A very large amount of the property of the State is excluded from its assessed valuation. All the railroads, aggregating over four thousand miles in length, with their rolling-stock, machine shops, and other accessories, all iron and copper mines, and some other corporations, pay taxes at specific rates, and are out of the scope of the assessment officers. All houses of public worship and cemeteries; the personal property of all library, benevolent, charitable, and scientific institutions, and such real estate as they may actually occupy; the public property of counties, cities, villages, townships, and school districts actually used for corporate purposes; property of the State and of the United States, including unoccupied lands; land grants made to promote public communications (for limited terms), and liberal allowances of household goods are exempt from taxation. It was the estimate of Gov. Croswell in his retiring message to the Legislature, January, 1881, that, including the interests which pay specific taxes and those which are exempt from taxation, the aggregate property of the State was not less than Twelve Hundred Millions of Dollars. LABOR AND ITS INDUCEMENTS. There is nothing in either the soil or the climate, or other natural advantages of Michigan, which exempts those who settle in the State from the common conditions of success in every part of the world. If a man without means chooses to lead an idle and thriftless life, he can starve to death here as soon as anywhere else. But there is no portion of the Union, either in the States or territories, which offers larger encouragement to industry and economy. The laborer, seeking employment with an honest desire to earn a living, and willing to render a fair day's work for a fair day's wages, can always, under ordinary business conditions, find something to do for which he will be well paid. A few years of labor and frugality, in which steadiness and growing experience will, as in every other pursuit, enhance from year to year the value and compensation of his services, will ensure savings enough to buy land. If he has chosen one of the newer sections of the State for his residence he may readily secure a farm in the neighborhood to which he has become accustomed, at low prices and on easy terms, and the same qualities which gave him a start will establish his prosperity and independence on a sure and enduring basis. The mines, It is not alone the work of the farm that affords openings to labor. furnaces, lumber camps, mills, manufactories, and mechanic arts of the State, continually increasing in number and variety, furnish a growing and diversified demand for every kind of employment that a man can pursue either with his head or his hands. And there is no region on earth where brains and muscle can work more advantageously together. THE INDUSTRIES OF MICHIGAN. Although agriculture is the chief producing interest of this State, and engages the attention of the largest share of its people, fertile farms and prolific orchards have not alone contributed to its prosperity. Noted for its wheat, its wool, and its fruit, it is also the first of the United States in its production of lumber, salt, charcoal pig iron, and copper, and in the extent of its fresh-water fisheries, certainly first in the value and probably first in the amount of its yield of iron ore, and among the most advanced in its general manufacturing and commercial development. While a few States excel it in the volume of their crops, and some in the aggregate of their industrial statistics, none can equal it in the magnitude and diversity of its resources, taken together. Its forests, mines, mills, and factories, while offering employment to all grades of labor, from the unskilled worker with the pick and shovel to the most expert mechanic, also create a large and constant local demand for the farm products of the State, and thus doubly promote the general progress. The full extent of the invitation Michigan thus proffers to the laborer and the artisan in search of work and to the farmer of small means who desires to purchase new lands, and to secure a home market for his surplus produce, can be best made plain by brief accounts of the history and condition of its leading industries. LUMBER. Before the axe of the lumberman commenced its work on the forests of Michigan, the northern part of its lower peninsula surpassed any known region of the same area in the richness of its stock of timber. Interspersed with the best varieties of pine were extensive growths of oak, maple, beech, ash, walnut, cherry, whitewood, hickory, and elm, while the less valuable cedar, hemlock, basswood, and tamarack grew, in some sections, in equal abundance. In the upper peninsula pine existed also in large quantities, and broad tracts of hard wood invited the erection of furnaces for the manufacture of the best grades of charcoal iron. Magnificent forests of hard timber covered the greater part of the southern counties, now so rich in agricultural wealth. A more comprehensive account of the