COMMENTS ON KN^IPP's PAPER 675 



In 1909 the administrative officers on the Forests in District 5, in- 

 cluding supervisors, deputies, and forest examiners, were 30 per cent 

 forest-school graduates and 70 per cent non-technical ; in 191 3 the 

 forest-school graduates were 66 per cent and the others 34 per cent ; 

 in 1917 the forest-school graduates were 61 per cent and the others 39 

 per cent. No doubt a census taken three years from now will show a 

 much greater decrease of the forest-school graduates as compared to 

 the non-technical men. 



Since I have been supervisor four graduates have started their 

 careers as forest assistants on this Forest; two are still with us, one a 

 supervisor and one a forest examiner. I have noticed that the grad- 

 uates are of two broad divisions — those who dislike scientific research 

 or specialization and those who take to it naturally ; the first class tends 

 towards the specialized and purely technical positions. But the fact 

 remains that every graduate is given a drilling in the theoretical and 

 technical and only a smattering of the problems of administrative work, 

 which he must pick up as best he can, once he is on a National Forest. 



What we are talking about is a graduate who can make good in any 

 line of work on a Forest and who will be able to realize on his invest- 

 ment in a technical education when it comes to being a supervisor or 

 forest administrator. This is not a problem which can be thrown onto 

 forest schools by the Forest Service regardlessly. Probably both are 

 to blame for the results, and it is their joint responsibility to correct 

 the mistakes of the past and to prepare for the new generation of for- 

 esters which will appear when world conditions settle down to normal. 

 Without Forest Service activities the schools would lack their chief 

 field of demonstration and experience, and without the schools the 

 Service would remain where it was in the Land Office days, as far as 

 forestry is concerned. If it is true — and I am sure it is — that an un- 

 dergraduate can soon learn whether or not he is better fitted for gen- 

 eral forest business or administration than for the scientific work, he 

 should be given one year as a guard on the Forests before he is allowed 

 to qualify for the civil-service examination ; or perhaps he should spend 

 a year or so on a Forest before he even enters a school, to see whether 

 or not he is adapted for the life and the work and become thoroughly 

 acquainted with the hardships and other disadvantages mentioned by 

 Kneipp. And the Service should make it part of its business to take 

 these future students or forest assistants and test them out by actual 

 work, and by a study of their personalities and tastes help the schools 

 to determine for what class of work they are best fitted. If this were 

 done, fewer men would choose the wrong career, and both the schools 



