4;o 



RECREATION. 



our forests. Homestead law and pre-emp- 

 tion and timber and stone acts and the land 

 sales in 40 acre tracts at public auction have 

 scattered the ownership of timber lands. 

 Lumbermen could not secure sufficient areas 

 of timber to make economical logging oper- 

 ations or apply proper forestry methods. 



"For buying lands of entrymen, lumber- 

 men have been censured and criticised, 

 though that is what the laws undoubtedly 

 anticipated. Violations of the laws are ex- 

 ceptions, not the rule. Premature county 

 organizations and heavy taxes on unpro- 

 ductive land where owners were non-resi- 

 dents and derived no benefit from the tax, 

 have aided in denuding the forests, to es- 

 cape this burden. When lands in our pine- 

 ries were denuded of timber they were 

 wanted for cultivation, which fact has made 

 counties, State and Nation more indifferent 

 as to the preservation of forests. Methods 

 of disposing of public timber lands have 

 placed lumbermen at great disadvantage. 

 Economical methods could not be applied 

 to scattered tracts. The Canadian system 

 of large limits and light taxes has given 

 Canadians great advantages. 



"In the Western forests, conditions are 

 much more favorable, better forestry meth- 

 ods can be adopted, more practicable and 

 profitable and continued supply of timber 

 can be produced. Protection against fire 

 can be successfully applied by clearing 

 away all dry materials from around each 

 of the trees. Large trees may be cut, leav-. 

 ing much greater numbers of smaller trees 

 for growth and reforestation. As the 

 lands are not valuable for agricultural pur- 

 poses, taxes will be made light on partially 

 cut lands, so that continued growth can be 

 maintained. Protecting forests by attempt- 

 ing to keep the fires from running is not a 

 success. When fires are kept from running 

 for long periods, damage, when it does run, 

 is greater than the aggregate of intermediate 

 burnings, and fires can not be entirely pre- 

 vented. 



"Timber permits by government should be 

 on a large scale to make logging and re- 

 foresting profitable and economical. A large 

 proportion of our lumber supply in later 

 years must come from private timber culti- 

 vation on individual holdings. 



"The forestry department will become in- 

 creasingly more and more important. It 

 should be given large authority, and means 

 to carry on the work and for reforesting on 

 a large scale as rapidly as may prove prac- 

 ticable." 



There is a great deal of common sense 

 in these explanations of the difficulties 

 which have forced lumbermen to uneco- 

 nomical methods and, no doubt, in the end 

 the people alone are to be blamed for the 

 ruthless forest destruction ; for the people 



have always had it in their power to re- 

 move these difficulties, provided this be, as 

 it is claimed, a government of the people, 

 by the people, for the people ! 



There are, of course, lumbermen, who do 

 not look so liberally on the establishment 

 of forest policies by the States as Mr. Walk- 

 er does. This came out when a paper was 

 read on the effect of the Chippewa Forest 

 Reserve on the locality. The writer claimed 

 that certain jack pine lands with sandy sub- 

 soils were agriculturally valueless and 

 would be more profitable in forest. Some 

 owners of cut over lands of that character 

 contended that the lands were still good 

 enough for settlers, to whom the lumber- 

 men owners would rather dispose of them, 

 than to have the State take them for wood- 

 cropping. 



The same divergence of interests has 

 made itself felt in Michigan, where the 

 farmers object to forest reservations, be- 

 cause the tax burden is thereby less dis- 

 tributed. Prof. F. Roth, of the University 

 of Michigan, in charge of the new College 

 of Forestry, referred to this in his paper on 

 the possibilities and methods of reforesta- 

 tion in the white pine belt: 



"Our methods of using the pine forests 

 have left us large areas of denuded lands, 

 considerable portions of which are in a 

 burned or firescarred, waste condition. Re- 

 forestation concerns itself with putting 

 these unproductive non-agricultural lands 

 back into a productive condition. Unfor- 

 tunately the opinions concerning these lands 

 vary within wide limits, and consequently 

 there is much disagreement as to what can 

 and what should really be done with them. 

 Naturally the local town and county offi- 

 cials, the county papers and many, not all, 

 of the citizens, desire their town and county 

 to be built up, to, get taxpayers, roads and 

 schools and incidentally to have the value 

 of their holdings increased. These people 

 mean well and deserve careful consideration. 

 Less so the mere speculator in these cheap 

 waste lands, who makes a business of per- 

 suading good, thrifty laborers and artisans 

 from the city into buying sand lands, and 

 •thereby gets the least experienced and most 

 pcorly equipped people to undertake what 

 the most experienced farmer refuses to try. 

 These settlers generally fail, and the last 

 50 years' experience in Wisconsin and 

 Michigan, as well as on the large stretches 

 of sands along the Atlantic, clearly proves 

 this fact. The evidence of these people, 

 therefore, is biased and makes these lands 

 appear better than they are. Census figures 

 on settlement and improved lands indicate 

 that the sandy lands in our lake States, 

 formerly pinery and now largely waste 

 lands, have remained unsettled ; that, for 

 instance, the State of Michigan has 16 



