The Training of a Forester Part 3

A PUBLIC SERVANT

I repeat that whether a Forester is engaged in private work or in public work, whether he is employed by a lumberman, an a.s.sociation of lumbermen, a fis.h.i.+ng and shooting club, the owner of a great estate, or whether he is an officer of a State or of the Nation, by virtue of his profession he is a public servant. Because he deals with the forest, he has his hand upon the future welfare of his country. His point of view is that which must control its future welfare. He represents the planned and orderly development of its resources. He is the representative also of the forest school from which he graduates, and of his profession.

Upon the standards which he helps to establish and maintain, the welfare of these, too, directly depends.

STATE FOREST WORK

The work of the States in forestry is still in the pioneer stage, and the work of a State Forester must still bear largely on the creation of a right public sentiment in forest matters. In State forestry the need for agitation has by no means pa.s.sed. It is often the duty of the State Forester to prepare or endeavor to secure the pa.s.sage of good State forest laws, or to interpose against the enactment of bad laws. In particular, much of his time is likely to be given to legislation upon the subjects of forest fires and forest taxation. Upon the latter there is as yet no sound and effective public opinion in many parts of the United States, and legislatures and people still do not understand how powerful bad methods of forest taxation have been and still are in forcing the destructive cutting of timber by making it impossible to wait for the better methods of lumbering which accompany a better market. I have known the taxes on standing timber to equal six per cent.

a year on the reasonable value of the stumpage.

Thirteen States have State Forests with a total area altogether of 3,400,000 acres. Of these New York has the largest area. Its State Forests cover 1,645,000 acres, partly in the Adirondacks and partly in the Catskills; Pennsylvania comes next with nine hundred and eighty-four thousand acres; and Wisconsin third, with about four hundred thousand acres.

Twenty-nine States make appropriations for forest work. Excluding special appropriations for courses in forestry at universities, colleges, and schools, the total amount spent for this purpose is about $1,340,000. Pennsylvania has the largest appropriation,--three hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars, in addition to which a special appropriation of two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars has been devoted to checking the chestnut blight. Minnesota comes second with two hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars; New York third with about one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, and Wisconsin next with ninety-five thousand dollars.

Thirty-three States have State forest officers, of whom fifteen are State Foresters by t.i.tle, while the majority of the remainder perform duties of a very similar nature.

Eleven States are receiving a.s.sistance from the Federal Government under the Weeks law, which authorizes cooperation for fire protection, provided the State will furnish a sum equal to that allotted to it from the National fund, with a limit of ten thousand dollars to a single State.

For purposes of reforestation, ten States maintain forest nurseries.

During the year 1912 they produced in round numbers twenty million young trees, of which fourteen million were distributed to the citizens of these ten States.

In some States the waterpower question falls within the sphere of the State Forester, as well as other similar Conservation matters, while it has usually been made his duty to a.s.sist private timberland owners in the handling of their holdings, whether these be the larger holdings of lumber companies or the farmers' woodlots. In many States the State Forester is made responsible for the enforcement of the State forest fire laws, and for the control and management of a body of State fire wardens, who may or may not be permanently employed in that work. The enforcement of laws which exempt timberlands or lands planted to timber from taxation, or limit the taxation upon them, are also usually under his supervision.

The work of forestry in the various States being on the whole much less advanced than it is in the Nation, the State Forester must still occupy himself largely with those preliminary phases of the work of forestry through which the National Forest Service has already pa.s.sed. Much progress, however, is being made, and we may fairly count not only that State forest organizations will ultimately exist in every State, but that the State Foresters will exert a steadily increasing influence on forest perpetuation in the United States.

THE FOREST SERVICE IN WAs.h.i.+NGTON

A description of what a Forester has to do which did not include the work of the Government Foresters at the National Capital would necessarily be incomplete. The following outline may, therefore, help to round out the picture.

The Was.h.i.+ngton headquarters of the Forest Service are directly in charge of the Forester and his immediate a.s.sistants. The Forester has general supervision of the whole Service. It is he who, with the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture, determines the general policy which is to govern the Service in the very various and numerous matters with which it has to deal. He keeps his hand upon the whole machinery of the Service, holds it up to its work, and in general is responsible for supplying it with the right spirit and point of view, without which any kind of efficiency is impossible.

