Testimony of Raphael Zon, Director, Lake States Forest Experiment Station

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TOLAN COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL MIGRATION

Mr. PARSONS. The next witness will be Dr. Zon.

Will you state your full name and your address and your official position and who you represent for the record, please Dr. Zon?

Mr. ZON. Raphael Zon, Lake States Forest Experiment Station.

Mr. PARSONS. Congressman Osmers will interrogate you, Dr. Zon.

Mr. OSMERS. You have submitted a statement, Dr. Zon, covering conditions in the so-called cut-over region.

(The statement referred to is as follows)

STATEMENT OF RAPHAEL ZON, DIRECTOR, LAKE STATES FOREST EXPERIMENT STATION

A STATEMENT ON THE CUT-OVER REGION—BREEDING PLACE OF MIGRANTS

The problem of migratory destitute workers has two aspects:
The constitutional right of American citizens to migrate from one State to another to seek economic opportunities, and in this search for employment to be protected from uncontrolled exploitation.
Eliminating the causes of migration at their source by increasing the economic opportunities in the distressed area.
The first lies in the field of labor legislation, the second, in the field Of economics.
This statement deals with the causes of distressed conditions in the cut-over region which makes it a potential reservoir of migration and offers some suggestions for improving the economic opportunities at home and thus eliminating the causes of migration.
The cut-over region.—The northern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, comprising, roughly, 76 counties, are commonly referred to as the cut-over region. The name suggests that it was once a timbered region from which the timber has been removed. This is not entirely true. Mining of copper and iron, and to some extent farming, play an important part in its economic life and are also responsible for the present economic condition.
The region includes some 57 million acres (about one and one-half times as large as the New England States) and has a population of about 1 1/2 million people.
The region is, for the most part, still "wild land area." Although some 16,000,000 acres. or more than one-fourth, are classed as land in farms, actually only 10 percent is in cropland. About 5,000,000 acres are in cities, villages, rights-of-way, and bogs and marshes. The remainder, between 40 and 45 million acres, is forest land of one kind or another. The cut-over region is therefore of very recent agricultural settlement and of low density of population. The population density ranges from 15 to 30 persons per square mile, and for most of the area there are less than 2 families per section of land. Its distressed condition, therefore, does not arise from overpopulation in relation to its resources.
The cut-over region once a land of opportunity.—The cut-over region has been richly endowed with natural resources—forests, minerals, lakes, and large acreages of soil suitable for agriculture. Barely 50 years ago, people from all parts of the East flocked into this region to work in the copper and iron mines and the lumber camps. In 2 decades, between 1880 and 1900, the population of the northern Lake States increased 245 percent. At its height the copper industry employed 16,000 workers in Houghton County, Mich., alone, and the population of about 75,000 was almost wholly dependent upon it. In 1910-11 iron mining employed about 35,000 men. In the early nineties, during the period of highest lumber production, there were some 155,000 men employed in the primary and secondary wood-using industries. About the same time there was started a land boom, largely stimulated by land companies.
Today the cut-over region—a distressed area.—In the course of three or four decades the economic picture has completely changed. The copper mines, which at their peak produced 96 percent of all the copper in the United States, in 1933 produced only 9 percent and employed less than 2,000 workers. The decline in copper mining antedates the depression, because while production of copper in the United States as a whole increased from 1933-34, that of the Michigan copper mines declined still further. Michigan copper mining is deep, high-cost mining, much more costly than in Utah and the Southwest, and cannot compete with the low-cost mines recently discovered in Africa and elsewhere.
The iron mines in the Lake States still produce about 88 percent of all the iron mined in the United States, and yet employ today fewer men. As a result of the mechanization of the mines and greater output per man, only 18,000 men were employed in 1937, against the 35,000 men employed in 1910, although 50 percent more ore was taken out in 1937 than in 1910. Some estimates place the number of miners who can never be reemployed at 5,000, who must be moved elsewhere or provided with some other work. For the most part, the men who came to the region to engage in mining were stranded there after the demand for their labor disappeared, because there was no other region to which they could move.
