land owned by the college up north and does a big businesss in 

 promoting propagation o'f trees in farmers' wood lots and along 

 public highways all over the state. 



"The trouble, when you come to consider private interests in 

 relation to the problem of re-clothing idle lands with forests," said 

 Orlando F. Barnes, of the State Tax Commission, "is that timber 

 yields no income to the owner until separated from the soil. The 

 owners are under constant pressure to cut and market. There is a 

 constantly increasing tax burden, with no similar annual income to 

 * meet it. Michigan forests are taxed as real estate. The increase in 

 value of the trees is taxed each year, while the harvest waits. It must 

 wait for many years. 



TIMBER HARVEST WAITS. 



"The premise is a false one. The supposition is that the forest has 

 but one year's life, like the ordinary crop of a farmer. Farm crops 

 aren't even taxed, direct. The land is taxed according to its crop rais- 

 ing capabilities as proved by the yields from year to year. We don't 

 tax the corn and the wheat as it stands on the land, but we 4 tax 

 'the timber. While the harvest with which to pay the tax bills waits, 

 from 30 to 75 years as the case may be, the owner must pay from year 

 to year. He must get the money from some other source. Not only 

 that, but interest on the outlay compounds at a staggering rate. 



"Land and timber should be exempted from the annual ad valorem 

 property tax, and there should be substituted for it a percentage tax 

 payable whenever any part of the timber crop is harvested. This 

 should be modified by an annual land tax at a fixed rate upon the land 

 valued as stump land, along with a yield tax when the timber is cut. 

 There must be a fixed land tax collected annually, for the counties in 

 which these lands are located must have their revenue." 



CAN'T AFFORD TREE-PLANTING. 



This explains, in outline, statements which have been made to the 

 inquirer among owners of large, unused areas in the bankrupt lancf 

 area. The question was asked: "Why don't you re-establish the 

 forests on these lands?" 



The answer always is: "Because we can't afford to do it when the 

 state taxes us to death" a statement never made clear by them, but 

 ~ow explained by the, state tax commissioner. 



Among residents of the North country there is to this day a fixed 

 antagonism to any scheme that contemplates easement of the tax bur- 

 den on these lands. The counties need the money. The fact that 

 3,00 acres a month revert to the state for non-payment of taxes doesn't 

 tend to loosen the local grip. There is, however, now evident and be- 

 coming yearly more evident, a conviction that fire damage wrought by 

 conflagrations starting in slash lands can not be brought into bounds 

 without some action that will give the state and its fire-fighting and 

 tree-planting organizations more direct control over private lands than 

 they now have. It is useless to expect owners of charred and devas- 

 tated sand plains to do anything effective. That is the conviction 

 among thinking men in the northern counties. 



GETTING TOGETHER. 



A proposal has bobbed up in agricultural circles. It is there, indeed, 

 that something might have been expected to occur. The fact that ag- 



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