20 THE COMMISSION OP INQUIRY, 



The necessary result was failure — a disaster to the man who made the 

 attempt, and anything but profitable, either to the neighborhood in 

 which he settled, or to the State at large. Abandoned homes there are 

 without doubt in the pine barrens.* It has been suggested, however, 

 (See Appendix 2), in quarters not altogether disinterested, that none 

 of the failures evidenced by the abandoned homes to be seen in some 

 of these northern counties, were due to the unfitness of the land, but 

 that (so far as they represent not timber skinning but the failure of an 

 honest effort to make a home), they were all due entirely to the unfit- 

 ness of the man who made the attempt to create a farm out of such light, 

 sandy lands. Inasmuch as a great quantity of land has, by the aid' of 

 questionable advertising matter, been sold by land speculators, to clerks, 

 stenographers and working people of Chicago and elsewhere, it is easy 

 to believe that a large number of persons may have been caught who 

 had neither the means nor the knowledge to fit them for the task of 

 farming. But it matters not at all whether failure of honest effort was 

 due to the unfitness of the land, or of the man who was enticed into 

 making the attempt. So far as the land policy of the State has made 

 easy either result, it merits only condemnation, and a change in that 

 policy should be made which will prevent the recur^-ence of like results. 

 But making due allowance for the actual failure of bona fide attempts 

 at home making that are included in the figures above quoted, the greater 

 part of the abandonments shown represent the pernicious and destruc- 

 tive work of the timber skinner, the man of the "rubber forty," who is 

 vying with fire in the work of bringing the cut-over lands of the north 

 to a condition of waste and desolation. 



THE CAPACITY OP THE CUT-OVER LANDS FOR NATURAL REFORESTATION. 



The forfeited tax land is chiefly found in the regions once covered with 

 pine forests. This land is light. Very little hardwood land, which is 

 generally heavier, has been allowed to fall to the State for taxes. The 

 typical history of the cut-over land of the original pineries, is that, 

 after removal of the pine, fire, invited by the toppings and inflammable 

 debris, has swept over the region. This devastation is often several 

 times repeated, and its completeness is in proportion to the number of 

 fires and their intensity. Sometimes the vitality of the land is de- 

 stroyed; sometimes a few trees escape destruction, or a little young 

 growth, and the possibility of natural reproduction, if fire is kept out, 

 is preserved. The State has tried neither to keep fire out, nor to pre- 

 serve the seed trees and young growth. It has ignored the value in 

 forest growth except when large enough to yield lumber or wood. The 

 value of seed trees, because of their equipping nature to reforest with- 

 out planting or other artificial aid, has been overlooked. The policy of 

 the State has been to crowd its holdings of cut-over lands upon pur- 

 chasers for a mere song for the very purpose of having them stripped 

 of this scattered gro wth. This policy, and the supine inaction of the 



* Extract from a letter of W. B. Mershon of Saginaw: 



"I spent five days around Harrison and I saw abandoned fartns in great numbers. I will bet I 

 saw 100 farm bouses boarded up and desolate, and in some of them were the cook stoves roddne 

 chairs and a lot of other jtuft left behind, for they evidently had no money to cart it away. A whole 

 lot of hte s trarady is written on the Michigan sand barrens. New settlers are going in ri^ht along to 

 try the same oK expenment of threshing a living out of the sand and nothingness, and will meet 

 with the same result. See also appendix 2. e = , ^^ nn. ^^„ 



