Mr. C. A. Reed: I believe Senator Penney is to discuss a topic very closely affiliated with this one and perhaps it would be well to defer the discussion until we hear his address.
President Reed: We will be glad to have Senator Penney present his paper next, then. It is along the same lines—legislation in regard to tree planting.
Senator Penney: When my friend, Mr. Linton, started off to discuss his paper, he said he was a long distance member, and you can see the effect in the fruits he has borne or the nuts he has borne. Ever since I was taken sick up north, he has been trying to tell me I was a nut. I was taken sick up there in the deer hunting camp, and my friend, Mr. Linton, assisted in getting me out and rushing me to the nearest hospital, and it happened to be an insane asylum in northern Michigan.
LEGISLATION REGARDING THE PLANTING OF NUT AND OTHER FOOD PRODUCING TREES
Senator Harvey A. Penney, Saginaw, Michigan
I wish to express my hearty appreciation to your Association for the distinct honor of being invited to address your meeting upon the subject of "Legislation Regarding the Planting of Nut and Other Food Trees." I believe that my invitation came as a result of having been responsible for introducing a tree-planting bill in the Senate of the 1919 session of the Michigan State Legislature, and later in securing its passage.
This bill purported "to regulate the planting of ornamental, nut-bearing and other food-producing trees along the highways of the State of Michigan, or in public places, and for the maintenance, protection and care of such trees, and to provide a penalty for injury thereof, or for stealing the products thereof."
For several sessions of the Michigan Legislature prior to 1919, bills had been introduced intending to accomplish this result, but each time heretofore they have regularly failed to pass. This fate included one introduced by the writer during the session of 1917. I am now fully convinced that none of these bills, although a step in the right direction, seemed to provide the proper working machinery or necessary features to put them into practical operation, and hence did not appeal to the legislative committees, nor to the members of the several legislatures.
During the regular session of 1919, with the valuable assistance of Hon. W. S. Linton of Saginaw, a new bill was prepared providing an entirely new method of supplying and planting such trees, and for putting such a law into effective operation under the jurisdiction of the state. It was made to work in harmony with the rights of the property owner adjoining the highway, and with the duties of those state officials whose departments were perfectly adapted and equipped for putting the law into active operation.