BEPOET OF THE SECRETARY. 95 



this way there are firebreaks throughout the forest, and if a fire 

 starts it may then be confined to a small area. The cost of the work 

 is thus reduced and bodies of small growth are saved. Even this 

 work requires a large annual expenditure, far more than is now 

 available for the Department. 



As the protection from fire is the most important consideration in. 

 the administration of the National Forests, I have requested an 

 increased appropriation for this work. In addition to the increase 

 requested for permanent improvement work, I urge that there be an 

 increase of SI 20,000 for extra patrol, and that authority be granted 

 to me to draw upon the receipts from the Forests, in case of grave 

 emergency, for fighting fires. 



NATIONAL FOREST TIMBER SALE POLICY. 



It must always be kept in mind, as I pointed out in my report a 

 year ago, that the National Forests form an investment which has 

 not yet become fully productive. They are valuable chiefly for three 

 great uses — water conservation, the production of forage, and the 

 production of timber. The first use is already well developed, so far as 

 concerns irrigation, though it will have much larger development in 

 the future. But of the available water power on the Forests, esti- 

 mated to be in the neighborhood of 15,000,000 horsepower, only the 

 most insignificant fraction has as yet been harnessed. The forage- 

 producing power of the Forests is generally utilized now; only in 

 the most inaccessible mountain regions does the forage crop go to 

 waste, and the increase of this resource must take place primarily 

 through such improvement in present methods as will enable the 

 areas now used to support a larger amount of stock than at present, 

 rather than through increases in the grazing area. In striking 

 contrast is the timber crop. Its harvesting is confined to a trifling 

 part of the total. While the stockman occupies the length and 

 breadth of the Forest range, the lumberman is operating only along 

 the edges of the vast bodies of the National Forest timber which the 

 slow centuries have ripened for the ax. 



When the Forest Service first took charge of the National Forests, 

 through their transfer from the Department of the Interior on Feb- 

 ruary 1 , 1 905, in an effort to open them to use, timber sales were every- 

 where encouraged. Less than 114,000 feet of timber were sold during 

 the fiscal year 1905, at an average stumpage price of 75 cents per thou- 

 sand. In the fiscal year 1906 the amount sold rose to nearly 300,000 

 feet and the average stumpage price rose to $1.72 per thousand; 

 while in 1907 the sales exceeded 1,000,000,000 feet, at an average 

 stumpage price of S2.42 per thousand. 



Since 1907 the totals of sales have been much smaller— in 1908 

 not much over one-third of the 1907 sales, in 1909 not much over 



