ORGANIZATION FOR NATIONAL CONTROL 243 



THE FOREST SERVICE 



The Forester would be the chief executive officer, acting, of course, 

 under the Secretary of Agriculture. That would mean a single execu- 

 tive head for the nation-wide job. All existing forces of the Forest 

 Service would be at his disposal, and could be augmented as occasion 

 required to accord with his greater field of work. 



The keynote of the new organization should be decentralization, 

 with the greatest possible authority in local hands. The job should be 

 done oti the ground. The administration would be regional, the 

 regions corresponding to the principal economic forest types of the 

 country, with regional foresters in charge. A revision of the present 

 district lines of Forest Service organization might be found advisable. 

 In regions where National Forests occur these might be placed in 

 charge of district foresters under the regional foresters. Necessarily 

 large at first, the regions might later be sub-divided as funds and men 

 become available; or as organized forest units prove themselves able 

 to stand upon their own feet in preventing forest devastation, regions 

 or parts of regions could be eliminated from Government control. 



At the start the field organization under the regional foresters would 

 necessarily be of a flexible sort, something fitted to apply rough and 

 ready measures and something capable of being moulded into a more 

 perfect organization as time goes on. For example, there might be 

 simply a corps of forest inspectors in each region, a body of men 

 mostly on the go from one group of operations to another, explaining 

 the requirements and reporting upon how they are carried out. Most 

 of these inspectors, perhaps, should be practical woodsmen with a brief 

 but fundamental training in forestry. At the beginning of things we 

 should expect a situation such as we had when we started to manage 

 the Forest Reserves with a handful of men and inadequate funds. 

 That state of affairs righted itself in a remarkably short time, and 

 within a few years the administrative machinery became reasonably 

 efficient. Moreover, we should proceed upon the theory that the 

 regulations, when understood, will be willingly complied with even in 

 the absence of inspectors. The less supervision the better. 



As the organization gradually took shape, it might develop that 

 machinery similar to that now applied to the National Forests could 

 be used successfully. Resident forest supervisors might be placed 

 in charge of districts with forest rangers under them assigned to the 



