501 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



grounds for a public that promptly proceeds to peel all the bark off the 

 trees, or burn the whole business up, or even endeavoring on a few 

 thousand acres of "demonstration forest" to prove to an unimpressed 

 public the quite undemonstrable proposition that because the State is 

 growing trees on untaxed land at an annual cost of five or ten cents an 

 acre for protection, to be repaid in the final harvest 50 years hence, it 

 will assuredly pay the private forest land-owner to do likewise. Even 

 fire protection, valuable and generally indispensable though it is, will 

 sometimes seem to the impecunious State forester a useless outlay, 

 when the private owner of the land he is protecting suddenly decides 

 to log it clean of every valuable seed tree, and wandering cattle, goats, 

 sheep, and hogs swarm to complete the destruction. Verily the path 

 of the State forester is thorny — beset by the importunate office-seeker, 

 pestered by sentimentalists and faddists, labeled as a visionary by the 

 hard-headed lumberman, starved by a penny-wise and pound-foolish 

 legislature, and in general buried under a mountain of public ignorance 

 and apathy. That the State foresters liave, almost without exception, 

 stuck grimly at their posts and have been willing to "putter," if putter- 

 ing was all that could be done and at least served to keep forestry 

 before the public, is in itself proof of the high idealism of the trained 

 forester. Would Mr. Kneipp's "practical forester" have stood the same 

 gaff? 



Louisiana, second of the Gulf Coast States to establish a State for- 

 estry department, stands today on the threshold of forestry work of a 

 somewhere-near-adequate scale. Upon the groundwork laid by the 

 pioneers is at last, we hope, to be laid a structure of large-scale accom- 

 plishment. Uniquely financed out of the profits of those making useful 

 our great virgin forest resources, and legalized by a remarkably com- 

 plete, although by no means perfect, set of forestry statutes. State for- 

 estry work in Louisiana under the State Department of Conservation 

 is taking form. To have a part in rearing the structure is a privilege 

 far outweighing the drawbacks that may exist and the disappointments 

 that are bound to come. It is the object of this paper to sketch, after 

 14 months' study of Louisiana conditions, and, still more important, 

 after consultation with those whose knowledge of Louisiana's forests 

 is lifelong, a tentative plan for the State forestry edifice. In other 

 words, I shall try to present the broader phases of what, in my estima- 

 tion, is a proper State forest policy for Louisiana, to be carried out by 

 the State Forester, working under the Commissioner of Conservation. 

 Possibly such a statement, at the very initiation of the work, may serve 

 to clarify and to keep clear our own vision as forestry officials, and 



