FOREST SERVICE. 371 



because the courts are now holding railroads liable for damages 

 resulting from fires which the railroads cause. In a number of cases 

 damages were paid last year b}'^ railroads on account of fires on 

 National Forests for which they were responsible. With the principle 

 established, as it now is, that the loss of reproduction constitutes a 

 legitimate and tangible claim for damages, the interest of railroads 

 in preventing fires from spreading has become much greater. 



Special mention should be made of the admirable spirit in which 

 the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railroad has acted to reduce 

 the fire risk along its lines. By the use of oil-burning locomotives in 

 the Rocky and Cascade Mountain Ranges and the careful clearing 

 of its right of way across National Forest land, the fire risk was 

 greatly lessened. The Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway 

 companies also materially reduced the danger along their lines by 

 entering into cooperative agreements with the Forest Service. These 

 agreements were signed in the spring of 1910. They provided for the 

 close patrol of the railroads during the fire season, for the supplying 

 of equipment, telephone connections, tools, and other necessities for 

 elTective work in fire fighting, and for payment by the railroads of the 

 cost of fighting fu-es which start within 200 feet of the track and are 

 not proved to have been caused by some other agency than the rail- 

 roads, and also of fires at a greater distance which are proved to have 

 been caused by the railroads. 



In the spring of 1911 a further advance was made by a cooperative 

 agreement between the Forest Service and the Northern Pacific 

 Railway for joint protection of areas on which lands of the railway 

 are intermingled with National Forest land. Where the railway 

 company was granted alternate sections of land by the Government, 

 and these alternate sections lie within National Forests, neither the 

 company nor the Forest Service can protect its holdings effectively 

 without cooperation from the other. The agreement is an example of 

 the cooperative agreements which have been entered into with private 

 owners, generally organized into associations, for keeping down the 

 fire losses ■s\here fires on private lands would endanger the National 

 Forests. Among these associations are the Oregon Forest Fire 

 Association and the Washington Forest Fire Association, the holdings 

 of which include most of the heavily timbered west slopes of the 

 Cascade Mountains; the Pend Oreille, Coeur d'Alene, Potlatch, and 

 Clearwater Timber Protective Associations, whose holdings embrace 

 the greater part of the white-pine belt of northern Idaho ; and various 

 smaller organizations. These agreements provide for a division of 

 the cost of protecting specified areas where both parties to the agree- 

 ment would sulTer from failure of the other to protect its lands, on 

 the basis of the relative holdings of each. The object and the result 

 of these agreements are, so far as the Government is concerned, 

 better protection of the National Forests at a lessened cost to the 

 Government. 



Both the desire of associations of private owners to join forces wdth 

 the Forest Service in this protective work and the spirit of coopera- 

 tion shown by the railroads in efforts to reduce the fire risk illustrate 

 the r-owth of public sentiment generally in favor of preventing fires. 

 The gain in public sentiment on this point during trie last year has 

 been enormous. Incidentally, this gain has put the Forest Service 

 to a severer test than formerly to come up to the demand of the pub- 



