OPPORTUNITIES FOR FORESTERS 



By Prof. AUSTIN CAKY 



University of Minnesota 



CONDITION has been reached just recently to which some have been 

 looking forward for a considerable time — an excess in the number 

 of graduates of forestry schools over the number of opportunities for 

 employment in the line of work toward which most of them have thus far 

 gravitated. Over one hundred and seventy men took the examination for 

 Technical Assistant in the Forest Service last spring, while the Service had 

 places open in that regular grade for only about sixty of them. 



Fortunately, there are other opporunities. The Service has taken in 

 many as rangers or on a temporary basis. The developing reserves in the 

 Lake States have wanted some new men; and just lately the administration 

 of the Indian Office has made room by beginning the organization of a 

 technical force. The work of the older states and of teaching calls each 

 year for a considerable number. In one and another of these ways the bulk 

 of the class has now been placed, the balance going out into private employ- 

 ment. 1911, however, marks a turning-point in Forestry education in this 

 country in that the National Service failed to claim the men available. 

 The fact is notable enough to start discussion as to present tendencies in the 

 Forestry movement, and especially regarding the nature of the training given 

 in the schools which have increased so fast in numbers in the last few years. 



Regarding the schools and the courses of training they offer, newness is 

 one feature which is evident and which it is worth while to recall. It is little 

 over a dozen years since there were no forest schools in this country, and 

 many of us can remember our own lack of faith and confidence when the first 

 professional forest school was established at Cornell. That school was 

 established by an able man, thoroughly grounded in forestry science and 

 familiar with the position and achievements of the profession abroad. The 

 course of study was broad and fundamental, and it is not to its discredit that 

 the school was later closed. 



Again, when Pinchot and Graves founded the Yale School of Forestry they 

 had a perfectly clear idea of what they wished and expected to do. They 

 felt the need in the country of a body of broad-gauge, high class men to lead 

 in the movement of that time — men to start the National Forest work on a 

 high plane, to guide state legislation, to serve as teachers and leaders through- 

 out the country — men of intellectual capacity and of enthusiasm, who could 

 be counted on to push their own way in whatever direction they might get 

 turned. It was a bold conception strongly followed up, and the judgment of 

 those men is fully vindicated today. 



A considerable number of courses in technical forestry have been opened 

 at colleges and universities within the last eight years. Several are graduate 



82 



