FOREST SERVICE. 297 



need is for annual instruction camps for the training of rangers in 

 the things they need to know how to do in order to handle success- 

 fully their own jobs in fire protection and general administration. 



There is also a handicap imposed by the fact that the appropria- 

 tions now made for the Forest Service preclude the taking in each 

 year of more than a very few men technically trained in forestry and 

 grazing. As older men who entered the service with such training 

 leave, the tendency under present conditions is toward a smaller per- 

 centage of professionally trained foresters in the administrative 

 force. Such a tendency, if continued, can not but lower the stand- 

 ards of work. Already the situation is distinctly disadvantageoua. 

 Enlargement of the available force of trained specialists is therefore 

 an immediate need. 



As the demand for the timber and forage of the national forests 

 increases more and more intensive use will be necessary, and profes- 

 sionalh^ trained men will be required in correspondingly greater 

 proportion. Nevertheless, for years to come men of outstanding 

 ability who have entered the Forest Service without professional 

 training should be able to look forward to positions of major respon- 

 sibility. It would be a great misfortune if this were not true, for 

 the service has need of the best leadership that can be developed from 

 its entire personnel. Some of the highest positions are now held by 

 men who have climbed the ladder from the ranger ranks. They have 

 been progressively educated as foresters in the practical school of 

 experience. Nothing is more fundamental than that the door should 

 be kept open to ability and that the methods of personnel manage- 

 ment should be such as to assure both the fullest possible develop- 

 ment of the personnel available and, from the standpoint of the men 

 themselves, prospects that encourage ambition and effort. As a 

 corollary to this, there must be absolute assurance that merit alone 

 determines promotion, and that the forest officer who does his work 

 as it should be done, with an eye single to the service of the public 

 interests, will be secure in the tenure of his position, whatever that 

 may be. The public enterprise in forestry can make good only on 

 condition that it be kept always free from influence by political con- 

 siderations in the narrowest sense of the term, and one of the greatest 

 obstacles to progress in the development of forestry on the part of 

 the individual States is the fact that public opinion does not always 

 demand this essential to the creation and maintenance of an efficient 

 technical organization faithfully serving the common welfare. 



As is shown in the next section of this report, the national forests 

 are already virtually self-supporting, and from now on they may 

 safely be counted on to return to the Treasury a net revenue in 

 excess of their operating cost, though no small part of that cost is 

 incurred on behalf of public services of a nonrevenue-producing 

 character, such as watershed protection and recreational use. Fur- 

 ther, the cost of maintenance of the regular protective system as 

 well as emergency expenditures for fire fighting are mainly not oper- 

 ating costs, strictly speaking, but charges against the time when the 

 stands of timber in regions not yet opened up will come into de- 

 mand. Private timberland owners would capitalize such charges 

 as carrying costs. The less-developed forests and those which are 

 maintained primarily for watershed protection and will not be self- 

 supporting for a long time, if ever, create operating deficits which 



