1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



249 



is with the people at large and the Missis- 

 sippi Valley particularly to say whether 

 private interest shall prevail against the 

 public good. "--Mr. Charles Christadoro 

 in the St. Paid Pioneer Press. 



Mr. Charles W. Garfield, 

 the President of the Michi- 

 gan Forestry Commission, 

 delivered an address before the Federation 

 of Women's Clubs at Grand Rapids not 

 long ago, of which the opening paragraphs 

 follow : 



' l During the last winter, there has been 

 in our State, the greatest amount of thiev- 

 ing of timber ever known, which prob- 

 ably has been due to the fact that there 

 has been an appreciation of the value of 

 lumber, and that the temptation has been 

 too strong to be resisted. In some por- 

 tions of Michigan the trespassers have 

 been great lumber corporations, and their 

 cuttings have been of timber that is very 

 young, not by any means mature, and the 

 slaughter has been without precedent in 

 the annals of the State. 



" For a good many years, we have had 

 annually a terrible visitation of forest 

 fires that has devastated immense quan- 

 tities of timber lands, rendering valueless 

 quantities of the best timber, destroying 

 every vestige of life that would perpetuate 

 the forest, and even destroying the very 

 vitality of the soil. These fires have very 

 largely originated with careless hunters or 

 wilful carelessness on the part of men and 

 boys who desired to make a commotion. 

 The annual loss from fire can scarcely be 

 computed. 



" From reliable data I learn that many of 

 these forest fires originate with people who 

 use the north plains for pasturage pur- 

 poses. Not being content to steal pastur- 

 age, they devastate the country by firing 

 it over, under the theory that the gra/ini;- 

 will be better the following season. The 

 increased value of timber has led to in- 

 creased valuation of lands, and as a result, 

 man} r tracts have been sold, the owners 

 feeling that they were driven to it by ex- 

 cessive taxation, and tempted to it by the 

 greatly increased value of the product. 



" In our own vicinity here at Grand Rap- 

 ids we have examples of this. The own- 

 ers have given no thought to leaving behind 

 them a valuable heritage in the new growth 

 of timber that will naturally spring up 

 when the mature trees are taken away, but 

 have entered into contracts which have re- 

 sulted in stripping lands of every last bit 

 of forest value. The most flagrant case of 

 this kind that has come to my attention is 

 what is known as Slocum's Tract, lying 

 east of Muskegon and northeast of Ra- 

 venna, in Muskegon County. This is an 

 area of above 4,000 acres, covered with the 

 most valuable timber that grows in the 

 State of Michigan, aside from White Pine. 

 There is a large value in the mature, but a 

 far greater prospective value in the grow- 

 ing timber that will not mature for a gen- 

 eration. The soil is excellent and the 

 young timber is growing very rapidly. A 

 reasonable and economic method of lum- 

 bering would so deal with this tract as to 

 make it continuously valuable. But it has 

 been sold, to be cleared and left perfectly 

 bare in six years. This is an irreparable 

 loss to the entire country contiguous to it." 



Comment of a 

 Lumber Review. 



" Commercial forestry 

 as a science and as an 

 economic problem has been 

 advanced in leaps and bounds and with 

 a greater degree of consistency during 

 the past half decade than during the 

 earlier nine and one-half decades of the 

 century, and it is a problem in which 

 every lumberman is or should be deeply 

 interested. * * * 



" The point which lumbermen should 

 grasp and retain is the demonstrable fact 

 that by treating the tree as a crop plant- 

 ing under proper conditions and harvesting 

 when ripe and mature a permanent and 

 adequate return from the investment may 

 be secured and the integrity of the forest 

 preserved to be handed down to future 

 generations."- -TheZ,um6erman's /iVrvV:; 1 

 (N. Y.), August. 



* 



Growing Timber "The constant demand 

 for Special Pur- for timber for purposes 

 P ses - which do not require trees 



grown to full maturity suggested sometime 



