HAS NOT KEPT PACE. 



The total farm area in this state, exclusive of the fruit farms, is 

 8,856,000 acres. That is part of the area which the statisticians allot 

 out of the state's 36,000,000 acres to the farmer. It is the part which 

 the agriculturist has actually improved. Then there is an allotment 

 of 6,000,000 more acres conceded, proclaimed and properly advertised 

 as farm land of sufficient worth to pay a living- if worked. But it has 

 not been improved. Without setting foot on the millions of bankrupt 

 acres with view to tillage, the farmer has a field within the confines 

 of this state as big as the State of New Hampshire in which he has 

 not even broken ground. 



This tells two stories in one breath. It tells how agriculture has 

 NOT kept pace with land clearing; and it tells how unmitigatedly 

 foolish, when not actually criminal, is the "sucker" industry of selling 

 thin sand lands in remote Michigan to men who might be working 

 on better land. 



NOT ALL BANKRUPT. 



But if we are going to get anywhere that will be a departure point 

 for going forward we must be fair. Perhaps the passing use of the 

 term North Michigan in the foregoing is not understood as meant. 

 The bankrupt lands of Michigan are in Northern Michigan. But not 

 all North Michigan lands are bankrupt lands, nor even starvation 

 farming lands. Right here this newspaper takes pleasure in falling 

 back upon its own record in this matter. Many columns have been 

 printed in recent years to make known the successful efforts of 

 agriculturists on northern lands and to hearten the state with prophecy 

 of wealth in foodstuffs that bade fair to come from them. Not a word 

 of all this is now recanted. The lands were there then, and they are 

 there now the most of them awaiting the exact discovery that waits 

 on a land inventory. But if the lands are there and farms are there, 

 the farmers are not in any such numbers as of old The explanation 

 does not need to be made at length. It is high wages in the towns 

 and, cities. Nevertheless, these lands are agricultural lands, and not 

 waste lands, v not in the category of the 10,000,000 virtually bankrupt 

 lands. They are oases in a desert. 



Our business in the former days wa& on the oases Now we are 

 about to explore and appraise the desert, leaving the farmer to raise 

 farm crops and see who can raise a crop on the desert, and what. 

 Just one thing is insisted on: while "one man is trying to work 160 

 acres in the best sections of the state," which Dean Shaw, of the 

 Michigan Agricultural College, has told t'he writer is a common fact, 

 and while there are approximately 1,750,000 idle farm acres in Michigan 

 because there are not farmers enough, it will continue to be insisted 

 and taken for granted that attempt to divert farmers on to. lands that 

 haven't been able to pay taxes for a period of years is economic 

 criminality and ought to stop especially as there is a better way to 

 restore the desert to production. 



INQUIRE INTO OWNERSHIP. 



Dropping the term "desert," which doesn't sound nice, let the inquiry 

 be into the ownership and present control as a property of the bankrupt 

 empire of 10,000,000 acres. The end in view is an answer to the ques- 

 tion, how best to make these unused acres productive. The land, its 

 amount, location and control are the first consideration.; then the care 

 of what of value may now exist on the land; lastly, improvement by 

 cultural methods. 