The most disastrous consequence, however, was brought about by the cutting out of the timber. Some 90 percent of the original merchantable timber is now gone, and most of the large sawmills have been closed. And in the course of the next 5 or 10 years, the few remaining large mills will exhaust their timber supplies. The number of workers employed in logging and sawmilling has shrunk from 117,000 in 1890 to 12,000 in 1933 and even this not on a full-time basis. Since lumbering was the prevailing industry of the region, a more detailed account of its rise and decline may be desirable. (The three charts present graphically the rise and fall in lumber production and employment.)
The rise and decline of the lumber industry in the Lake States.—Rapid exploitation of the vast timber supplies of the Lake States came as a result of demands for lumber for rural and urban construction throughout the Middle West, brought about by the unprecedented farm and industrial expansion which commenced after the Civil War.
Prior to 1860 there had been considerable land cleared for farming in the southern portions of the Lake States, and many small sawmills, mostly water-power, were cutting timber for local and even some Eastern and Central States markets. Between 1840 and 1860, the number of sawmills increased from 615 to 1,561. In the latter year, lumber production exceeded 500,000,000 feet. This was only a beginning. By l870 the use of steam power in the sawmills made possible a tremendous increase in productive capacity, while railroad transportation increased the range of the lumbering operations and accessibility to markets. In 1870, 2,500 sawmills reported production of 3,500,000,000 board feet of lumber.
During the next three decades the lumber industry came rapidly into maturity and passed into old age. Peak production in Michigan was reached in 1889 at nearly 5,500,000,000 board feet. Wisconsin and Minnesota reported their greatest output in 1899 at over 3 1/3 and 2 1/3 billion board feet, respectively. Although in 1889 the peak of lumber production had not been attained in either Minnesota or Wisconsin, the combined total of the three Lake States was at a peal; of nearly 10,000,000,000 board feet of lumber.
Just as the development of the lumber industry was the inevitable result of expanding demands for lumber in the Middle West, so the collapse of the industry was made inevitable by the pressure of an almost limitless market on a limited resource. The decline of lumbering was as catastrophic as the rise of the industry had been spectacular. In 20 years, from the peak of 1889, lumber production dropped nearly 45 percent. During these declining years of the pine industry, expanded markets for hemlock and hardwoods helped to cushion the fall in Wisconsin and Michigan. In Minnesota the progress of exploitation was somewhat behind that in the other two States, but there were no extensive forests of northern hardwoods to take up the slack when the pine was gone. The full effect of timber exhaustion in the Lake States was not felt until after 1909. Up to that time the development of other wood-using industries, notably pulp and paper and furniture, which utilized larger amounts of labor per unit of raw material in processing and production than does the lumber industry, helped to make up for the employment lost in the decline of lumbering. The census of 1890 indicates peak employment of 155,000 men in the primary and secondary wood-using industries, of whom 117,000 were employed in logging and sawmills. By 1929 the number reported employed in logging and sawmills had shrunk to 32,000, but there were still a total of 132,000 men employed in all kinds of wood-using industries. After 1929 the slump in employment, wages, and value of products was serious. In 1933 employment in all forest-products industries in the Lake States had fallen to 69,000 men. Salaries and wages dropped from $182,000,000 in 1929 to a low of $57,000,000 in 1933, and the gross value of products of ail wood-using industries dropped from $680,000,000 in 1920 to $249,000,000 in 1933.
The consequences of forest destruction.—The most far-reaching effect of the disappearance of the forest was not so much in the drastic curtailment of the opportunities for labor as in profoundly changing the whole pattern of land use and the economic and social structure of the communities that were left behind. It gave rise to a new economic phenomenon, namely, tax delinquency on an unprecedented scale, brought about by the abandonment of millions of acres of cut-over land by its original owners.
Tax delinquency today is at the root of most of the economic difficulties of the region. The private exploitation of the timber resulted in the destruction of this valuable resource over a large area of the northern Lake States without replacing it by new timber growth or diverting it into permanent agriculture or other profitable use. The pioneering psychology of the early lumbermen, the belief that the forests were inexhaustible, the prevailing notion that all the cut-over land would eventually be needed for agricultural settlement, together with uncontrolled forest fires that swept the cut-over land year after year, left in their wake millions upon millions of acres of devastated land, and millions upon millions of acres covered with inferior forest growth. When the attempts to dispose of the cut-over land to settlers, after many tragic experiences on the part of settlers, had collapsed, the owners of the land began to abandon this land for nonpayment of taxes. The local communities, in the heyday of logging, had issued bonds to finance improvement of roads, schools, public buildings, and even drainage of swamps for future agricultural use. Today, with the decline of the lumber industry, the collapse of the land boom, many communities are left saddled with debts beyond their capacity to pay.
