TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 73 



made to men who buy mostly, if not exclusively, for the purpose of 

 getting the merchantable timber and wood. About 15% of the land is 

 sold for these grazing fads of one kind or another. Included in the 

 amount of my estimate for the timber there is a considerable area that 

 is purchased for speculative purposes in addition to the purpose of 

 getting the timber. There have been in particular many purchases by 

 land syndicates for resale, sometimes for farms and sometimes for 

 summer resorts along the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. 



My employment by the Dupont Powder Company was in the years 

 1906-7. This company makes great quantities of powder and other ex- 

 plosives for use in the mines of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Its opera- 

 tions involve the use of immense quantities of cord wood for the char- 

 coal or carbon used in making powder. They employed me to look over 

 the tracts of land for them in this State. They were considering the 

 purchase of such an area as, if reforested, would give them an annual 

 increase by natural growth of at least 10,000 cords. They proposed to' 

 reforest such a tract with maple, birch and beech. This would require 

 a tract of approximately fifteen thousand acres to enable them to cut 

 10,000 cords every year without depleting their forest holding. Of 

 course, they would replant as fast as each tract was cut over, treating 

 the whole, in other words, as a rotary or periodic forest property. 

 This company finally decided to go to Pennsylvania, and have located 

 a large tract for the practice of Practical Forestry as a business propo- 

 sition, inasmuch as so much of their product was used there. This gave 

 that State an advantage in the way of freight rates, which are high 

 on their product. With protection from fire secured by action of the 

 State and with a modification of i taxation so that the forest growth as 

 distinct from the land, shall be taxed on a rational basis and not as at 

 present on a basis where each year's growth is taxed annually during 

 the long course of years, it must necessarily stand idle until the tree 

 reaches maturity, I have no doubt that many large concerns consuming 

 in their business annually large quantities of timber and wood products, 

 will find it to their interest to reforest large areas of the less valuable 

 cut-over lands. 



"In township No. 24 north, range 3 west, Roscommon county, near 

 Higgins Lake, the statement from the Land Oflflce shows that there have 

 been fifty-four attempts to homestead, of which twenty-three have 

 been deeded and thirty-one have been cancelled or surrendered. In 

 some instances there have been five attempts on the same parcel, four 

 of which were acknowledged failures, and in the majority of instances 

 at least two attempts have been made, one at least of which was a 

 failure. Forty-three per cent of the total acreage taken up including 

 duplications has been deeded. At present it appears that 1,970 

 acres have been deeded finally and that 1,196 acres now stand as 

 abandoned. In other words, 371/2% of abandonments is the final show- 

 ing made by this particular township." 

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