656 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



applications to be checked up, requests day follows day, each full of interesting 



for grazing application blanks or rangers' details, each different from the last, 



requisitions for supplies. and all worth while, because the clerk 



By the time she has laid out her in a field office of the Forest Service 



day's work, it is time to take dictation, feels herself to be a part of The Game, 



and the round begins again. Thus not just a cog in a machine. 



THE FORESTRY ISSUE IN THE 



LAKE STATES 



By H. H. Chapman 



NOWHERE in the Eastern States all classes who depend for their own 



has there been greater interest prosperity upon the upbuilding of a 



displayed in forestry than in region through development of farming 



the States of Michigan, Wis- and may even be echoed by farmers and 



consin and Minnesota. The public settlers in their desire to secure increased 



consciousness has been keenly aware of population and a more extensive dis- 



the extensive denudations by lumber- tribution of the tax burden. Hence the 



men, transforming many forest areas strength of this fundamental opposition 



into barren plains. Forest fires, sweep- to State Forest reserves need occasion 



ing over these level lands, have attained no surprise. 



a speed and fierceness unknown in But if our civilization in America is 



mountain regions, and on several to progress, or even maintain itself, the 



occasions, notably at Hinckley, Minne- unregulated exploitation of the weak by 



sota, in 1894, and at Baudette, the strong, the ignorant by the un- 



Minnesota, in 1910, have resulted in scrupulous, must cease. An economic 



great loss of life as well as property. fact cannot be suppressed by merely 



The stimulus thus given to popular denying it. Results speak for them- 



interest in fire protection and forestry selves. One of the deepest truths dem- 



would long ago have brought about an onstrated by centuries, in the most 



advanced state of development of densely populated nations of the Oid 



public forest reserves, were it not for World, is that there exists much land 



an insidious undertow constantly work- too poor to be successfully farmed, 



ing to discredit the movement by The one profitable use for such land is 



misrepresentation and breaking out in forest production. The result of efforts 



open hostility at the least provocation, to farm non-agricultural soils is im- 



This opposition is directed against the poverishment, discouragement and ac- 



use of lands for forest production. Its tual pauperization, leading finally to 



advocates include interests which deal the creation of a race which is wholly 



in wild lands, and who on general incompetent. Fortunately, the extreme 



principles oppose scientific land classi- results, in the Lake States, have not 



fication as tending to bring the agri- had time to manifest themselves or are 



cultural possibilities of a region into prevented by the mobility of the 



disrepute. If the public accepts the population. Instead of being prevented 



statements of these land dealers they from seeking other fields, as so often 



will be forced to believe that not an happened in absence of transportation 



acre of non-agricultural land exists in in earlier ages, the unfortunate victims 



the three Lake States, and that the of land hunger, after exhausting their 



moral right of land speculators to sell resources, abandon the farm and the 



any land whatever to prospective settlers mortgage, and drift elsewhere, perhaps 



is unquestioned. to the slums of some city. If of 



Such representations are eagerly ac- superior stock, they may even profit by 



cepted by townspeople and practically their experience and get a start on 