In earlier years, taxes were not burdensome on local residents, even though the population was sparse. Timberland and industries formed a broad enough tax base to absorb most of the load, but as the forest land was cut over and the land abandoned and stricken off the tax rolls, the tax base greatly diminished speculative values of land disappeared. In the 14 northeastern counties of Minnesota, for instance, and this is characteristic of the entire cut-over region, the peak valuation occurred in 1920, when it was approximately $235,000,000. By 1936 the valuation of the same properties declined to $100,000,000, a shrinkage of 57 percent, and further decline is imminent. Land abandonment y timber owners and land speculators has left the farmer, home owner, and businessman to bear the burden.
While taxable values have been decreasing, governmental costs have not been reduced, but, on the contrary, new costs have been added for relief, old-age assistance, and emergency programs. To raise the minimum amount of funds necessary to operate the local governments, usually $150,000 to $600,000, requires a levy of 10 to 30 percent of the assessed value of the taxable property. All of the northeastern counties in Minnesota, except St. Louis County, have average tax rates of over 100 mills.
Tax delinquency, once started, forms a vortex into which other properties not yet delinquent are being constantly sucked in. As more land becomes tax delinquent, heavier taxes are shifted to solvent taxpayers, driving one after another into delinquency. Several counties have been able to collect no more than one-half of the taxes levied during the last 12 years. Some individual township and school districts reached a delinquency of over 90 percent.
In some counties of northern Minnesota, as much as 65 percent of their gross land area is found to pay no taxes to the support of the local government. This throws the full burden of running the local government on the remaining 35 percent of the land, and on the homes, industries, and business establishments. Part of even this remaining property is delinquent for 1 to 4 years of taxes and threatens to reduce even further the already meager tax base.
Of the forty or forty-five million acres of so-called wild land in the cut-over region, 21,000,000 acres, or nearly one-half, have become tax delinquent. Of these about 13,000,000 acres have been purchased by the Federal Government for national forests, or have become State or county forests. The remaining 8,000,000 acres are practically no man's land. Without State and Federal aid the local governments would be unable to carry on their functions.
Labor migration.—No other region illustrates the relation between migration and economic opportunity as does the northern Lake States. As has already been shown, when mining and lumbering were booming there was a great influx of labor into the region. During the 30 years between 1880 and 1910 the population had more than quadrupled. Beginning with 1920, when the output of the copper mines shrank almost to nothing and mechanization of the iron mines threw out more than half of their workers, and the sawmills began to close, there began a gradual exodus of workers from the region. As a result of this there was a decline in the population between 1920 and 1930 in most of the cut-over region. Beginning, however, with 1930, when the opportunities for employment in the cities as a result of the industrial depression had decreased, there became manifest a back-to-the-land movement. In northern Minnesota, for instance, some 17,500 people had moved to farms between 1929 and 1934. A slight increase in population has been noticed since 1930 in northern Wisconsin and northern Michigan. Some came from distressed agricultural areas in North and South Dakota, and a considerable group came from cities of over 10,000 population. This increase in the population of northern counties was due to a return to the land of people who had failed to find work in the cities and to the discouragement of the normal tendency of young people to drift toward the cities.
Most of the migrants were industrial laborers seeking refuge during the depression. A large number of these migrants are squatters and are past 45 years of age, and almost half of them are on relief
The counties into which there is an influx of such migrants naturally resent their coming, since it increases their relief load and tends to create rural slums Some of these migrants actually buy little farms with the hope that they can make a living. The result is that there are a great many small farmers who must seek work off the farm to make a precarious living. Some of them are only farmers in name.
There are today in the cut-over region whole communities that are simply stranded—potential migrants for the first opportunity that presents itself, but at present immobile because they have no place to go.