The Forester prepares the estimates, or annual budget, for the expenditures of the Service, and appears before Committees of Congress to explain the need for money, and otherwise to set forth or defend the work upon which the Service is engaged. His immediate subordinates spend a large part of their time in the field inspecting the work of the Service and keeping its tone high. Their reports to the Forester keep him thoroughly advised as to the situation on all the National Forests, so that he may wisely meet each question as it comes up, and adjust the regulations and routine business methods of the Service to the constantly changing needs of the people with whom it deals.

Being responsible for the personnel of the Forest Service, the Forester recommends to the Secretary of Agriculture, by whom the actual papers are issued, all appointments to it, as well as promotions, reductions, and dismissals. Under his immediate eye also is the very important and necessary work of making public the information collected by the Service for the use of the people. Since 1900, 370 publications of the Service have been issued, with a total circulation of 11,198,000 copies.

The publications of the United States Forest Service include by far the most and the best information upon the forests of this country which has until now been a.s.sembled and printed. Hence, the prospective student of forestry can do nothing better than to write to The Forester, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. (which is the correct address), for the annotated catalogue of these publications which is sent free to all applicants, and then to secure and study such of the bulletins and circulars as best meet his individual needs. If he looks forward to entering the United States Forest Service, he should not fail to get also the Use Book, the volume of directions and regulations in accordance with which the National Forests are protected, developed, and made available and useful to the people of the regions in which they lie.

The dendrological work of the Service, which has to do with forest distribution, the identification of tree species and other forest botanical work, is also under the immediate supervision of the Forester, and the Chief Lumberman reports directly to him.

In addition to the work which falls immediately under the eye of the Forester, and which used to, but does not now, include the legal work necessary to support and promote the operations of the Service, there are seven princ.i.p.al parts, or branches, in the work of the Was.h.i.+ngton headquarters. The first of these is the Branch of Accounts, whose work I need not describe further than to say that the Service has always owed a very large part of its safety against the bitter attacks of its enemies to the accuracy, completeness, and general high quality of its accounting system.

The second branch, that of Operation, has charge of the business administration both of the National Forests and of the other work of the Forest Service. Here the business methods which are necessary to keep the organization at a high state of efficiency are formulated, put in practice, and constantly revised, for it is only by such revision that they can be kept, as they are kept, at a level with the very best practice of the best modern business. There are very few Government bureaus of which this can be said. The Branch of Operation is responsible for the adoption and enforcement of labor-saving devices in correspondence, in handling requisitions, and in the filing and care of papers generally, and for the supply of stationery, tools, and instruments, and the renting of quarters,--in a word, for the whole of the more or less routine transaction of business which is essential to keep so large an organization at the highest point of efficiency.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRUSH PILING IN A NATIONAL FOREST TIMBER SALE]

The office work needed in the mapping of the National Forests, with all their resources, boundaries, and interior holdings, is in charge of the Branch of Operation. So is the immense amount of drafting which is necessary in the other work of the Service, and the photographic laboratory in which maps are reproduced and where permanent photographic records of the condition of the forest are made.

The third branch, that of Silviculture, is the most important of all. It has oversight of the practice of forestry on all the National Forests, and of all scientific forest studies in the National Forests and outside. It is here that the conditions in the contracts under which the larger timber sales are made are finally examined and approved, and here are found the inspectors whose duty it is not only to see that the work is well done, but to labor constantly for improvements in methods as well as in results. Here centres the preparation of forest working plans, and the knowledge of lumber and the lumber markets.

The Branch of Silviculture has charge also of National cooperation for the advancement of forestry with the several States, and in particular for fire protection under the Weeks law. This form of cooperation has made the knowledge and equipment of the Forest Service available for the study of State forest resources and forest problems, and much of the progress in forestry made by the States is directly due to it.

