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Show Michiganlbday t t S i . . k. ; a.,i -vi v,'; v- -. - I t ' 7- Michigan Makes a Major Part of the World's Air Rifles. Prepared by National Geographla Socletr, Washington, L). C. WU Service. A GREAT company of Michigan pioneers were recently honored when the Lumbermen's Memorial, Memo-rial, overlooking the Au Sable river, was dedicated. Little did Monsieur Jean Nicolet, the first white man to set foot on Michigan Michi-gan in 1034, or the hardy pioneers who later laid a firm foundation upon which the state was built suspect that today their crude camps would be sites of great American cities joined by a splendid network of fine highways high-ways and railroads. In its infancy Michigan was a huge lumber camp; today its industries are legion. Detroit industries alone normally nor-mally employ some 350,000 workers who are massed in units attaining to 55,000 or 65,000 in a single establishment. establish-ment. It is, of course, her automobile Industry, which predominates in this mass employment. When the future state was surrendered surren-dered by the British in 179G, nobody attached undue importance to a village vil-lage named Detroit with its 500 inhabitants inhab-itants and an area less than a square mile. Skip 136 years and Detroit reappears re-appears as the nation's fourth largest city with an area of more than 140 square miles, a population of more than one and a quarter million and an industrial product value of $2,000,000,-000 $2,000,000,-000 a year. Approaching the city by lake steamer steam-er one beholds a striking panorama. The Canadian side shows many miles of green meadows, while the American Ameri-can side reveals a gradually intensifying intensify-ing spectacle of mammoth cranes, towering stacks, vast factories all of industry's bewildering panoply. Lest the motorcar bulk disproportionately dispropor-tionately on Detroit's skyline, it should be remembered that the city's 3,000 major manufacturing plants include 35 lines that fall into the million-dol-lars-a-year class of productivity. In fact, ever since the days when Detroit made the first gold pens, ran the first refrigerator cars and built among the earliest of sleeping cars and, tradition tradi-tion adds, mixed the first ice-cream soda the Michigan metropolis has been a plexus of diversified manufacturing. manufac-turing. Detroit's Remarkable Growth. Her growth, measured In terms of population, has increased more than 360 per cent during this century. Indeed, In-deed, her present roll of Industrial operatives surpasses by more than 60,-000 60,-000 her total population of 1000. Within With-in the past ten years the office cloud-toucher cloud-toucher has taken its place in Detroit's De-troit's skyline, and apartment hotels and hotel skyscrapers cannot be reared fast enough to keep pace with her growth. In fact, Detroit's rapid changes in physiognomy justify the English writer who remarked of American cities, "Wrecked buildings spring up like mushrooms." One turns gratefully from Detroit's traffic-choked thoroughfares into that loveliest retreat of all her 3,000 acres of park spacer Belle Isle. In trading eight barrels of rum, three rolls of tobacco and six pounds of warpaint for the Indian-owned Belle Isle, the city's forefathers achieved something not to be expressed by its present valuation val-uation of many millions of dollars; for Belle Isle park is at once the worker's work-er's restful Avalon, treasure-hunting childhood's pirate lair, and every one's enchanted island, with song-birds as Ariels and caged bears as Calibans. What more intriguing than a wooded island park, canalized for canoeing, dotted with picnickers' stoves, and visited by a symphony orchestra this on the edge of a great Industrial city? Pontiac, a town founded in the early boom period, leaped into the general expansion frenzy by taking out the state's first railroad charter in 1S."0. Six years later work was begun on the Detroit & Pontiac railroad. Presently many a pioneer, upon hearing the first locomotive's distant shriek, was seizing seiz-ing his gun to "git the b'ar" with the strident voice. Great State for Lumber. The original track of wooden, Iron-sheatcd Iron-sheatcd rails was soon discharging ripped-off fragments of sheathing through the car bottoms. These "snake-heads," as the dying frag-nients frag-nients were called, caused many a casualty among the passengers until the D. & P. came handsomely to the rescue with "a new and eh''ant car" whose metaled flooring smothered the snake-head offensive. Michigan's through-rail connection with the East was e-taii", -bed by the conr.l'-tion of the Ginat Western railroad In IS'l. Nowaflays the state's tr.i:poi-t'i:ion is served by siearn liia-s operating S.TeO mi'os. motor eoaci.es T."1 0 miles, and el ( trie lines I.'