Employment Situation—A survey made by the United States Forest Service in 1939 showed that within the 76 counties of the cut-over region there are 412,400 breadwinners. Of these, 337,000 have some regular work-in public forests, Federal and State, 500, in forest industries, 58,170; in farming, 111,010; in other industries, largely mining, 72,460; in other services and trade, 94,860. The remaining 75,000 heads of families are on relief of one kind or another. Of these, 15,000 are permanent relief cases, 45,000 are on W. P. A., and 15,000 are unemployed and in need of work. In other words, about 18 percent of the entire population is dependent on W. P. A., relief, or in need of work.
The road to economic independence.—The present economic plight of the people in the northern Lake States, in my opinion, must be ascribed not so much to lack of natural resources as to the lack of opportunities for the large mass of the population, misdirected land-use policies of the past, and the feeble efforts of today to correct these policies. The northern Lake States region has been used for a long time as a backward colony from which raw materials were exported without contributing to any extent to the permanent building up of the region itself. Although the cream of the natural resources has been largely skimmed, there are still ample resources left in the cut-over region to support a larger and more prosperous population than there is now, provided these resources are developed principally for the benefit of the people living in the region.
Here are some of the opportunities Timber growing in most European countries is recognized as an economic opportunity, as agriculture, for instance, is in this country. From 50 to 100 acres of intensively managed forest give permanent employment to 1 man for a year. We cannot expect at present such intensive timber culture in this country, but let us assume that if we adopted some semblance of permanent forestry, a thousand acres could give employment to 1 person per year. This is from 10 to 20 times the size of the forest area which gives employment to 1 man per year in Europe. The 45,000,000 acres of forest land would immediately provide permanent employment to some 46,000 persons in addition to the 58,000 persons already gainfully employed in the woods, mills, and pulp and paper plants.
Seventy percent of the entire volume of commercial timber in the cut-over region is in industrial or speculative ownership (this does not include the farm woods). Half of this is in the form of large private holdings of 10,000 acres or more and is controlled by about 75 owners. Whoever controls these timber resources controls to a large extent the economic destiny of the region. Should they choose to adopt timber growing as a permanent policy, the economic stability of the people working in the woods, in the mills, and other wood-using industries could be more or less assured. If they choose to follow the old policies, as most of them do, of cutting out and getting out, the economic security of labor will be made still more uncertain.
Here is an actual concrete example of what management of forests on a permanent basis means to the lumber industry and the workers in it.
Sweden has a forest area of about 62,000,000 acres—not very much larger than the forest area in the whole Lake States, which is about 55,000,000 acres. Only for a few years, some 40 years ago, when we still had abundant forests did the annual cut reach 10,000,000,000 feet, and it has been declining ever since. The annual cut today from these 55,000,000 acres is about 1 1/2 billion board feet, including pulpwood. The Swedish forests, after more than a century of logging, are today producing 7,000,000,000 feet of lumber each year, and this yield is maintained and even increased from year to year; while in the Lake States, if the present destructive processes still go on, our 55,000,000 acres soon will not be able to maintain an annual cut of even 1,000,000,000 feet.
In Sweden today, with a forest acreage not much greater than ours, there are employed some 400,000 men in cutting and transporting logs, and in the manufacture of lumber and pulp, as against 69,000 in the forest industries of the Lake States.
Sweden, besides meeting all its own domestic needs, exports forest products to the value of $45,000,000 a year. The Lake States not only do not meet their own domestic needs, but import some lumber and large quantities of pulpwood and pulp.
Take the mining industry. Millions of tons of ore are shipped out from the region to be smelted somewhere in Pittsburgh or Cleveland. Suppose at least some of this ore were processed into pig iron and steel within the region itself. What new opportunities would be created for the employment of local labor! At the same time it would enhance the prospects of utilizing the low-grade ore which at present remains unused.
The agricultural potentialities of the region are only scantily developed, since, as has already been pointed out, only about 5,700,000 acres are in actual cultivation. It is possibly risky to encourage expansion of agriculture in the old conventional way—an individual farmer on a little piece of land struggling to make a living through his individual efforts, when even farmers on good land farther south have a hard time of it. With cooperative farming, however, on land leased from the Federal Government, States, or counties, with no mortgages facing the settlers, with machinery bought cooperatively and cooperative marketing of the products, with part-time work in the woods, mills, or some other industries, a new chapter might be written in the agricultural development of the region.
