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Lost Millions 



WHEN the Constitution of Minnesota was drawn up, the 

 state was a wilderness. The prairies rolled away to 

 the westward like an untamed sea and the vast for- 

 ests of the North had been scarcely nicked around the edges. 

 Little was known of the land hidden beneath these forests. 

 No one even dreamed of what its future might be. How could 

 they? For the existing conditions at that time veiled the 

 future so completely that the later developments, as they have 

 actually occurred, would at that time appeared the most 

 ridiculously impossible of all the conjectures open to it. Tim- 

 ber land was so plentiful and so cheap that the idea of the 

 state ever wanting any of it for its own purposes was pre- 

 posterous. The question was, how could the state best rid 

 itself of this white elephant. Millions of acres of the timber 

 had been given the state by the federal government for the 

 public schools and it was the duty of the makers of the con- 

 stitution to find some way through which it would produce a 

 revenue. At that time, there seemed only one possibility in 

 sight to sell them. All of the lands that they knew at that 

 time in the West and South were good farm lands and de- 

 sirable for homes. Why then should not all the other land 

 under that limitless blanket of forests be good for the same 

 purpose? 



Things Have Changed. 



Therefore it was decided to insert a provision in the con- 

 stitution by which this land could be sold by the state auditor 

 whenever it was desired for settlement. Such was the de- 

 cision of the lawmakers, and considering the evidence which 

 they had in hand, it was an eminently wise decision. It has 

 added money to our school funds and made us in that way 

 the richest state in the Union. No flaw can be picked in their 

 action, if we consider it in the light of the times in which 

 they live; but things have changed. The development of the 



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