The book from which the following excerpt is drawn is to be published later this month by W. W. Norton O” Company; it is one of a series of bicentennial state histories being prepared under the aegis of the American Association for State and Local History.

Man’s muscles were still the primary source of power. Nothing could be done if they could not do it; they set the limits, and although for a long time they had been helped by the muscles of horses and oxen, this did not greatly change the basic rule: you can do what you are strong enough to do, and no more. So when the first assault on Michigan’s pine forests was made it was exactly the kind of job King Hiram of Tyre would have understood when he set out to provide the cedar for Solomon’s Temple. You took saws and axes and went to work.

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