THE SCHOOL-TRAINKD FORESTER 8o5 



working under the engineer ; they are interested, able, industrious, and 

 reliable ; they are mostly drawn from among the workmen of the forest, 

 but of late it has been found that even for these subordinate positions 

 a short course at a special school is very useful, and thus the secondary 

 school (corres])onding to this, our ranger school) has come to be quite 

 universal in Europe. 



That there would develop a little rivalry here, even more than between 

 engineer and pipe-layer, is to be expected ; the underforester quite 

 commonly finds fault with the forester ; his knowledge of actual con- 

 ditions in the woods is far more detailed, and where this is reinforced by 

 a superior native ability and judgment, there is real envy and friction. 

 In recent years some of this has even crept into the forestry journals. 

 In administration circles this has led to the proposition to reduce the 

 number of foresters or school-bred and higher-paid men. The move- 

 ment is for more money, and if it succeeds it will most certainly lead 

 to poorer woods and less income. 



In our own country a good deal of forestry history has been making, 

 and the relation of progress in forestry and the schooled forester has 

 been brought out most strikingly. For a century, lumbering has been 

 an important industry in our country; since 1870 the mechanical and 

 railway engineers have helped this industry in its development. 



What has this industry contributed to forestry ? Nothing whatever ; 

 on the contrary, it has devastated the forest, and thus made our begin- 

 nings, in many districts at least, most difficult and almost entirely in 

 the nature of first-hand investment, of replanting bare lands, sadly 

 impoverished by the ever-recurrent fires. Almost up to the present 

 these practical men of the forest have not only done nothing to pro- 

 mote forestry, but they and even their technical journals have actively 

 opposed, not only efforts at constructive work in silviculture and admin- 

 istration, but hindered and successfully prevented efforts at fire protec- 

 tion — a line of activity calculated for their own immediate good. 



What we know today of ini])roved methods in forest-fire protection 

 has been developed almost entirely by the U. S. Forest Service, under 

 the guidance of an organization headed and directed ( llnough persons 

 and books) by the school-bred forester. And it is significant that the 

 efforts of the largest ])rivate organizations toda\ are in the hands of 

 Forest Service school-bred men. 



Forest inipro\-einents, clear division of forests, roads, trails, phone 

 lines, and .all the good things needed in the proper conservation and 

 management of forest ditl not develop under the lumberman's reginii' 

 of our forests. Inaccessibilitv was even cultivated, and the cut-over 



