730 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



charge on the haul from Sidnaw to Iron Mountain of 

 $5.75 a thousand feet. Bear in mind, too, that last 

 winter, we were just getting started, we logged a very 

 small amount of timber and we charged off initial ex- 

 penditures pretty heavily. As for the higher wages, we 

 get more work out of the men. 



Preparing For the Bad Fire Year 



"The cost of the brush burning, we admit, seems high. 

 We hope to get that down, but whatever the cost we are 

 going to bum that brush. Fire is ninety per cent of the 

 problem of growing timber here in the north and I be- 

 lieve the forest fires can be definitely prevented only by 

 getting rid of the brush menace. A fire protective sys- 

 tem is a good thing and will help keep down forest fires, 

 but during a dry windy summer such as we have up here 



not appeal to him for this reason and also because of the 

 tax burden. Until timber taxation is put upon a fair basis, 

 I doubt if the profitableness of protecting cut-over lands 

 will api^eal to the average business man, but it must be 

 clear that if these northern lands which were cut over 

 thirty and forty years ago and which today are burnt and 

 barren for miles, had been protected, they would now 

 l^ear a timber crop which would make them worth many 

 times their present value. The holder of such cut-over 

 lands would have a valuable property instead of a barren 

 waste which he is glad to sell for $5 or $10 an acre or 

 less. 



"Timber! That's Our Crop" 



"Yes, lumbermen tell us that raising timljer as a busi- 

 ness proposition won't go. So far as Mr. Ford's business 



HERMANN HARTT, LOGGING SUPERINTENDENT, AND AN AREA FROM WHICH THE HEMLOCK HAS BEEN REMOVED 



AND THE BRU.SH PILED AND BDRNED. MERCHANTABLE HARDWOOD YET TO BE CUT. MR. HARTT WAS NOT 



FOR BRUSH BURNING WHEN HE STARTED IT, BUT HE IS EMPHATICALLY NOW. 



every five, six or seven years, it won't stop the fires once 

 they get started in old cut-over slashings. With the slash 

 cleared up, I believe that our woods will be quite safe 

 from fire after about two years. By that time the sprout 

 growth will be up and there won't be much inflammable 

 material to give trouble. Of course we will have to main- 

 tain some protective system because our holdings are not 

 all blocked up, how much we haven't worked out." 



That was Mr. Kingsford's explanation of why the 

 company had adopted the policy of burning its slash 

 rather than in leaving it in the woods and expending 

 possibly a smaller amount of money in intensive fire pro- 

 tection. 



"Mr. Ford is possibly able to practice more expensive 

 and intensive methods of lumbering than the average 

 lumberman, who is looking ahead only until he dies. The 

 protection of cut-over lands for timber production does 



is concerned, we believe that it will. I have studied these 

 northern lands for forty years and I think I know what 

 they will do in the way of growing timber. Land which 

 has grown timber once will grow timber again." 



"How about the common cry that these northern cut- 

 over lands are needed for agriculture," I asked. 



"The trouble with the American farmer today," re- 

 plied Mr. Kingsford, "is that he is suffering from over 

 production. Whenever there is demand for it, he can 

 raise two years' supply of farm produce in one year. 

 Why weigh him down with more land, particularly up 

 here in the north where the land must be classed as gen- 

 erally poor. Of course, there are areas of good farm 

 land here, but the sum total of land acreage which is poor 

 for farming and good for timber growing is so large 

 that the high grade farm land will naturally pass into 

 farms on its economic merits. 



