SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 33 



6. That the state may pay to the town a tax on these lands, which shall be 

 used only for road and school purposes. 



When the bill for this law was up for consideration, it was quite fully dis- 

 cussed and was protested against, particularly by the committee representing 

 the two counties in which the lands were located. 



The principal arguments may be summed up in the following four points : 



1 . Why reforest our lands, we are glad to be rid of the ' ' howling wilderness " 

 which you seem to wish to estabhsh. 



2. Our lands are fair agricultural lands and can and will be practically all 

 settled. 



3. Even our lightest lands are today excellent stock range and worth more 

 to us for this purpose than they will be for forest purposes. 



4. You withdraw large areas of our lands from taxation and thus throw the 

 burden of maintaining school and road and proper civic government on the 

 shoulders of a few of us who have our homes and our interests here and cannot 

 well escape. 



There was much truth in these contentions and since this matter must come 

 up again, it is of interest to inquire into these principal arguments. It is but 

 natural, too, that much sentiment prevailed and that both sentiments and 

 . misunderstanding were fostered by interested persons, but on the whole, the 

 protest was a fair one and well deserved the consideration which it received. 

 "Why reforest and re-establish the 'howling wilderness' we are glad to have 

 behind us?" This argument, as most of the people of the district have by 

 this time fully learned, was based largely on a misunderstanding of the real 

 objects of the reserves. In a country where only about eight per cent of the 

 land is settled, where one may ride for miles and miles on a kind of "stump 

 prairie" without seeing house, hovel or camp, and where marsh fires and 

 brushwood fires burn for days without so much as attracting attention, in such 

 a county, the protective efforts of the state can hardly be accused of producing 

 a wilderness. Here a state forest ranger can only be of benefit to everyone and 

 most of all to the local settler, to the stock farmer and the owner of lands and 

 timber. 



Nor is this all. In a district where 100 days of sleighing indicates the nor- 

 mal winter, where frost must be looked for practically in every month of the 

 year, and where settlement is as slow as it has been in these districts, what can 

 be more desirable and useful than a goodly cover of forest, a shelter against the 

 winter storms, an ample supply of fuel and a local supply for the few mills, 

 which, if proper management prevails, might find here a supply for all times 

 to come? Today it is the unsightly, blackened swamp waste which discour- 

 ages the good settler, it is this stump waste which might be termed the" howl- 

 ing wilderness. " What the state is attempting, not the increase of wilderness, 

 but a most useful, in fact, here an indispensable branch of agriculture and the 

 only form of agriculture which can be relied on as producing a useful, market- 

 able crop on all of these lands irrespective of seasons. 



"Our lands are practically all farm lands, etc." Here we meet again with 

 the argument which has been considered before, it is the same argument which 

 led to the clearing of the millions of acres of non-agricultural lands abroad, it 

 is the argument which prevented the people of Pennsylvania from heeding the 

 words of Penn, it is the same misconception which left unheeded the good ad- 

 vice and proper beginning of the Pilgrim fathers and which made people deaf 

 to the pleadings of the governor of New York two centuries ago. As has been 

 stated, the experience of Europe has proved it an error for those countries, 

 which after a thousand years of trial, are spending milhons of dollars every 



