AS OTHERS SEE US 



Translated from the Revue des Eaux et Forets, February 15, 1910 



THE recent dismissal of Mr. Gif- 

 ford Pinchot from the Forest 

 Service of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture makes timely 

 a reassuring- word as to the high state 

 of efificiency, stability, and encouraging- 

 prospects for the future which this able 

 man has contributed to the government 

 work in forestry and to the science in 

 general in America. A statement of 

 the actual results accomplished during 

 the eleven years of Mr. Pinchot's serv- 

 ice is a tribute to the ability of any man 

 under the best of conditions, but no 

 adequate description can be given of 

 the tremendous prejudices and diffi- 

 culties vmder which he worked and 

 which his foresight and perseverance 

 enabled him to conquer, nor of the tre- 

 mendous revolution in popular thought, 

 from reckless improvidence to conserv- 

 ative economy which his administration 

 has brought about. 



When Mr. Pinchot began his service 

 as Qiief of the Division of Forestry, 

 he was "a forester without a forest." 

 The government forest reserves, then 

 comprising 42,000.000 acres, were prac- 

 tically unmanaged. Land laws designed 

 to encourage settlement throughout 

 the west made easy the fraudulent as 

 well as the legitimate but wasteful ex- 

 ploitation of timber over great areas, 

 while year after year fires ran through 

 the poorly protected reserves, not grad- 

 ually, but rapidly destroying their pro- 

 ductive value. The duties of the Divi- 

 sion, later the Bureau of Forestry, were 

 purely advisory. Now, all this is 

 changed, even to the name of the bu- 

 reau. From a small division of thirteen 

 men, not more than four of whom were 

 technically trained foresters, the Forest 

 Service has become an administrative 

 force of over 2.000 men, with control 

 over some 195,000,000 acres of land. 



The '"Forest Reserves/' from which 

 only dead timber could be cut, are now 

 National Forests, which already yield 

 nearly 400,000,000 board-feet of ma- 

 ture as well as dead timber per year, the 

 cutting of w'hich is done according to 

 plans prepared by technically educated 

 men. The employment of such men has 

 led to the rapid growth of forest schools 

 from two, at the time of Mr .Pinchot's 

 accession to office, to twelve at the 

 present time. This, together with the 

 awakened interest of practically all the 

 eastern and some of the western states 

 in their own forest resources, has 

 brought forward the subject of con- 

 servation as a great national issue. 



The United States embraces so va- 

 ried a range of climatic, topographic, 

 and forest conditions that scientific ex- 

 periments performed upon them cannot 

 help but be of service to the cause of 

 forestry almost throughout the north- 

 ern ehemisphere. FTitherto, America 

 has come to Europe for her ideals, her 

 examples, and to a large extent her 

 methods of forest practice. Europe, on 

 the other hand, has found in America 

 some of her most beautiful and promis- 

 ing timber species. The work of 

 Schwafbach and Mavr, among others, 

 brings out the fact that European for- 

 esters already take no small interest in 

 American species. With the establish- 

 ment of forest experiment .stations 

 brought about during Mr. Pinchot's 

 term in office, the time is without doubt 

 drawing near when the United States 

 can supply to the world not only species 

 but also technical information, based on 

 thorough scientific experiment. The 

 initiation of experimental methods, per- 

 haps more than any other one feature, 

 illustrates the great advance during re- 

 cent vcars of forestry in America. 



364 



