176 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
The land class designated as “‘farm”’ in this table includes all oper- 
ated farm real estate, except such as is assessed to real-estate opera- 
tors, timber operators, or power companies. It takes in not only the 
cleared farm land and the adjacent unimproved land on the same 
description, but also adjacent unimproved land descriptions belonging 
to the same owner when they are an integral part of the farm. The 
class also takes in potential resort real estate which is not yet being 
being used or held for resort purposes. 
The forest category includes (1) all real estate assessed to lumber, 
pulp, or other wood-using industries; (2) timbered tracts owned by 
individual loggers; (8) all real estate assessed to land companies or to 
individuals who operate a land-selling office, no matter what the nature 
of the land; and (4) land of low value, chiefly cut over, which is held 
by speculators, nonresidents, and other inactive owners whose purpose 
of ownership is not evident. This category thus includes potential 
as well as actual forest land. 
The third category, designated ‘‘all other’’, includes real estate 
held chiefly for resort or residential purposes, that held by other 
industries than wood-using industries, and all real estate assessed to 
power companies, no matter what the nature of the land, much of it 
being held only for purposes of overflow. 
The abandoned-farm category is not mutually exclusive, but refers 
to those tracts in all categories on which the cleared land and usually 
the farmstead have been abandoned. 
It will be observed that, except in those towns where there is very 
little delinquency in any category, there is much more in the forest 
class than in the farm class. In Athelstane and Little Rice, which 
have large areas with sandy or swampy soils, nearly 40 percent of the 
land in the forest category had been delinquent for 4 years. This is 
to be compared with 6 percent in the farm class. Similarly in Lincoln 
County, the forest-land class showed 3 or 4 times as much long-term 
delinquency as the farm class in most of the groups of townships. 
In two of the selected townships—Morse and Murry—there was 
relatively more delinquency in the “‘all other” category than in either 
the farm or forest class, the ratios of delinquent to total area in this 
category being 64.9 and 52.9 percent respectively. The explanation 
for these high ratios seems to be that resort and power developments 
have not met with success in these townships as they have, for 
instance, in Laona and Three Lakes. The amount of delinquency 
on the part of abandoned farms varied from practically none in 
Bartelme to 39.6 percent in Bayview. 
All in all, long-term delinquency in the selected Wisconsin towns 
quite accurately mirrors economic conditions. The ratios are high 
in the towns where economic possibilities are limited and low in the 
towns with greater and more varied resources. 
A bulletin of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station (70, p 
22) sheds additional light on the character of the delinquent ade 
in the northern part of the State. In respect to one of the towns 
studied, it states: 
One of these towns has a total area of 41,644 acres. In 1920 only 7,400 acres 
of this was sold for taxes ® but in 1926 nearly 22,000 acres, or more than half the 
total area, was sold. The bulk of this tax-delinquent area belonged to land 
companies and speculators, being divided about equally between these two classes 
62 The authors, in referring to land being sold for taxes, mean that only the tax liens were sold, the owner 
still having an opportunity to redeem from the lien holder. 
