EDITORIAL COMMENT 



The American Forestry Association Turns a New Leaf 



About forty years ago a small group of enthusiastic and unselfish 

 men and women devoted to the cause of forestry organized the Amer- 

 ican Forestry Association. Its mission was to bring about the estab- 

 lishment of forestry in this country. Its educational work in the early 

 days, and its constructive proposals were largely responsible for the 

 first steps taken in American forestry. For years it not only was an 

 instrument for spreading information about forestry, but was the 

 means of organizing the friends of forestry in support of forest legis- 

 lation, both at Washington and in many of the States. It was an 

 effective source of propaganda ; it was also a powerful force in meeting 

 selfish opposition and securing public action. 



Those of us who twenty-five and thirty years ago were struggling, 

 in the face of public indifference and powerful opposition, to set in 

 motion an effective movement in forestry, found in the American 

 Forestry Association a rallying point, an associated group of men 

 ready to fight for a principle, an organization aggressively taking the 

 leadership in forestry. It helped secure Federal and State legislation ; 

 it also stood back of the Federal and State officers. in their struggles, 

 often against great obstacles, to make their work effective. Every 

 forester felt behind him the strong arm of the organized forestry in- 

 terests of the country, in the American Forestry Association. 



It is with this background, and the knowledge of what the Associa- 

 tion started out to do. and might still be doing, that we view the action 

 of the Board of Directors on February 25, 1921. which has seriously 

 impaired, if it has not brought to an end, the usefulness of the Associa- 

 tion' as representing the organized interests of forestry in. the country. 



For a number of years the Association has been drifting away 

 from the ideals of its founders. More and more its objective has been 

 restricted to propaganda regarding forests and to the effort to create a 

 general interest in trees, forests, and wild life. Less and less has it 

 acted as a fighting agency of the organized forestry interests of the 

 country to clarify public issues, to lead in carrying them forward, to 



313 



