orth Middle Western states the wilderness land has been for the
most part owned by the lumber companies. The lumber companies attempted
to dispose of their cut-over and burnt-over land in the easiest way by
selling to individuals. As a rule this retail selling was unsuccessful.
They found that it was more profitable for them to stick to their lumber
business and sell their land in large tracts to the land dealers and to
land-development and colonization companies.

In this connection it is interesting to note that in the wilds of our
north one may still see the following stages of frontier life as they
exist side by side, sometimes overlapping and crosscutting one another.

1. The earliest stage known to American civilization was that of virgin
wilderness inhabited by animals and roamed over by Indians. As remnants
of that time there are found some animals, now driven into the swamps
and rocks, and a few Indians settled on reservations.

2. The next stage was when the white missionaries, traders, adventurers,
followed by professional trappers, began penetrating the wilderness.
This white men's hunting stage is still represented by the present-day
"shackers" and trappers, though they are mostly of an amateur character,
and, so to speak, domesticated.

3. The following stage was when lumbermen began being heard throughout the
forests. They are still there, though in considerably reduced numbers. They
are hurriedly attacking the remaining woods, leaving in their wake a
dreary, sorrowful-looking expanse of cut-over and burnt-over lands.

4. These cut-over lands are now invaded by the land development and
colonization companies, with their armies of new settlers, attempting to
transform the last remnants of wilderness into fertile gardens, fields,
and meadows. This is the last decisive war of man upon the wilderness--a
picturesque and difficult struggle. A settler gives this vivid
description, printed in the Radisson, Wisconsin, _Courier_:

Everywhere we go we see men, women, and children cutting and piling
the brush and logs that have covered the ground since the days of
the logger. Everyone seems to be trying to clear more land than his
neighbor, and get it ready to produce the crops that are so badly
needed all over the world, and as we stop a minute to take a better
view of what each one has done, we hear the boom of dynamite that
is following the brush lines as they are being pushe