Under the Branch of Silviculture, the Office of Forest Investigations brings together all that is known of the nature and growth of trees in this country, and to some extent in other countries also, conducts independent studies of the greatest value in developing better methods of securing the reproduction of important forest trees, and computes the enormous number of forest measurements dealing with the stand and the rate of growth of trees and forests that are turned in by the parties engaged in forest investigation in the field. Under the Office of Forest Investigations, studies in forest distribution and in the structure of wood are carried on, and it includes the Library of the Forest Service, by far the most complete and effective forest library in the United States.

The fourth branch, that of Grazing, supervises the use of the National Forests for pasture. Over the greater part of the West, this was the first use to which the forests were put, and an idea of its magnitude may be gathered from the fact that every year the National Forests supply feed for about a million and a half cattle and horses, and more than fourteen million sheep. It is no easy task to permit all this live stock to utilize the forage which the National Forests produce, and yet do little or no harm to the young growth on which the future of the forest depends. To exclude the grazing animals altogether is impossible and undesirable, for to do so would ruin the leading industry in many portions of the West. Consequently, many of the most difficult and perplexing questions in the practical administration of the National Forests have occurred in the work of the Branch of Grazing, and have there been solved, and many of the most bitter attacks upon it have there been met.

The fifth branch, that of Lands, has to do with the questions which arise from the use of the land in the National Forests for farming or ranching, mining, and a very wide variety of other purposes, and with the exceedingly numerous and intricate questions which arise because there are about 21,100,000 acres of land within the boundaries of the National Forests whose t.i.tle has already pa.s.sed from the Government. The boundaries of the National Forests also are constantly being examined to determine whether they include all the land, and only the land, to be contained within them, and whether they should be extended or reduced.

The first permits for the use of waterpower sites on Government land were issued by the Forest Service, and the policy which is just being adopted by the Interior Department and other Government organizations in their handling of waterpower questions was there first developed. These permits are prepared in the Branch of Lands. The first steps toward deterring men who attempt in defiance of the law to get possession of lands claimed to be agricultural or mineral within the National Forests are taken here, but the final decision on these points rests with the Department of the Interior. The examination of lands to determine whether they are agricultural in character, and therefore should be opened to settlement, is directed from this Branch.

The uses to which National Forest lands are put are almost unbelievably various. Barns, borrow pits, botanical gardens, cemeteries and churches, dairies and dipping vats, fox ranches and fish hatcheries, hotels, pastures, pipe lines, power sites, residences, sanitaria and school-houses, stores and tunnels, these and many others make up, with grazing and timber sales, the uses of the National Forests, for which already more than half a million permits have been issued. This work also falls to the Branch of Lands.

The sixth branch, that of Forest Products, is concerned with the whole question of the uses of wood and other materials produced by the forest.

Its princ.i.p.al work is conducted through the Forest Products Laboratory, in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Here timber is tested to ascertain its strength, the products of wood distillation are investigated, wood pulp and paper studies of large reach are carried on, the methods of wood preservation and the results of applying them are in constant course of being examined, and the diseases of trees and of wood are studied in cooperation with the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture. The consumption of wood, and the production of lumber and forest products, are also the subject of continuous investigation, and various necessary special studies are undertaken from time to time. At the moment, an effort is under way to find new uses and new markets for wood killed by the chestnut blight in the northeastern United States.

The seventh branch has to do with the study, selection, and acquisition of lands under the Weeks law, in accordance with which eight million dollars was appropriated for the purchase of forest lands valuable for stream protection, with particular reference to the Southern Appalachians and the White Mountains of New England. The examination of the amount of merchantable timber on lands under consideration for purchase, the study of the character of the land and the forest, and the survey of the land keep a numerous body of young men very fully occupied. Their task is to see that none but the right land is recommended for acquisition by the Government, that the nature and value of the lands selected shall be most thoroughly known, and that the constant effort to make the Government pay unreasonable prices or purchase under unfavorable conditions shall as constantly be defeated.

The same branch takes charge of the lands as soon as they have been acquired.

The foregoing description of the work which is done in Was.h.i.+ngton by the Forest Service may help to make clear the great variety of tasks to which a Forester may be required to set his hand, and emphasizes the need of a broad training not strictly confined to purely technical lines. It would be defective as a description, however, and would fail to show the spirit in which the work is done, if no mention were made of the Service Meeting, at which the responsible heads of each branch and of the work of the Forester's office meet once a week to discuss every problem which confronts the Service and every phase of its work. This meeting is the centre where all parts of the work of the Service come together and arrange their mutual cooperation, and it is also the spring from which the essential democracy of the organization takes its rise.