-: M 1,,:!. s. e .,:r,..t:;:r., u:.l !.r very capital j is not content to make only laws. Lansing normally has 15,000 hands engaged en-gaged In Industries, mainly the automotive auto-motive or auxiliary thereto, producing an annual output valued at $1S5,000,-000. $1S5,000,-000. Though Lansing's forests have long since yielded to the spacious avenues ave-nues radiating from her lawn-surrounded state house, and though the cry for reforesting the state is widespread, wide-spread, the capital and her sister cities rank among the country's most beautifully tree-shaded communities. Sometimes appearing as if buried in greenery, and for the most part displaying dis-playing regularly spaced maples along foliage-roofed streets, Michigan's towns thus preserve a souvenir of the great logging area of their state. Michigan's "forest primeval" lay with pine and softwoods mainly to the north of 43rd parallel of latitude, and with the hardwoods mainly to the south of it. A century ago her area was still 97 per cent timbered. In the expansion period that followed fol-lowed the Civil war the state loomed up as the great pine producer. Eastern East-ern farmers turned pioneer and trekked Michiganward for their fractional frac-tional investment in the 125,000,000,-000 125,000,000,-000 feet of timber that rose north of Saginaw. The prairie states were calling for timber, and Michigan's was massed in big stands with easy river access to the Great Lakes. Up sprang 800 camps employing 25,000 loggers. Plank roads were laid through the wilderness. In 1S75 there were 30 solid miles of logs in the Au Gres. For more than 30 years men chopped and saws screamed, until in 1S0O Michigan's pine lumbering reached its peak with 4,250,000,000 feet. Transition to Manufacturing. But the young states transition period from lumbering to manufacturing waa not accomplished without growing pains. Her forests shorn, a host ol lumber towns Ludington, Cheboygan, Bay City, Manistee, Alpena, Muskegon, Saginaw relapsed temporarily into stagnation or ruin. The story of Muskegon Is typical Her glories fled, her people trekked, and grass grew in her streets. Then slowdy she rebuilt herself on the deserts left by vanished sawmills. How, the woodworking, automotive and other industries have lifted the once-ruined town to her present prosperity pros-perity is one of the most striking stories in Michigan annals. Saginaw, once such a "Sawmill City" that her shore area was materially mate-rially enlarged by filling in the shallow lagoons with incalculable tons of sawdust, saw-dust, represents a similar rise, falL and comeback. To-day she normally pays more in freight bills on her au-tomitive au-tomitive and other products than her famed lumber cut was worth 40 years ago. Flint took refuge In carriage building. build-ing. Many a town started diversified woodworking as a stop-gap. Citizens at Ludington, Manistee, and elsewhere bored the earth, produced brines, and made the steam of lumber mills evaporate evap-orate the brine into salt. There was a state-wide spectacle o( Michigan remaking herself. But not until around the turn of the present century did she set a firm foot on the Industrial ladder, up which she has since made so spectacular an ascent. Where the Mint Grows. Southwest of Lansing the Indian place-name of Kalamazoo ("beautiful water'') still holds true by reason of the cold springs which once refreshed the red man and nowadays refresh a muck-land celery crop valued at upward up-ward of $2,000,000. The same muck region puts Michigan topmost, along with northern Indiana, in peppermint. These two sections produce, for pharmaceutical phar-maceutical and other purposes, 80 per cent of the United Stales supply. Kalamazoo's paper factories, which have produced bond und book stock for 50 years, instance how Michigan turned to manufacturing when her lumbering peak had passed. Grand Rapid's furniture market comprises an international aggregation aggrega-tion of manufacturers, buyers, and salesmen. From a Rcore of states and from European countries come the displays of furniture and Interior decoration. dec-oration. These are disposed on the vast floor spaces of 20 factory showrooms show-rooms and ten specially built exhibition exhibi-tion buildings. The buyers of whom 3.IMKI are sometimes present, hail from every state In the Union and from half a ilozen foreign countries. Its To furniture factories, employing some ll.'KKi people, represent an annual an-nual products value of about $."".0,000,-(. $."".0,000,-(. A large preponderance of Hollanders, Hol-landers, who still nourish Hie old craft-spirit tradition. Is to be found among the local furniture and cabinetmaker.?. |