FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 7I 



lowering the lifeboat after the ship has struck. I'atrol is better 

 than fighting, because the incipient spark or camp fire can be 

 extinguished before it becomes a forest fire that has to be 

 fought. One patrolman can stop a hundred incipient fires 

 cheaper than one hundred men can stop one large fire. 



Results in forest protection are most trul\- measured, not 

 by the mmiber of fires extinguished but by the absence of fire 

 at all. 



Another feature of the new law is that the small assessment 

 u])on the land owners makes it cooperative. Just as the indi- 

 vidual cannot maintain a properly organized and equipped fire 

 department to look after his city property as well alone as 

 through joining with the community, neither can he do so in 

 protecting forest property. If one patrolman can cover the 

 land of several owners, it is unwise for each to hire a man. 

 If a fire starts and threatens several tracts, it is better to share 

 the expense of putting it out. The sale value of timberland in 

 any region is increased by public knowledge that those inter- 

 ested there unite in supporting progressive protective methods. 



Again this law has been the means of compelling the non- 

 resident owner, the small owner who is unable to employ anyone 

 alone, and the non-progressive owners who would otherwise do 

 nothing, to contribute their share towards the general cost, and 

 the public take far more kindly to the enforcement of fire laws 

 by the state than to similar activity on the part of tlie individual 

 owner, against whom a prejudice might exist. 



Our forest wealth is mainly community wealth. All the 

 owner can get out of them is the stumpage value. The people 

 get everything else. On every acre of forest destroyed by fire 

 the citizens of the state who are not land owners bear at least 

 75 per cent, of the direct loss and sustain serious injury to 

 their future safety and ])rofits. 



The care of our forests involves greater responsibility than 

 is ordinarily realized, and this work cannot be too thoroughly 

 performed. 



EDGAR E. RING. 



Forest Cornmissioncr. 