The recreational industry could be given a new impetus if facilities were created for the low-income groups to enjoy the summer climate, the woods, the lakes, and the fresh air of the northern Lake States region. At present, with half of the population of the United States earning less than a thousand dollars a year, these recreational facilities, except for those living in the immediate vicinity, are largely an inaccessible territory.
Most of all, however, the region needs some new industries utilizing the available raw materials. There are many small forest industries which could be built up in the cut-over region today if they were encouraged and even subsidized at first by the public itself. The slashings left after logging which feed the forest fires could be converted into a source of readily utilizable fuel. The souvenirs made of wood and offered to the tourists, now coming largely from Japan, could and should be all manufactured in the region itself. With woodcraft skill not yet entirely obliterated in the native population, especially among the Indians, many useful articles could be made of local wood.
While fuel wood for fireplaces is becoming a luxury in the larger cities, millions of cords of it rot in the woods only 100 or 160 miles away. With splendid highways and highly developed trucking, it is hard to believe that some way could not be found by which this large supply of fuel could be made available to a large number of people in the towns and cities. The possibilities of utilizing such species as aspen and jack pine in the manufacture of pulp, paper, and cellulose in general could be greatly increased, as well as utilization of these woods for construction purposes of all kinds. If private capital, because of the risks involved, is not attracted by these possibilities, the public has enough at stake to justify making the initial moves itself.
The moral of it all is that the present sparse population of the cut-over region much of the unemployment, and the financial difficulties of the people are not due to lack of resources but to lack of opportunities, and man-made impediments for the natural growth of the region. No satisfactory solution can be attained except on the basis of wealth production, adequate support, and a reasonable standard of living within every area in which people live. It may be agricultural industrial, or commercial, or a combination, so long as it is really productive. Under favorable conditions, I cannot see why the cut-over region could not support a density of population similar to that of Sweden, Finland, and Norway, and that means a population of from two to two and one-half million.
TESTIMONY OF RAPHAEL ZON—Resumed
Mr. OSMERS. I wonder if you would just tell the committee about the area, briefly, based on the statement which you have submitted and which is included in our record.
Mr. ZON. Yes.
AREA AND BACKGROUND OF CUT-OVER REGION
Mr. OSMERS. Would you tell us about the area and extent of the Region, to begin with?
Mr. ZON. The cut-over region is confined to the northern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It embraces an area estimated at from 76 to 80 counties.
Mr. OSMERS. In those States?
Mr. ZON. In those States. It contains about 57,000,000 acres.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. About one and a half times the size of New England.
Mr. OSMERS. Would you describe briefly the history of the region when it was known as the Land of Opportunity?
Mr. ZON. Well, as we all know, these Northern States have been endowed by nature with very rich natural resources, lands, waters, forests, fish and what not. During the period of greatest development of those resources, there was a tremendous influx of population from the East.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. During the period between 1880 and 1900, in two decades, the population increased almost 250 percent. Everything was going fine. Then, because of the uncontrolled exploitation of the natural resources and some other economic factors that entered in, the whole thing again went down, and there started a great exodus of a great deal of the population.
Mr. OSMERS. Tell us this Mr. Zon: What is the present economic condition of the cut-over region?
Mr. ZON. Pretty bad. Here is a land which I still consider to be very rich in natural resources. Of course, they cut out the pine. That was the basis of the early lumbering industry. We still have some other kinds of trees which in the old days were never considered economically important, which are coming into use now because of the development of the paper industry.
In Sweden and Norway the country would still be considered to be a country flowing with milk and honey, whereas we consider it a distressed area. We cannot consider a region which produces 88 percent of all the iron mined in the United States as a terrible country.
Mr. OSMERS. No. Obviously not.
Mr. ZON. And yet conditions are very bad.
RISE AND DECLINE OF LUMBER INDUSTRY
