 

 grown, and after the original crop of timber is cut and sold, 

 the land lies in idle wastefulness. Under proper handling, 

 the state, a few years hence, would receive an enormous in- 

 come from these waste areas. 



An additional use, aside from growing trees, may be made 

 simply by the enactment of a law for the leasing of state 

 lands by the Forestry Board for summer hotels, cottages, and 

 hunting and fishing lodges. This is by no means a new idea, 



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