22 MICHIGAN FORESTRY. 



want to assess land and ripe crops on the farm and make the sugar beet indus- 

 try impossible thereby? Would it not provoke the strongest of criticisms and 

 justly so? But this is exactly the case with the farmers' woodlot as well as the 

 large forest. 



SIX MILLION ACKE3 ABANDONED. 



The effects of our taxation, strange as it may seem, falls more heavily on 

 the large owner than the small one. The owner of a number of farms, worked 

 bj^ hired help, is simply without revenue, and may be, is losing even part of 

 his capital. The small farmer simply loses part of his wages. He does on 

 his own farm what he is not willing to do for anyone else if hired, he gives up 

 part of his just wages to the tax collector. In reality, of course he pays more 

 taxes and his small loss means more to him than the larger loss to the 

 richer man, but certain it is that these small holders can, and do hold on to 

 their lands, while the larger holder, who from necessity, runs affairs on a busi- 

 ness basis, removes what there is of value and abandons them. Six nallion 

 acres of tax title land, one-sixth of the land area of the state, is soaked for 

 taxes fully testify to this truth. What are you going to do about it? The 

 answer is for the statesmen of Lansing. 



Certain it is that a farming community, in managing affairs on business 

 principles, can not afford a tax rate of over one per cent and expect to make 

 any interest on the investment. And equally certain it is that private own- 

 ers can not go into forestry and expect success in an enterprise where large 

 tracts of poor lands are to be restocked at considerable cost, and where every 

 bit of work must be done by hired help and under difficult conditions, unless 

 there is some assurance of a more equitable system of taxation than prevails 

 in our north counties today. 



BENEFIT TO THE STATE. 



As regards the work of the state, all is different. State lands are exempt, 

 or practically so, and besides this the benefit which the state seeks in refor- 

 estation is not merely in stumpage, but it is more in secondary benefits, added 

 industries, better market for farm products and the utihzation of lands other- 

 wise lying idle. 



Why the state should permit this tax rate system to go on is difficult to 

 see. It has done incalculable damage, it has led to abandonment of lands, to 

 the deterioration and misuse of these lands, it has prevented development in 

 a number of our counties and is today one of the most serious obstacles to im- 

 provement. 



Still more is it difficult to see why the state should want to load a special 

 burden on these very districts by holding areas of lands, whole townships, 

 without itself paying taxes or in some way easing the unreasonable and mis- 

 chevious burden of these people. 



Everyone is agreed and our statesmen are ever ready to proclaim that the 

 development of any country or town is an advantage to the state on the whole. 

 Why, then, should the state shirk its duty and thereby seriously hinder the 

 development of any district, merely under the pretense of saving the penny? 



LOSS TO STATE LARGE. 



And such a penny ! Take eleven of our pinery counties in the southern pen- 

 insula and the aggregate assessed value in 1902, of real and personal property, 

 amounts to but a trifle over one per cent of the property of the state. But 

 this pitiful one per cent must be squeezed for an extra nennv. even a,t the risk 



