122 



But the increasing floods and the shortage of wood in some 

 places by the conversion of heavy virgin forests into stretches of 

 waste land made the people finally wake up to the fact that some- 

 thing had to be done before it was too late. 



The first real forest legislation was in 1876 and in 1886 a 

 Division of Forestry was created in the Department of Agricul- 

 ture. In 1891 the President w^as authorized to establish forest 

 reserves and many were set aside but were indifferently managed 

 with an inefficient force. 



In July, 1910, this Division became the Bureau of Forestry, 

 and in March, 1905, changed its name to the Forest Service. At 

 this time it also took over from the Interior Department the 

 reserves which they then began to call National Forests. Many 

 of the States also took up forest work accompanied by necessary 

 legislation. Private interests placed many stumbling blocks in 

 the progress of forestry which was made difficult because of the 

 fact that three-fifths of the standing timber had already passed 

 from government control into private hands, but the present sys- 

 tem of National Forests which were created to produce a per- 

 petual supply of timber for home industry, to prevent destruction 

 of the forest cover which regulates the flow of streams and to 

 protect local residents from unfair competition in the use of the 

 forest and range, is a monument to tho^e far-sighted men such 

 as Pinchot who fought hard and valiantly in the early days to 

 place the whole National Forest enterprise on the basis of per- 

 manence. 



NATIONAL FOREST ACTIVITIES. 



The net area of National Forests now owned by the people is 

 over 150 million acres and the activities of the Forest Service 

 extend from the xA.tlantic States to the Pacific Coast from Mexico 

 to Alaska and an efficient organization has gradually been built 

 up to handle the w^ork of protection of the Forests and the de- 

 velopment of their resources. 



In only twelve years the National Forests have been extended 

 to cover an area more than four times that of all the forests of 

 the German Empire and the Forest Service has won the respect 

 and confidence of the body of right-minded people all over the 

 West as well as the East. 



The average area administered by a Forest Service Ranger on 

 a National Forest is over 140 times greater than the area admin- 

 istered, until recently, by a man of equivalent rank in a German 

 forest. 



The activities of the National Forest force cover a wide scope 

 and extend from protection against forest fires, which is always 

 considered the work of paramount importance, to the construc- 

 tion of thousands of miles of roads, trails and telephone lines, 

 the extensive planting of trees to reestablish forests destroyed in 

 part by fires, the carrying on of research and experiments to aid 

 in the development of the best methods of forestry, the survey of 



