FORESTRY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. 15 



farmers than in all the rest of the State together. These prospective 

 settlers included both actual farmers who were attracted by the cheap 

 price and ease of clearing, and clerks, stenographers, and other city 

 workers who had no real knowledge of agriculture but were dazzled 

 by the prospect of an easy and independent life. Needless to say, 

 their expectations were not realized. As one of the State forest war- 

 dens expressed it : 



A man will have more fun for his money by throwing it in the lake and see- 

 ing the splash. When these poor fellows from the cities buy a section of this 

 land they expect to be able to grow something upon it. The result is that they 

 eke out a miserable existence for a year or so, and then abandon the farm and 

 are glad to get back to the city, where the pay envelope is handed out each 

 Saturday night. 



This does not mean that the entire region is nonagricultural ; 

 portions of it contain good land where farming is profitable. It 

 does mean, however, that the lands which have reverted to the State 

 for taxes and which form the principal stock in trade of the 

 land companies have been classified naturally by a gradual culling 

 process as the poorest in the region. They are chiefly light sands of 

 the type concerning which one of the old-timers once said : 



Of course you can farm those lands. All you need is two things — a shower 

 of rain every week day and a shower of fertilizer on Sunday. 



Not having sufficient control over the elements to bring about such 

 a desirable combination, most of the would-be settlers sooner or later 

 were forced to give up their attempts to cultivate land better suited 

 for forest production than for farming. The result of the activities 

 of the land speculators in forcing the settlement of nonagricultural 

 lands in these regions has been described as follows by a man thor- 

 oughly familiar with local conditions : 



I spent five days around Harrison and I saw abandoned farms in great 

 numbers. I will bet I saw 100 farmhouses boarded up and desolate, and in 

 some of them were the cook stoves, rocking chairs, and a lot of other stuff left 

 behind, for they evidently had no money to cart it away. A whole lot of life's 

 tragedy is written on the Michigan sand barrens. New settlers are going in 

 right along to try the same old experiment of thrashing a living out of the sand 

 and nothingness, and will meet with the same result. 



A similar fate met those who invested in summer-resort lots, 

 whether for speculation or for actual residence. A few of these were 

 desirable locations on lake fronts, but the great majority were on 

 desolate sand barrens or in impassable sphagnum swamps. These 

 facts, of course, did not appear in the advertisements. Purchasers 

 were led to believe that they were securing property of unusual 

 attractiveness in a colony that was bound to be one of the most popu- 

 lar summer resorts in the State. In order to get the thing started 

 and to secure the right kind of people prices were reduced at the 



