1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



2 57 



I have communicated with the women's 

 clubs of Michigan, and they are taking up 

 the matter in earnest. From lumbermen 

 and land owners and woodsmen I have 

 been gathering testimony with regard to 

 the most desirable line of action, and I 

 have come to the conclusion that we are 

 more in need of expert counsel upon the 

 legal side of the forestry problem than we 

 are of expert assistance in the business of 

 forestry. Beyond any question we must 

 straighten out some of our legal difficulties 

 before the State can properly take hold of 

 the business of growing forests with any 

 safety. The State now owns ostensibly 

 more than three million acres of land that 

 have come into its possession as the result 

 of delinquent taxes. There is another mil- 

 lion on its way, but the titles to these lands 

 procured by the State in this way are very 

 imperfect, and it cannot afford to take the 

 chance of growing forests upon them until 

 the titles cannot be successfully attacked. 



There has not, in the history of the State, 

 been such flagrantthieving upon State lands 

 as during the last year. Timber has been 

 stolen by the millions of feet, not by poor 

 men who take an occasional tree, but by 

 corporations which have cleared up large 

 areas, and, under our trespass laws, have 

 afterward settled with the State, this being 

 a cheaper way to get timber than by buy- 

 ing the land; so that the Commission has 

 become satisfied that our trespass laws 

 must be modified and perfected and en- 

 forced in a different way before there will 

 be any safety in growing new timber. If 

 the state is unable to take care of its own 

 now, we can never expect to awaken a 

 sufficient interest in forestry to secure leg- 

 islation that will provide for growing more 

 forests to be the prey of trespassers. 



Then we have no method of controlling 

 forest fires. While there have been more 

 acres devastated by thieving than by fires 

 during the last generation, the destruction 

 by the fire element has been enormous, and 

 we have no system which gives us any 

 protection either upon State lands or upon 

 those held by individuals ; so that we shall 

 have to frame legislation with reference to 

 protection from fire before we go into the 

 forestry business in earnest. 



Then there is the problem of taxes. I 

 found in my preliminary investigation of 

 the conditions in Michigan that I was at 

 once in the midst of the great problem of 

 taxation, as affecting timber lands. The 

 men who own large tracts of growing 

 timber are actually driven to cutting off 

 the timber and getting their money out of 

 it because of the excessive local taxation- 

 made especially heavy on the lands of non- 

 resident owners. The theory of the asses- 

 sors is not without reason, for they claim 

 that with the demand for timber, these 

 lands will actually sell for more money than 

 adjacent farm lands. On the other hand, 

 there is a stronger argument in favor of 

 arranging taxation so as to induce the 

 owners of tracts of forest to maintain them 

 as forests in the interests of the very lands 

 which are contiguous and given up to 

 agriculture and horticulture. In some 

 cases on lands upon which timber has ma- 

 tured and been cut off by lumbermen, as- 

 sessments have been maintained at the 

 same figure as before the timber was re- 

 moved, and this has resulted in the land's 

 going back to the State for taxes. The 

 owners maintain that when they are so 

 exorbitant they cannot afford to keep the 

 lands for growing timber again, even with 

 the best of promise in the young growth. 

 On the other hand, the assessors say these 

 owners have reaped a great harvest, and 

 unless the assessments are maintained upon 

 their lands, the burden of continuing the 

 expenses of the government will be thrown 

 upon agricultural lands which barely af- 

 ford the owners a living. But no matter 

 what the theory of either party may be, 

 the fact stares us in the face that under 

 existing laws the State is acquiring tre- 

 mendous areas of land, immature timber 

 is being slaughtered, and nothing has :is 

 yet been accomplished to stay the hand <>t 

 the destroyer. 



The attention of the Commission has 

 been called to a remarkable lack of I 

 sight shown by the owner of a large tract 

 of timber land near (irand Rapid-, 

 tract contains something over four thou- 

 sand acres, and what to-day is probably the 

 finest block of hardwood timber in the 

 State of Michigan. The timber has been 



