TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 11 



(2) Exploitation for profit to speculators at the States expense, is 

 the net result of the present land system and methods. 



For the purpose, among other things, of determining whether the State 

 has received an adequate price for the tax homestead land that it has 

 sold, the Commission has sent out investigators through several coun- 

 ties to look up such transactions as seemed to need it. The result shown 

 generally in all directions and by a great number of transactions, 

 justifies the conclusion that a very large percentage of the land sales 

 result in the transfer of land on which the timber values at the time were 

 enormously out of relation to the price realized. This is largely the 

 result, it seems, of inadequate service in the examination and appraisals 

 of land and of the shrewd workings of a very considerable body of self- 

 interested men, who habitually deal in these State lands as speculators 

 for profit realized in various ways. The evidence is conclusive that 

 there are many of this type of land speculators; that no part of the 

 State where there is any considerable area of forfeited tax land is with- 

 out them; that a very large part of the tax homestead land that is 

 entered as homesteads, and most of that which is sold, passes through 

 the hands of these men. (See appendix 2, part 2.) This fact alone 

 clearly shows that the present law and methods in vogue result in a 

 vast body of transactions attractively profitable to speculators. 



Our investigations of many of these transactions convincingly confirms 

 this inference. Moreover petty misdeeds, irregularities, and inefficiency 

 of service, appeared all along the line of investigation. The State's 

 large money loss through the combined effect of these things is the least 

 impoi-tant part of the injury. In the language of the committee which 

 conducted this investigation, the effect on the minds of the public, and 

 especially on the people in the various districts most involved, is in- 

 definitely more serious than the money loss. It is the general lack of 

 adequate State protection and State care and interest in these north 

 counties and in the State lands generally, that has made the State 

 lands "commons" in the eyes of the people, to be dealt with as any one 

 desires. This conception and attitude has been extended until all through 

 our northern counties unoccupied lands are treated as common prop- 

 erty; cut-over lands held in contempt as not worth the attention of a 

 community or worth the protection accorded property elsewhere and 

 under different conditions. This sentiment finds expression today in the 

 public attitude toward trespass and fire; and it is especially in this 

 latter respect where it will stand for j^ears, as the most potent influence 

 for the continuation of the waste land condition of large districts. 



An efficient, well-controlled, business-like execution of our present 

 system, faulty as it is in principle, a well-organized State patrol of the 

 northern wild woods and State lands as is evidently contemplated in our 

 trespass service, would long ago have established respect for law and 

 property and thereby prevented the destruction and loss of much prop- 

 erty, and would have made it easy to introduce better care of forests and 

 other works helpful in the development of these districts. 



The much dreaded fire question is trivial compared to many of the 

 achievements of the modern industrial world; a few years of real ade- 

 quate effort will restore law and order to a point where extraordinary 

 care become superfluous and where a moderate expenditure well in 