timber resources of the States is printed on succeeding pages, from the pen of Prof. W. J. Beal, the accomplished botanist of the Agricultural College. Much of the timber product of the State has been of an exceedingly superior quality. Its cork pine ranks among the best of the soft woods, and commands the highest market price. Its common grades of white and Norway pine are of standard value, while its harder woods are in demand in the ship-yards, factories, and cabinet shops of this and the European continent. Two-thirds of the best lumber sold in the markets of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston goes from its mills, which also supply the heavy building demands of this and neighboring States, especially the prairie States; and it exports annually to foreign countries large shipments of hewn oak and pine timber, staves, and veneering stock. THE CHIEF MANUFACTURING INTEREST OF THE STATE. For more than a score of years lumbering has been the chief manufacturing interest of Michigan, and no American State equals it at the present time in the extent and value of its lumber product. The State has never collected and compiled the annual statistics of this industry, and the most trustworthy sources of information upon the subject are the elaborate publications of journalists connected with papers representing that interest, or issued at the centers of the manufacture. Even these are deficient in statistics covering the trade in spars, staves, heading, and long timber, and the thousands of cords of fuel chopped and sold annually have gone unrecorded, as also have the heavy shipments of railroad ties, cedar telegraph poles, piles, paving blocks, spool stock, and hard woods for the furniture maker. But since 1863 the statistics of the manufacture of pine into lumber have been gathered with intelligence and thoroughness. ITS GROWTH AND MAGNITUDE. The history of this great industry covers a period of only about thirty years. In 1854 the Hon Wm. L. Webber, of East Saginaw, made the first estimate of the extent of the operations of Michigan lumbermen, whose activity was then chiefly confined to the valley of the Saginaw river. He reported the existence of 61 mills, many of them using water-power, and placed their entire annual product at but 108,000,000 feet. Eighteen years later, in 1872, it was estimated that the lumber product of Michigan for twelve months included 2,560,000 feet of oak timber, 12,700,000 staves, 300,000,000 lath, 400,000,000 shingles, and 2,500,000,000 feet of sawed pine. The number of sawmills in the State at that time was about 1,500, employing more than 20,000 persons, and representing $25,000,000 of capital. There were also 200 shingle-mills and 80 stave and hoop factories with an annual product of $4,000,000 in value. The lumber trade suffered materially during the following years of commercial depression, but in 1879 the total amount sawed in this State reached 3,100,000,000 feet, and Gov. Jerome in his inaugural message estimated the value of the entire timber product of that year at $60,000,000. The product of 1881 is estimated by the lumber journals to have been: 84,000,000 Michigan Central R. R.-Mackinac and Bay City Divisions. 85,000,000 This large total is that of sawed pine lumber alone and is exclusive of shingles, lath, staves, and long timber, whose product possesses an annual value of many millions. An ingenious calculation shows that the work of the Michigan mills during that year in sawed lumber would load a train of cars 2,470 miles in length, each car carrying 10,000 feet and occupying 33 feet of track, and would build a city of handsome frame houses capable of furnishing comfortable homes for more than a million of people. The aggregate value of the forest products of this State already marketed is in excess of $1,000,000,000. These totals far outstrip those of any other timberproducing State, or of any country of like area. FACILITIES FOR TRANSPORTATION. The numerous lakes, rivers, and small water-courses which form such salient features in the topography of Michigan, have been and are of inestimable value to many interests, but to none more than those of the lumbermen. They have borne myriads of logs from the forests along their banks to the booms of mills located at convenient shipping points, and this economical transportation has added millions to the profits of the business, and greatly aided its remarkable development. Within a few years the disappearance of the valuable pine along some of the streams and the necessity of access to the remoter tracts of timber have led to the construction of small logging railroads in many portions of the lower peninsula, which possess an aggregate length of several hundred miles, although few of them are incorporated under the general railroad law. In all instances, it is believed, they have proved profitable. DIVERSITY OF LABOR EMPLOYED. A brief description of the methods of lumbering followed in Michigan will illustrate the diversity of labor employed. The felling of the trees is the work of the winter, when