Mr. OSMERS. Would you describe for us the rise and the decline of the lumber industry, and what consequences that has brought with it?
Mr. ZON. Well, the industry started in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and in the course of about 40 years, it ran its course. I think it reached its peak about between 1890 and 1900, or something like that. At that time there were 117,000 workers, lumberjacks, working in the sawmills and woods.
Mr. OSMERS. What was the number?
Mr. ZON. 117,000. In 1933 there were only 12,000, and these were not working on a part-time basis. The worst part of it is not the shrinkage in the number of people employed, but the destruction of the forests. This has changed the whole land's use. Most of this land was owned by large lumber companies. After they cut off the timber the land was burned, and they tried to pass it over into agriculture. For a decade or so, they tried to force land settlement, which collapsed.
Then they began to abandon this land. Today there are out of the 57,000,000 acres, 21,000,000 acres that are tax delinquent.
Mr. OSMERS. 21,000,000 acres are tax delinquent?
Mr. ZON. Yes. That means the owners have abandoned that land. When the owners abandon land, the remaining property which is still subject to taxation has to carry all of the cost of the government. That increases taxes tremendously. In Minnesota, some parts of Minnesota, it resulted in an increase in hundreds of mills. There are some counties in which 70 percent of the land is tax delinquent and the remaining 30 percent has to carry all the normal costs of the county.
Mr. OSMERS. During the depression. was there an influx of labor into that land?
INCREASED IN-MIGRATION 1930-1935
Mr. ZON. During the period from 1930 to 1935 people who had gone to the cities began to flock back to the land. Every abandoned shack and every abandoned lumber camp was occupied. They were mostly people who had come from industrial cities, mostly cities over 10,000 population.
Mr. OSMERS. I see.
Mr. ZON. Now, there has been a gradual increase in population, but that only increases the rural burden, because these people are chiefly squatters. They do not have any money. They become a burden on the county, and the county does not like that.
Mr. OSMERS. Some people consider the cut-over region as a stranded area, which raises the problem of migration. What are your views on that?
Mr. ZON. That is perfectly true. There are about 5,000 miners that would like to go somewhere, but there is no place to go. They are stranded.
Mr. OSMERS. What do the people in that area think of these migrants that come in there?
Mr. ZON. The counties do not like them, because they become a burden, a relief burden. They do not like it, because it is not bona fide settlement of any kind. If opportunities increase in the city, they will all go back to the city.
LAND OWNERSHIP
Mr. OSMERS. What is the present situation with regard to land ownership there? You touched on that briefly before.
Mr. ZON. Out of 51,000,000 acres, 21,000,000 acres are tax delinquent.
Mr. OSMERS. It is tax delinquent, but not publicly owned?
Mr. ZON. Not all of it. Some of it went to the National Government, for national-forest purposes. The States and counties got it back via the tax-delinquent route. In Wisconsin, tax-delinquent land reverts to the counties. In Michigan and Minnesota it reverts to the State.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. Some of this land that reverted to the State and counties was made into county forests and State forests, but a great deal of it, 8,000,000 acres out of the 21,000,000 acres, is practically no man's land
Mr. OSMERS. I see.
Mr. ZON. It is a very peculiar thing. The title to that tax-delinquent land is a very peculiar thing. In Minnesota tax-delinquent land reverts to the State, but the county retains a 90-percent equity of the taxes. and the State cannot do anything with the land until the State has extinguished the 90-percent equity of the county. The county does not do anything with it. It is no-man's land.
Mr. OSMERS. In your statement you have some rather sensible recommendations as to what steps can be followed in this area to eliminate it as a source of migration.
Mr. ZON. Yes.
RECOMENDATIONS FOR FEDERAL ACTION
Mr. OSMERS. I wonder if you would tell the committee, particularly, of course, with respect to what the Federal Government can do, what can be done toward stabilizing that area?
Mr. ZON. Now, there are about 31,000,000 acres of land still privately owned, and I think about 15,000,000 acres are farm lands. The other 60,000,000 acres of the best land belongs to large lumber companies. About 75 large companies own practically all of the remaining virgin timber in the Lake States.
TIMBER CONSERVATION
If the bad results come as a result of this uncontrolled exploitation of the forests. it stands to reason that the reverse side of it is to stop that reckless cutting of the timber. I personally believe the first thing for the Federal Government to do, because I do not see how the State can do it, is somehow to prevent the devastation of the remaining marketable timber in that region.
Mr. OSMERS. You mean, under the heading of national conservation of resources?
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Or in that spirit?
