Chapter 4
The Washington headquarters of the Forest Service are directly in charge of the Forester and his immediate assistants. 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 assembled and printed. Hence, the prospective student of forestry can do nothing better than to write to The Forester, Washington, 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 principal parts, or branches, in the work of the Washington 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.
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 title has already passed 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 principal 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 Washington 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 Washington 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 Washington, after consultation with the men in the field. The execution of all the work, the larger features of which the Washington 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 Washington 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.
While the work of the Washington 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 multitude of questions which the Supervisors can not answer are decided in the District office instead, as was formerly the case, of being forwarded to Washington 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 ownership 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 principal 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 associations. Of these, two stand out most conspicuously at the present time, one the Northwestern Conservation and Forestry Association, the other the Oregon Forest Fire Association. 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.
The object and methods of one of the associations is described by its Secretary as follows:
"A field hitherto narrow but continually broadening, and offering much opportunity for those with peculiar qualifications, is the management of the cooeperative forest work carried on by timber owners in many localities, often jointly with State and Government. This movement originated in the Pacific Northwest, where it still has the highest development, but is extending to the Lake States, New England, and Canada.
"As a rule the primary object of these cooeperative associations is fire prevention and their local managers must have demonstrated ability to organize effective patrol systems, build telephone lines, apply every ingenuity to supplying and equipping their forces, and, above all, to handle men in emergencies. But in most cases the association of forest owners to this end has led also to progress in many other matters inseparable from improvement, such as study of reforestation possibilities, forest legislation, educating lumberman and public in forest preservation, and the extension of cooperation in all these as well as in fire prevention from private to State and federal agencies.
"The development of such activities is already employing several highly paid men who can command the confidence, not only of forest owners, but also of the public and of public officials. Advisers in legislative as well as technical forestry matters and particularly proficient in all that pertains to forest protection, their usefulness lies as much outside their own association as within them, and to be successful they must be skilful organizers and campaigners. It is these men who have developed to its highest extent the adaptation to forestry propaganda of modern publicity and advertising methods.
"As a rule, however, these may be described as graduate positions, filled by men of experience and acquaintance with the several agencies involved, rather than by newly fledged Foresters. A practical knowledge of protection problems is essential."
Forestry associations offer a different, but often a most fascinating field, of work for the trained Forester. There are at present 39 such associations. The work which they offer has much in common with the duties of a State Forester.
Fish and game associations are beginning to employ Foresters, realizing that the wise handling of the forests may well go hand in hand with the care of the game and fish which the forest shelters and protects. Eventually nearly all such associations which control any considerable body of land in timbered regions may be expected to utilize the services of trained Foresters of their own.
In addition to the work for lumbermen and for associations of various kinds, land owners in considerable variety have begun to employ Foresters. Among these are coal and coke companies, iron companies, wood pulp and paper companies which are beginning to look after their supply of timber; powder, arms, and ammunition companies, hydraulic and water companies; a great corporation engaged in the manufacture of matches; and a number of railroads, including the Delaware and Hudson, the Illinois Central, and the Pennsylvania. In addition to the need for cross ties, railroads are among the largest consumers of lumber. The Foresters who work for them are largely occupied with growing the wood supplies which the railroads need, and nursery practice often occupies a very large share of their attention.
FOREST SCHOOLS
Since the first one was founded in 1898, the number of forest schools in the United States has increased so rapidly as to create a demand for forest instructors which it has been exceedingly difficult to fill. Indeed, the increase in secondary forest schools, or schools not of the first grade, has doubtless been more rapid than the welfare of the profession or the sound practice of forestry required, and the brisk demand for teachers has led some men to take up the task of instruction who were not well fitted for it.
There are in this country to-day 23 forest schools which prepare men for the practice of forestry as a profession, and 51 schools which devote themselves to general instruction in forestry or to courses for Forest Rangers and Forest Guards. The approximate number of teachers in all forest schools is at present 110, and this number will doubtless be still further increased by the addition of new forest schools or the expansion of old ones, while a certain number of places will be made vacant by the retirement of men who find themselves better fitted for other lines of work.
The teaching staff at three of the principal forest schools of the country is as follows:
At School A, 5 men give their whole time to forest instruction, and 14 give courses in the forest school.
Schools B and C have each 4 men who give their whole time to the work; and 4 and 20 respectively who give lectures or individual courses.
In addition to the work for lumbermen, associations, railroads, and others just mentioned, an increasing number of Foresters are required to care for the forests on large landed estates in different parts of the country. Work of this kind is at present restricted almost entirely to the East, and especially to New England, where several firms of consulting Foresters give to it the larger portion of their time. Some of the men thus employed are as fully occupied with the tasks of the professional Forester as any of the men in the Government service, while others give a part of their attention to the general management of the property, or to the protection and propagation of game and fish.
THE OPPORTUNITY
GOVERNMENT SERVICE
There is no more useful profession than forestry. The opportunity to make himself count in affairs of public importance comes earlier and more certainly to the Forester than to the member of any other profession. The first and most valuable, therefore, of the incentives which lead the Forester to his choice is the chance to make himself of use to his country and to his generation.
But if this is the first matter to be considered in deciding upon a profession, it is by no means the last, and the practical considerations of a fair return for good work, bread and butter for a man and his family, the certainty or uncertainty of employment,--such questions as these must have their full share of attention.