THE FOREST SERVICE AND ITS MEN 659 



administration has been due to the fertility of resource displayed by the 

 leaders of the organization as well as its rank and file. 



11. Idealism. — No man can be truly successful and remain so with- 

 out a clear view of the goal for which he is striving; and if the aims 

 of Forest administration have never been revealed to a man, or have 

 been acquired by him solely from his own experience and observation, 

 he will create his own set of ideals and will too often fall far short in 

 his achievement. Here, again, the "practical" man is handicapped, both 

 by what he knows and does not know. The great ideal toward which 

 the Service works is the successful handling of the timber resource, 

 not merely for its present exploitation, but for reproduction and estab- 

 lishment as a permanent asset in our national life. Obstacles to the 

 achievement of this end loom large, and to the man without forestry 

 training may not only seem unsurmountable, but often he never even 

 sees beyond them nor is able to recognize the true goal. It is not, as 

 he prides himself, that he has a better sense of values, based on the 

 proper balance of the needs of the present and the future, but that by 

 his training he is frequently unable even to see the future, much less to 

 give it a proper weight in the scheme of things. An impractical 

 theorist is impossible as an executive, but a man without ideals is as 

 dangerous as an I. W. W. It takes a trained mind to make idealism 

 practical; and unless the Forest Service is guided in its policies by just 

 such men, there will come a time when the public will curse us out for 

 betraying the trust imposed on us and failing to achieve the great pur- 

 pose of our founders. 



12. Experience. — No other argument is used so convincingly to 

 prove the relative superiority of practical training gained in doing 

 things over theoretical education obtained in the class-room as that 

 whose basis is experience. The contempt of the practically trained 

 man for the technical graduate fresh from school, who reveals some 

 startling phase of ignorance in the handling of horses or makes some 

 bad break through lack of familiarity with local custom, is unbounded, 

 and the poor ignoramus is branded as a failure from then on. We find 

 this contempt and intolerance as a common trait of those who work 

 largely with their hands and whose horizon is narrow. Why? 



To every man comes experience as the cumulative reward of effort, 

 physical or mental. To the pioneer, the laborer, and the mechanic this 

 takes the form of skill with animals, woodcraft, good artisanship, and 

 other muscular training, in which he excels by habit. But there is an- 

 other and far more important kind of experience — that of mental ob- 

 servation and reasoning — which the man who merely excels in doing 