Mr. ZON. Yes. That could be worked out with the lumber companies and the Government. The Government could provide for fire protection and they in return will undertake not to devastate their land, and not to cut it clean so the land may continue to produce.
Mr. OSMERS. In the State of Minnesota, would it be possible to take people and settle them on the land which they have acquired through tax delinquency?
Mr. ZON. Yes. They could under the law, and that is what they are doing, but they are doing very poorly. Under the law, when the land reverts to the State. they have a right to classify the land. Land suited for conservation is no longer to be sold, but land they think has agricultural possibilities, they can sell again.
Mr. OSMERS. I see.
Mr. ZON. Since all the County commissions are really the owners of the land, to get some revenue from the land, they try to sell that land again.
Mr. OSMERS. Whether it meets those requirements or not?
Mr. ZON. Yes. They are very lenient in their classification.
Mr. OSMERS. Of agricultural land?
Mr. ZON. Yes. Most of this land is covered with timber. The law requires that the land and the timber should be valued separately. That is not always done. The result is that many people buy this land under very liberal conditions. It used to be $80 per forty. They have reduced it to $20. You have to pay down only 10 percent, and that means you can get it for $2. Lots of people pay the $2, get the land which has timber, devastate the rest of the timber. and then abandoned it again, so the land comes back again in worse condition.
Mr. OSMERS. In other words, they get the timber for $2?
Mr. ZON. They get the timber for $2 and that is all there is to it. Some county commissioners are doing a better job. Most of the counties, however, are so hard up they are anxious to put the land on the tax roll. Therefore they will do anything to sell it. That is in Minnesota.
Mr. OSMERS. If a resettlement program was entered into, what agency or agencies would be best fitted to deal with that program?
Mr. ZON. It has been stated that the National Government has 5,000,000 acres of national forests in the three States.
Mr. OSMERS. In this area?
Mr. ZON. In this Lake States region; yes.
Mr. OSMERS. I mean in the cut-over area.
Mr. ZON. In the cut-over area; yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
RESETTLEMENT ON GOVERNMENT-OWNED LAND
Mr. ZON. Now, it seems to me, instead of excluding settlers there from the portions which are good agricultural land, I do not see why the Government could not let people settle on that agricultural land.
Mr. OSMERS. You mean in the national forests?
Mr. ZON. In the national forests; yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. Of course, they might not make an economic existence from agriculture, but by working in addition on roads, at fire protection reforestation, cutting, and so forth. they could make a fairly good living.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. Some national forests are doing that. Some settlers who live outside of the forest have been told that they could go over into the forest, where they gave them land of better quality than they had outside. There we have arranged our work in the woods in such a way as to provide work for those settlers. This we could have done on a much larger scale, except for the C. C. C. When they bring the C. C. C. in there, it interferes with that policy.
Mr. OSMERS. You mean by sending the C. C. C. boys into this area, possible employment for local residents has been eliminated?
Mr. ZON. Not eliminated, but reduced greatly.
Mr. OSMERS. Reduced?
Mr. ZON. Yes. While I believe a great deal in the C. C. C. itself, in this particular instance it did conflict with the interest of the local people. They had as many as 30,000 C. C. C. boys working in the Lake States region.
Mr. OSMERS. What type of work have the C. C. C. boys been doing in this area—the cut-over region?
Mr. ZON. They have been helping to cut forests, build roads and trails; build telephone lines, cut out trees, helping with the fire protection, and helping with the planting of trees. They have planted many millions of trees, and have done similar work.
Mr. OSMERS. In your statement, which I have read with a great dear of interest, you make some reference to a program that is now being used in Sweden.
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Would you care to tell the committee the nature of the forest conservation program there?
Mr. ZON. The main thing is, of course, not to cut more timber than the forest can grow. That is exactly the reverse of what happened here. We simply cut off the timber without regard to its growth. In Europe, and in Sweden especially, they restrict their cutting. The strange part of it is that some of the best forests are forests belonging to private companies—mining companies, for instance.
Mr. OSMERS. In Sweden?
Mr. ZON. In Sweden. The forests have been developed, of course, in the course of many years. You cannot do it overnight, because it takes many years for trees to grow. They have gradually developed a system of forestry which they do not take off any more than the forest grows and the forest can maintain. In that way the mills can provide stable employment. They do exactly what I have suggested they could do here. They deliberately invite settlers to come within the Government forests and provide them with parcels of land, so they have part-time agriculture and part-time forest work.
