558 JOURNAL 01" FORESTRY 



complished. A study of this matter, I submit, will show that most of 

 the real progress in the administration of the National Forests has 

 sprung not from the field, but from foresters in the Washington office 

 who have little chance for active work in the woods. These men, inci- 

 dentally, are not strangers to fatigue, thirst, cold, indigestion, and un- 

 comfortable skins. They have been through all that. And, by the way, 

 I do not consider that filth and poor food are necessary factors in the 

 making of a good forest officer, be he forester or not. These are merely 

 things to be endured under the inexcusable and abominable conditions 

 of life which exist in most logging camps and mountain districts at the 

 present time. Decent logging camps will bring forth a better breed 

 of lumberjacks, and, better living conditions in the woods will call to 

 the profession more and better foresters. When forestry is really prac- 

 ticed on the National Forests the present deplorable social conditions 

 prevalent throughout most forested regions will be revolutionized, and 

 in this the forester is directly and deeply concerned. 



If it is true, which I doubt, that the forest schools are producing men 

 ill qualified for National Forest work, then the schools should be revo- 

 lutionized at once, for the remedy lies not in less training, but rather in 

 more and different training. I am inclined to think that foresters have 

 not been placed in executive positions to any great extent in recent 

 years largely because of the timidity of their superior officers, many of 

 whom were not foresters. Undue fear has obtained that the forester 

 lacking long experience would make mistakes. What if he should? 

 Many mistakes were made by the foresters who were the leading spirits 

 in the Forest Service during the days of Gifford Pinchot ; but I hazard 

 the opinion that, in spite of these mistakes, the vital progressive spirit 

 which permeated the Service in those days accomplished larger ends 

 than any which appear upon the surface at present, when the value of 

 the forester in forest administration seems to be doubted. I firmly be- 

 lieve that all important executive positions in the Forest Service should 

 eventually be held by foresters. Without the forester's training, view- 

 point, and imagination filtering down through all its forces, the Service 

 would soon take on the tone of many another Government bureau of 

 staid and conservative type, grinding out its business with doleful me- 

 chanical accuracy, and the National Forests would fail utterly to accom- 

 plish the ends for which they were created. 



By F. A. Silcox— ' < 



District Forester Kneipp's article, "The Technical Forester in Na- 

 tional Forest Administration," in the February issue of the Journal, 