The Service Meeting is the best thing in the Forest Service, and that is saying a great deal.

It must not be imagined that the maintenance of Forest Service headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton indicates that the actual business of handling the National Forests is carried on at long range. In order to avoid any such possibility the six District offices were organized in 1908. These are situated at Missoula, Denver, Albuquerque, Portland, Ogden, and San Francisco. Each of the District offices is in charge of a District Forester, who directs the practical carrying out of the policies finally determined upon in Was.h.i.+ngton, after consultation with the men in the field. The execution of all the work, the larger features of which the Was.h.i.+ngton office decides and directs (and the details of which it inspects), is the task of the District Forester. The District Forester's office is necessarily organized much on the same general lines as the Was.h.i.+ngton headquarters. Thus, the subjects of accounts, operation, silviculture, grazing, lands, and forest products are all represented in the District offices. In addition, a legal officer is necessarily attached to each District office, and each District Forester has in his District one or more forest experiment stations, employed mainly in studying questions of growth and reproduction; and three forest insect field stations, maintained in cooperation with the Bureau of Entomology, are divided among the six Districts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOREST RANGERS GETTING INSTRUCTION IN METHODS OF WORK FROM A DISTRICT FOREST OFFICER]

While the work of the Was.h.i.+ngton office is mainly that of guiding the work of the National Forests along broad general lines, through instructions to the District Foresters, the office of each District Forester deals directly with the Forest Supervisors, and so with the handling of the National Forests. A mult.i.tude of questions which the Supervisors can not answer are decided in the District office instead, as was formerly the case, of being forwarded to Was.h.i.+ngton for disposal there, with the consequent aggravating and needless delay. The establishment of the District offices has made the handling of the National Forests far less complicated and far more prompt, and has brought it far closer than ever before to the actual users,--that is, has made it far more quickly and accurately responsive to their needs.

PRIVATE FORESTRY

As yet, the practice of forestry by private owners, except for fire protection, has made but little progress in the United States, although without doubt it will be widely extended during the next ten or fifteen years. The concentration of timberland owners.h.i.+p in the United States has put a few men in control of vast areas of forest. Many of them are anxious to prevent forest destruction, so far as that may be practicable without interfering with their profits, and for that purpose Foresters are beginning to be employed. Until now the princ.i.p.al tasks of Foresters employed by lumbermen have been the measurement of the amount of lumber in the standing crop of trees, and the protection of forest lands from fire. Here and there the practice of a certain amount of forestry has been added, but this part of the work of the private Forester employed by lumbermen has not been important. It is likely, however, to increase with some rapidity before long. In the meantime, the private Forester must usually be willing to accept a good many limitations on the technical side of his work.

It is essential for the Forester thus employed to have or promptly to acquire a knowledge of practical lumbering, that is, of logging, milling, and markets, and for the forest student who expects to enter this work to give special attention to these subjects.

Already about 170 graduates of forest schools are in private employ, a considerable proportion of which number are employed by large lumbermen.

The time is undoubtedly coming, and I hope it may come soon, when forest destruction will be legally recognized as hostile to the public welfare, and when lumbermen will be compelled by law to handle their forests so as to insure the reproduction of them under reasonable conditions and within a reasonable time. The idea is neither tyrannical nor new. In democratic Switzerland, private owners of timberland are restrained by law from destroying the forests upon which the welfare of that mountain region so largely depends, and if they disobey, their forest lands are replanted by the Government at the owners' expense.

Another opening for Foresters in the employ of lumbermen is through the forest fire protective a.s.sociations. Of these, two stand out most conspicuously at the present time, one the Northwestern Conservation and Forestry a.s.sociation, the other the Oregon Forest Fire a.s.sociation. Each has as its executive officer a trained Forester whose knowledge of the woods not only makes him exceedingly useful to his employers, but also, when combined with the Forester's point of view, enables him to be of great value in protecting the general interest in the forest.