16 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



priation bill and the old one continued 

 in effect. 



Unfortunately little faith can be 

 placed in the willingness of the Lower 

 House to support forest conservation. 

 Its attitude clearly appeared in connec- 

 tion with recent efforts to secure im- 

 portant legislative reforms. Under ex- 

 isting provisions of law timber inay be 

 measured either in the rotmd or after 

 it has been manufactured into lumber. 

 In actual practice the latter procedure 

 is the one almost invariably followed, 

 with the result that the government 

 loses revenue on logs cut and abandoned 

 in the forest and on those carried out 

 to sea by floods while being trans- 

 ported by water. Wasteful manufac- 

 turing methods are encouraged, as 

 there is no charge on what goes into 

 slab piles. No charges are paid on 

 lumber smuggled out of the yards and 

 sold secretly or on that which is stolen 

 from the yards or is burned or rots, for 

 the reason that under the administration 

 of a Filipino secretary of finance and 

 justice, the bureau of internal revenue 

 allows the mill men themselves to declare 

 the amounts of lumber on which charges 

 are due. Their declarations are not 

 made until the lumber is shipped to 

 market and there is no check on them 

 except that afforded by the amounts of 

 lumber actually received at the more 

 important points of debarkation. This 

 extraordinary administrative arrange- 

 ment, not paralleled in the history of 

 the American occupation of the Philip- 

 pines, encourages fraud and unquestion- 

 ably results in material loss of revenue, 

 for although officers and employes of 

 the bureau of forestry were finally made 

 internal revenue officers for the purpose 

 of enforcing collections, the exigencies 

 of field service rendered it impossible 

 for them to be stationed premanently 

 at sawmills so as to perform the very 

 large amount of work involved in 

 measuring manufactured lumber as it 

 comes from the saw. Measureinents in 

 the rotmd could be easily and quickly 

 made either in the forest or at the mill 

 and an adequate check on operations of 

 lumbermen could thus be established 

 without materially augmenting the force 

 of the bureau of forestry. 



In view of these facts I drafted an act 

 providing that timber should be meas- 

 ured in the round. It was thought that 

 certain of the lumbermen would oppose 

 this measure, but no opposition devel- 

 oped when the bill came up in the 

 Commission and it was passed by that 

 body. Unfortunately an effective bit 

 of lobbying had been done meanwhile in 

 the Lower House and that body prompt- 

 ly killed a measure which would have 

 augmented materially the annual rev- 

 enues of the government without inter- 

 fering in the least with the legitimate 

 operations of lumbermen. 



The Philippine Assembly has not 

 been content with obstructing the work 

 of the Bureau of Forestry but has twice 

 struck at its very existence. At the 

 last session of the legislature it passed a 

 bill transferring all forest work to the 

 bureau of lands for which a Filipino 

 chief had just then been appointed. 

 Fortunately the Upper House has not 

 yet become oblivious to the fact that the 

 Act of Congress of July 2, 1902, fixed 

 certain specific duties, of a very im- 

 portant character, for the director of 

 the Bureau of Forestry and that the 

 power of the Philippine legislature to 

 defeat the will of Congress by abolishing 

 his office is therefore decidedly doubtful. 



In spite of the splendid service which 

 the Bureau of Forestry has rendered in 

 making practicable and encouraging 

 the building up of a great lumber 

 business in the Philippines and in 

 augmenting the government revenues, 

 its continued existence is probably due 

 onlv to the fact that it does not at 

 present lie wnthin the power of Filipino 

 politicians to do away with it. Let us 

 hope that it will long continue to survive 

 political vicissitudes. 



Vastly more timber falls and rots 

 annually in the Phillippincs than is cut 

 by all the lumbermen. The lumber at 

 present manufactured is not sufficient 

 in amount to meet the local demand, to 

 say nothing of the possibility of build- 

 ing up a profitable export trade. Under 

 proper supervision the public forests 

 will steadliy increase in value and will 

 become an important source of per- 

 manent wealth. Without such super- 

 vision deforestation will progress more 