snow-clad ground and frozen streams facilitate the transportation of supplies into the forest and the hauling of logs. Camps are pitched at convenient points in which the axemen and teamsters live during the chopping season, the abundance of material making the construction of comfortable quarters easy and economical work, The cut timber is carried on sleds to the banks of some convenient stream or to the track of a logging railroad. In the latter case it is taken to the mill on flat cars, as needed, or transported to the shore of the great lakes and rafted, uncut, to ports hundreds of miles away. In the former instances the high water and strong currents of the spring freshets are used to carry the logs down the streams to points where it is possible to ship lumber to other markets by rail or lake, and where, as a consequence, the mills will be found. There the logs are received and secured in strong booms, controlled by local corporations, the managers of which attend to their delivery at the private booms of their owners, whose property is easily designated by their special marks. Sawing, yarding, and shipping require the labors of other and distinct classes of workmen. THE GREAT CENTERS OF MANUFACTURE. The distribution of the lumber manufacture of Michigan is determined by its rivers and railroads. Below the valleys of the Saginaw and the Grand, little else than a mere local trade now exists. The Saginaw receives the waters of the Tittabawassee, the Cass, the Flint, the Shiawassee, the Bad, the Pine, the Chippewa, the Tobacco, and their numerous tributaries, draining a vast and magnificently timbered region. At its mouth are the thriving towns of Bay City and West Bay City; sixteen miles above, at the head of steam navigation, are Saginaw and East Saginaw. At these cities and in the flourishing villages between them are collected the finest lumber manufacturing establishments in the world, whose total yearly product surpasses that of any other single district. The river which brings the logs to their booms also bears large vessels to their docks, and they have under absolute control all the advantages of cheap water transportation. The Saginaw valley is also connected by several first-class lines with the railway system of the continent, and with this multiplied outlet commands access to all the markets of the world. The Lake Huron shore, including Saginaw Bay, counts its saw-mills by the hundred. The Au Sable and Thunder Bay are important logging rivers of that part of the State, and lumbering is also extensively carried on along the Rifle, the Aux Gres, the Cheboygan, the Black, and many smaller streams. Alpena, Tawas City, East Tawas, Cheboygan, Oscoda, Au Sable, Harrisville, and Black River are important manufacturing or shipping points. The chief lumbering rivers emptying into Lake Michigan are the Muskegon, the Manistee, the Grand, the White, and the Pere Marquette. Many millions of feet are also cut annually along the banks of the Kalamazoo, the Paw Paw, the Grand, the two Sables, the Aux Becs Scies, the Pentwater, and other lesser streams. The Muskegon, after draining a broad valley extending far into the interior, expands into a handsome lake close upon the shore of Lake Michigan. No natural provision could be more favorable for the handling of logs and the shipment of the sawed product, and the city of Muskegon, located upon the south shore of the lake, has the distinction of annually cutting more lumber than any other single city in the world. Manistee possesses a similar eminence in the manufacture of shingles. Benton Harbor, St. Joseph, Grand Haven, Spring Lake, Saugatuck, Montague, Whitehall, Pentwater, Ludington, Frankfort, Elk Rapids, and Traverse City also contribute to swell the total of the forest products of the Lake Michigan shore. There are many inland towns, situated upon railway lines, which are important centers of this industry; among them are Flint, Lapeer, Evart, Big Rapids, Cadillac, Midland, and Farwell. Lumbering is yet in its infancy in the upper peninsula, but the value of the sawed and square timber product of that region in 1881 must be estimated at over $4,000,000. Saw-mills are scattered along the shores and the railways of Menominee, Delta Mackinac, Marquette, Schoolcraft, Baraga, Houghton, and Ontonagon counties, but the chief centers of lumber production in that section of the State are Menominee, Escanaba, Manistique, St. Ignace, Ford River, and Munising. THE LUMBER BUSINESS OF THE FUTURE. The impression that Michigan is showing signs of exhaustion as a timber-producing State is without adequate foundation. Forestry Bulletin No. 6, issued by the United States Census Bureau on December 1, 1881, contained this estimate of the amount of merchantable timber standing in Michigan on May 31, 1880: 66 Lake Michigan, (lower peninsula).. In Menominee River Valley... In Schoolcraft, Chippewa, Mackinac, and Delta counties.. Total..... Feet, Board Measure. 7,000,000,000 8,000,000,000 14,000,000,000 1,600,000,000 2,400,000,000 2,000,000,000 35,000,000,000 |