accounts are mixed with the fish and game accounts, as is natural, the 

 same men doing the same work in the same department. 



The one definite figure obtainable is in the Auditor-General's 

 report, where there is an item, "forest fires, paid for suppression of," 

 and this item, in the report of 1918, is $43,434.66. This is the amount 

 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918, and it includes the two-thirds 

 of the aggregate amount paid by the state as days' wages to emer- 

 gency fire fighters, the township paying the other third. 



More particularly how the money was spent will appear in the 

 comparison that will be printed later along with Prof. Roth's 

 estimate of what should be spent. 



ARTICLE VI. 



Michigan spends $50,000 a year putting out forest fires. More is 

 spent in addition maintaining the skeleton forest and forest land pro- 

 tection organization on the millions of acres needing protection and 

 which lie outside the otherwise protected areas, of the state forests, 

 under the management of the Public Domain Commission. The 

 $50,000 plus, is expended by the State Game, Fish and Forest Fire De- 

 partment. The plus amount, spent for maintenance of the standing 

 organization and its equipment, never reaches $100,00 in a single year. 



Michigan gets off cheaply. It does until one comes to reckon up 

 the fire damage and balance it against the expenditure. An ordinary 

 business corporation would fire a general manager who boasted about 

 how little fire hose he caused to be bought in a year, when the opposite 

 page of the ledger carried an account of fire loss that was over 27 

 times the cost of hose bought. That is what forest fire "protection" 

 and forest fire damage amount to in Michigan, from the comparative 

 point of view. 



The annual loss of merchantable timber has been in recent years 

 $2,00,000 a year, timbermen say in formal reports. Add to this a mod- 

 est estimate of soil damage, of $5 an acre Prof. Roth's figure and 

 you would have to add to these estimates another big figure for dam- 

 age done to second growth, not yet large enough for commercial use, 

 but stock in hand, just as much so as calves and colts on a livestock 

 farm. This last figure nobody has mentioned, so far as known. When 

 you add them all together and balance them against the $50,000 to 

 $100,000 investment in fire fighting you quickly perceive that the in- 

 vestment is so smair that you wonder the waste has been allowed to 

 go on so long. The answer is that so few people have had the facts. 



EUROPE'S FORESTS PAY. 



Forest protection is better in Europe, where they have state and 

 municipal tracts of woodland that pay revenues to the public. 



There they began restoring forests 200 years ago and have in some 

 countries kept pace with forest devastation. In the better adminis- 

 tered areas, as in Saxony, forest protection costs from 15 to 30 cents 

 an acre. These forests pay not only expenses but a profit into the 

 public treasury. 



For Michigan, which is just beginning the work of forest 

 reclamation, money for protection will have to be invested, and the 

 state will have to wait upon rehabilitation of existing forests and 

 growth of new forests to get its money back and wait still longer 

 for profits. But a beginning can not be made without spending money 

 for adequate protection of what now exists and what is being brought 

 into existence. 



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