WASTE. 
45 
10 million acres, and among these much of the best land, will 
still remain either woods or unproductive brush land in 50 years 
to come. What advantage it is to a county and to the state to 
have poor, unproductive sand lauds settled by poor and igno¬ 
rant people, and support farms “without barns,” cannot here be 
discussed. In the same way, it is not here contemplated to en¬ 
ter into the question of communal property, i. e., whether it 
might not be well for a county, which can get land for the 
mere taking, to hold a few townships in county forests and 
have these county forests at least defray the county expenses, 
and give work to many people. If not the counties, certainly 
the state can afford to acquire and hold for the future all cut¬ 
over lands. Such communal properties have been mainstays 
of European states in all financial crises and have been eagerly 
sought and guarded by all European governments as well as by 
towns, counties, and cities. With a county holding 100,000 
acres of good forest land, every citizen becomes part owner, his 
store or shop is valued in proportion as it shares these advant¬ 
ages, and instead of hindering the development of a county, as 
is often claimed, such a forest property would stimulate im¬ 
migration and help to develop both directly and indirectly all 
the resources of the county. 
RECOVERY AND PREVENTION OF WASTE. 
What can be done to save the enormous loss to the state is 
clear: The land must be restocked and the young timber must 
be given a chance to grow on all lands which are essentially 
forest soil and not desirable for agriculture. 
Forest Fires .—What the fire has done to the pine supply is 
apparent from the conservative figures of original stand of pine. 
Besides this injury to pine, the fire has killed more than 5 bil¬ 
lion feet of hemlock, at least 1 billion of cedar and several bil¬ 
lions of hardwoods besides large quantities of tamarack. In ad¬ 
dition fire has killed stands of young and sapling pine (under 
8-inch diameter) covering many thousand acres, which today 
