country has gone steadily and rapidly forward since the time 

 these wise men made this constitution. The great forest 

 cover has been torn aside from the northern part of the state 

 and has revealed not the fertile farm lands which they thought 

 were there but in many instances a rocky, hilly, and sandy 

 soil entirely unsuited to agriculture. 



New Facts Discovered. 



This is not merely a change of condition since those early 

 days, but a discovery of actual facts of which they were igno- 

 rant. Furthermore they thought the timber supply in the 

 North was inexhaustible. They could not conceive of a time 

 when those great merchantable forests would be cut away. 

 The practice in European countries of growing timber crops 

 was considered entirely unnecessary in this country, if in- 

 deed it was considered at all. They not only knew nothing 

 of the possibility of growing timber as a crop, but they knew 

 nothing of any necessity of ever growing. For them there 

 was no possible need of the land as forest. Their object was 

 to convert the land into money and they took the only pos- 

 sible way then open to them. But what would these same 

 men say today if they could see things as they stand at pres- 

 ent? If they could see millions of acres of cut-over land 

 unsuited to farming lying idle, producing absolutely nothing, 

 not even taxes, and with no possibility of ever producing any- 

 thing? If they could see the condition to which our great 

 Northern forests have been reduced, the big mills shutting 

 down and moving to the west, the great stream of logs which 

 used to pour annually down the Mississippi reduced to a 

 mere intermitting dribble, the price of stumpage which could 

 be obtained for a song, and a poor song at that, in their day 

 soaring up to $10.00 and $15.00 a thousand? If they could 

 know how European countries which are now producing from 

 $2.50 to $8.00 per acre per annum net revenue from their for- 

 est areas often of poorer soil than ours? If they could see as 

 we do that these same lands, which are being sold under their 

 orders for from $4.00 to $6.00 an acre, could be made to pro- 

 duce as a forest at least 20 per cent of the appraised value 



