At 80

Last week the State of Michigan suddenly but soundlessly expanded--from 57,980 to 97,940 square miles. No cataclysm, no Blitzkrieg, not even litigation was the cause. The U. S. Bureau of the Census, which was already having trouble enough with its decennial count, simply capitulated to Chase Salmon Osborn.

Chase Osborn is a metallographer, zoologist, ornithologist, theologian, explorer, publisher, charitarian, author, Elk, Odd Fellow, honorary Boy Scout and onetime (1911-12) Governor of Michigan. He is also a geographer. Last year comprehensive Mr. Osborn lodged a geographic complaint with the Census Bureau, whose chore it is to compute the areas of States and Territories. The complaint: in figuring Michigan's area the Bureau had overlooked 39,960 square miles of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and St. Clair that lie within the State's borders. Bombarded by Osborn letters, wires, facts & figures, the Bureau finally gave in to its distinguished pest. Result: Michigan went up from 22nd to eighth place among the States, became "the biggest State east of the Mississippi River."*

The Detroit Free Press lately observed: "It was said that when Goethe died he was the last of the human race to have grasped all human knowledge. That, however, was before Chase Osborn got around to being born." If Chase Osborn has not grasped all knowledge, he has certainly grasped at it.

Adding 39,960 sq. mi. to Michigan was only an incident in Mr. Osborn's career. He has intermittently owned, edited and sold three small-town newspapers. A prospector and geologist of renown, he discovered the rich Moose Mountain iron range in Canada, the Kiruna and Luossavara deposits in Lapland, others in Africa, the Orient, Latin America. From sales of iron ore and timber lands, he has given nearly all of his millions away (to relatives, friends, deserving strangers, schools, churches, etc.). Says he: "It just happened that I was a moneymaker. . . . Why shouldn't I give it away?" He wrote a book about how the firefly lights up. He hunted (and failed to find) man-eating trees in Madagascar, nevertheless wrote and published Madagascar, the Land of the Man-Eating Tree. The Andean Land is a colorful two-volume work on his travels in South America. In The Earth Upsets, he announced that the earth's axis tips a mile to the northeast every year. ("The earth is a drunken staggering thing . . . the greatest acrobat that we have.") His present passions are botany, and a theory that the aurora borealis (still a scientific mystery) "is light sifted through clouds of sub-microscopic insects."

When he was a Republican Governor, he had Michigan's Legislature pass one of the first workmen's compensation laws in the U. S., sponsored a women's suffrage measure which became law after he left office. To potent Republican railroaders who were thinking of running him for President in 1912, he advocated public ownership of railroads. He believes (and attested in The Law of Divine Concord) that knowledge is something diffused through the atmosphere, and conveyed only to people who are "in tune with God." He is an expert zoologist, a tireless huntsman. Once he told Huntsman Theodore Roosevelt: "I can take you into the Canadian woods and walk your feet off up to the knees." Although he thinks that hating is bad for people and nations, he hates cities.

Old Chase Osborn, 80, now leads a comparatively quiet life. Winters he passes at Possum Poke on Possum Lane, his camp near Poulan, Ga.; summers at another camp on Duck Island, in Northern Michigan near Sault Sainte Marie. He is up every morning at 3, shaves standing on one foot (to practice poise), makes his own fire, washes out his own towels. In Michigan, he usually sleeps outdoors on balsam boughs. Long years in the open have browned his seamy face to walnut. When he recently broke four ribs, he refused to have a doctor. Blind in one eye, weak in the other, he still reads voraciously. "To preserve youthful equanimity," he rises from his chair every time a woman enters the room, even if she is one of his three secretaries. Sometimes he gets up and sits down 200 times a day. He and the wife who bore him seven children separated in 1923; he now lives with his onetime secretary, now his adopted daughter and co-worker (Stella Brunt Osborn).

Chase Osborn wants to do at least one more thing: write a book about dying. "Do I mind dying? Of course not. People who are fond of me will be sad, but that's all that bothers me. I love life, but I am so curious to see what goes on afterwards that sometimes, honestly, I can hardly wait."

*The same ruling gave Illinois 1,674 sq-mi. of Lake Michigan; Indiana, 230 sq. mi. of the same; Minnesota, 2,514 sq. mi. of Lake Superior; New York, 3,140 sq. mi. of Lakes Ontario and Erie; Ohio, 3,443 sq. mi. of Lake Erie; Pennsylvania, 891 sq. mi. of Lake Erie; Wisconsin, 2,378 sq. mi. of Lake Superior and 7,500 sq. mi. of Lake Michigan. Biggest State was still the same old Texas (262,398 sq. mi. of land, 3,498 sq. mi. of water).

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