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organization, and also because such an 

 administrative officer, even though in 

 the field for quite a portion of his time, 

 has generally a large territory to cover, 

 and his work cannot be intensive. It 

 now happens that the greater number of 

 the higher administrative offices in the 

 Service are filled by men who have had, 

 considering the chances in this country, 

 a good technical education, but this 

 is no criterion by which the future 

 should be judged. These men of whom 

 I speak may be classed as the mission- 

 aries of the forestry profession in the 

 United States. Their work has been one 

 of education and of organization and 

 the work they have done in the past 

 five years along these lines will, I 

 think, always stand out as a distinct 

 and a remarkable achievement; but 

 these results could not have been 

 as successful as they assuredly have been 

 unless these missionaries had found men 

 willing to be educated in the funda- 

 mentals of forestry and also willing to 

 sacrifice a larger gain for the satisfac- 

 tion of accomplishing something for the 

 general public service. The rangers 

 constitute this latter class of men to 

 whom I refer, and it would be difficult 

 to frame a tribute which would convey 

 the credit due these men. They have 

 worked under exasperating difficulties, 

 and they do not, in most instances, 

 appreciate what they have accomplished. 

 More and more it becomes apparent 

 to me that to the man who wants to 

 accomplish those things which are going 

 to count in the organization and manage- 

 ment of forest work, a position in the 

 field is an absolute necessity. There 

 will be no denial of my statement that 

 the trend now is out of the office and 

 into the woods, but some of the men 

 who are taking this step now are a long 

 way behind the rangers who have been 

 in the woods for some time. As Inspector 

 and later Associate District Forester in 

 another district of the Service, I thought 

 very often with envy of the Supervisor, 

 since from that point of view it seemed 

 to me that he was the man who was 

 accomplishing things. Now, as Super-, 

 visor, the same feeling comes to me 

 when I think about the rangers. As 

 Supervisor, perhaps my judgment in 



differing with a ranger on a piece of 

 work must as a matter of organization 

 be final, but unless I have been on the 

 ground and know the conditions thor- 

 oughly, I never feel satisfied with the 

 decision that has to reverse a ranger. 

 To successfully conduct the work of a 

 national forest, the Supervisor must 

 depend almost to the last degree on his 

 men in the field, for they are the men 

 who are on the firing line and who are 

 doing things. 



Not many years from now our ranger 

 districts, smaller in area considerably, 

 will be in the charge of a forest ranger, 

 who to successfully conduct the work 

 within his district, is going to need a 

 fundamental knowledge of technical 

 forestry. The forest stations will be 

 equipped with tree nurseries whence a 

 supply of young trees can be transported 

 quickly and safely to an area in need of 

 trees, when natural reproduction has 

 failed to seed up a logged or burned 

 country; these stations will be equipped 

 in many instances with instruments for 

 recording all those climatic features 

 that have such an infiuence on the 

 growth of the forest trees. The stations 

 will be dotted with experimental plots 

 from which the technically educated 

 ranger in charge will draw his conclu- 

 sions on which to base his field work. 

 This change I think the men have all 

 seen coming, slowly perhaps but surely, 

 but I do not believe any of them, who 

 think they lack opportunities for obtain- 

 ing knowledge for technical forestry, 

 should become alarmed lest their posi- 

 tions are shortly going to be preempted 

 by others. The rangers do not appre- 

 ciate that they know a great deal about 

 technical forestry, neither do they, I 

 think, realize how .tremendous an oppor- 

 tunity each one of them has to widely 

 extend this knowledge of technical 

 forestry by study, by reading, and, 

 perhaps most important of all, by 

 observation. Though it is hard for 

 some to read and assimilate readily, it 

 is possible for everyone, whether the 

 opportunity of a higher education has 

 been his or not, to benefit an hundred- 

 fold by observation. Rangers are seeing 

 those things in the woods that are 

 necessary to the forester if he is going 



