Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1914-10-31
The Agricultural Posi-
bilities Of Michigan
BY w. A. Carpenter. Frankfort.

While Michigan is today recognized
as one of the leading manufacturing
and agricultural states, there are ~
untold resources in the way of farm
lands to be opened up, cleared and
converted into valuable fruit and gen
eral farming districts.
From Grand Rapids north to Char
levoix and Petoskey along the line of
Grand Rapids to Mackinaw City
along the G. r. & l. railway; from
| Owosso to Frankfort, along the Ann
from east to west and all the way
through the upper peninsula lie idle
! lands, only waiting the coming of the
husbandman to blossom into dividend
paying farms Here and there all
along these railways are fertile, level
! farms, barns full to overlooking with
products of the soil, and yet not a
quarter of the wealth producing land
in the northern part of the state is
under cultivation.
A few inexperienced, ignorant (as
to farm work. city bred people have
been lure6 from their haunts or jobs
in the cities to begin new md
]
| tools and without the least idea of
farming, thinking green backs and
silver dollars grew wild, only to find
that it requires just as much hard
work, Just as much skill in farming
as in selling merchandise or in draw
ing we'll filled pay envelope, and
have become discouraged and re-
turned to the city, broken in spirit
and ready to yell, Its no use; there
is no money in farming" forgetting
utterly the fact that while it is just
as hard to make living on the farm
lands of Michigan as in any city,
after five or ten years instead of
having a massive bunch of receipted
bills to show for their toll, with pos
sibly Though not probably a few
hundred dollars in the bank or in a
home, they might have farm worth
from $50 to $3.50 per acre, a home
filled with comfortable furniture, a
farm stocked with valuable live stock,
tools of all kinds-a home to be proud
of, in fact, and a sure and certain
protection against want in old age,
besides having reared their children
amidst surroundings where there has
been room for them to grow and at
tain the full measure of manhood and
womanhood.
The Ann Arbor Railway company
was the first to see the possibilities
in store for those who would avail
themselves of the opportunity thus
offered, and about a year ago estab-
lished a bureau of development.
Other roads will follow suit and es-
tablish land offices, thus furnishing
the prospective settler with full list
of available lands along its road,
trusting to increased local shipping
and passenger transportation to re-
turn a fair rate of interest upon the
| investment.
When every acre of land in Y,ich-
| igan is under cultivation and pNtduc-
ing its full share Of beans, wheat,
oats, corn and fruit of every kind.
then will Michigan lead all the other
states in the value of its products.
And the time is rapidly drawing near.
New families are pouring into north
ern and central Michigan in a steady
and never ending stream. Many come
from the more thickly populated
states to the south. In BencN county
alone the past year are more thu
twenty-five families who came from
colleges, from government positions,
from stores, churches and factories.
Some of these new corners have re-
signed high salaried positions-and
all are making good. And all other
sections of the state tell the same
story.
The significance of this fact cannot
be over looked much longer. Michi-
gan is coming into her own, and that
right soon.