Mr. OSMERS. Does the Government pay in cash for the work they do in the forest, to augment their income from the agricultural end of their operations?
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr OSMERS. How long does it take for a program of that nature, if it were instituted in a cut-over region such as we are discussing here, before the cycle has been completed and the trees are ready to harvest, so to speak.
Mr. ZON. Well, we have a hiatus right there. We have very little marketable timber left. Then we have a hiatus there of trees of middle age
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. Or middle size.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. Then we have, as a result of fire protection, a large acreage of second growth coming on. If we could carry over the next 20 years. we will have lots of timber again in the Lake States. The whole thing is to cut the old timber sparingly, and in that way spread it out for the next 20 years.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. In that way you will give the middle-aged trees a chance to come in to the marketable size, so they will be ready for commercial use. I think if we could somehow tide over for the next 20 years we can gradually approach a permanent basis.
Mr. OSMERS. You think it would take a 20-year cycle, starting from your present situation?
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Of course, along with that goes a very wide planting program?
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. As you harvest the old trees, you plant new trees?
Mr. ZON. There are 7,000,000 acres to plant up.
Mr. OSMERS. 7,000,000 acres to plant up?
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. There is just one other phase of the cut-over region I think the committee would like to hear about. That is the iron mining.
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. There is considerable iron mining going on there today, is there not?
Mr. ZON. Yes; 88 percent of all iron ore mined in the United States is mined right there.
LABOR SITUTATION IN MINING INDUSTRY
Mr. OSMERS. Tell me about the labor situation in the mining industry.
Mr. ZON. It is pretty bad.
Mr. OSMERS. Why is that?
Mr. ZON. There are two things: copper mines and iron mines.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes.
Mr. ZON. The copper mines in Utah and the copper mines in the Southwest are not so deep. They can be mined much more cheaply. African copper also has been coming into competition. African copper can be laid in Liverpool at 5 cents a pound. The cost of mining in northern Michigan was never less than 11 1/2 cents.
Mr. OSMERS. Never less than 11 1/2 cents?
Mr. ZON. No. At one time the copper mines in Michigan produced 96 percent of all the copper. Today they produce only 9 percent. At one time there were about 75,000 people who depended on copper mines. Today they employ about 1,200.
Mr. OSMERS. Going back to iron mining, you said that the iron mines produce 88 percent; is that correct?
Mr. ZON. The iron mines are still very active. As a result of technological improvement, electrification and so forth, the output of the iron has increased about 50 percent in the last 30 years. Yet they employ fewer people. Where, in 1910, the iron mines employed 3O,000 people, today with a 50-percent greater output, they employ only 18,000 people.
Mr. OSMERS. Do you have any idea or any figure in mind as to the total population of the area we have been discussing, which embraces these 76 counties?
Mr. ZON. About one and a half million people.
Mr. OSMERS. Only 18,000 of them are employed in——
Mr. ZON. That is the total population.
Mr. OSMERS. Yes. The mining population is about 18,000?
Mr. ZON. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Which, of course. is very, very small compared to the total?
Mr. ZON. Yes. I personally think—perhaps I am too optimistic—but I believe the cut-over region can stabilize its present population and, in addition, if we are wise in our land policy, we can make it a land of greater opportunity. I do not see why this region—if you compare it with Finland, Norway, and Sweden—could not support two and a half or three million people. Their land is not a bit better than our land.
Mr. OSMERS. In other words you think, with proper planning, the future of the cut-over region is bright?
Mr. ZON. Not only as a reservoir for migrants, but really to establish a population.
Mr. OSMERS. That is all I have.
Mr. PARSONS. Are there any other questions? (No response.) The statement which you have prepared, Dr. Zon, entitled, "A Statement on the Cut-over Region, Breeding Place of Migrants," has been received as part of our formal record.
Mr. PARSONS. Thank you very much, Dr. Zon.
(Whereupon Dr. Raphael Zon was excused.)

STATEMENT OF RAPHAEL ZON, DIRECTOR, LAKE STATES FOREST EXPERIMENT STATION

A STATEMENT ON THE CUT-OVER REGION—BREEDING PLACE OF MIGRANTS

AREA AND BACKGROUND OF CUT-OVER REGION

RISE AND DECLINE OF LUMBER INDUSTRY

INCREASED IN-MIGRATION 1930-1935

LAND OWNERSHIP

RECOMENDATIONS FOR FEDERAL ACTION

TIMBER CONSERVATION

RESETTLEMENT ON GOVERNMENT-OWNED LAND

LABOR SITUTATION IN MINING INDUSTRY