COMMENTS ON KNEIPP'S PAPER, "THE TECHNICAL 



FORESTER IN NATIONAL FOREST 



ADMINISTRATION" 



By Arthur C. Ringland 



It is to be hoped that there will be general agreement with Professor 

 Tourney's statement that a discussion of the relative effectiveness af the 

 work of non-technical men as compared with those of technical train- 

 ing is ''hardly worth controversy." What constructive purpose would 

 such a discussion serve? It would tend inevitably to open a breach 

 which most of us have considered closed years ago — closed by the 

 mutual respect engendered by intimate contact in a common cause. 



Why not discuss the deeper and more worth-while problem of how 

 to make the work of forest officers as a whole more effective, regard- 

 less of whether they are damned or blessed with a degree? One fair 

 comparison may be drawn at the outset between men of technical and 

 non-technical training and newly appointed to the Service. It may 

 be fairly said that the technically trained man lacks experience and the 

 non-technical man vision. The problem is to develop officers of ex- 

 perience and vision from the material available. 



As a district forester the problem of newly assigned men was no 

 little source of worry. It did not seem enough to immediately detail 

 newly appointed Forest Assistant Smith as technical assistant on a 

 National Forest perhaps to serve under an unsympathetic forest super- 

 visor ; nor did it seem for the best interests of the Service to "turn 

 loose" newly appointed Forest Ranger Jones, even though armed with 

 such a formidable weapon as the National Forest Manual. It was this 

 problem that gave rise in 1909 to the Fort Valley Ranger School on 

 the Coconino National Forest in Arizona — the first school of its kind. 

 I believe, on the National Forests. This school, while heartily endorsed 

 by the Forester, was unfortunately abandoned for reasons of depart- 

 mental policy — reasons which it is to be hoped now no longer exist. 

 And here a wide-spread and erroneous impression should be corrected. 

 The Fort Valley School was not abandoned for legal reasons. Mr. 

 McCabe. the then Solicitor for the Department of Agriculture, made 

 a clean-cut distinction in his decision l^etween the legality of this school 

 and the sending of forest officers to the University of Montana. 



Contact with the .'\rmy, now for one year, strengthens the convic- 

 tion that the Forest Service needs .schools of practical application on 



(ill 



