856 JOURNAL OF FORHSTKV 



lands of our State and region are mute witnesses to testify the simple 

 great fact that the hunberman left the land barren and waste wherever 

 he touched it. 



As to any accumulation of necessary information, there was not a 

 trace; the knowledge of trees and forests was foreign to the business, 

 beyond the number of logs in a tree and the thousand feet board meas- 

 ure in a stand ; and even this knowledge was meager and unreliable and 

 the methods of the crudest. 



The expert knowledge of the forest was generally not possessed by 

 the men at the central offiice and by the owners ; the forest expert of the 

 lumber industr)' was the foreman of the logging camp and the cruiser, 

 and what little these men had of forestry knowledge they kept to them- 

 selves. 



All we know of forest distribution in the United States today, all 

 we know- of dendrology, of silvics and silviculture, of forest protection 

 against fire, insects, and fungi, and even a large part of what we have 

 in utilization, is the work of the school-bred man, with no important 

 help W'hatever from the practical owner or from the workers of the 

 w^oods. And it is most significant that the lumber industry today is 

 turning to the organization guided by school-bred foresters for their 

 statistics, for methods of cost accounting, for a clear exposition of the 

 status of the entire industry which might gain the confidence of our 

 people and thus work to some real relief and permanent benefit. When 

 the lumber journal of today asks that the Forest Service, in co-opera- 

 tion with the industries, work out a satisfactory plan for general forest 

 conservation, it states the simple admission and fact that the school- 

 bred forester is needed to put our country right in matters of the forest 

 industry. This statement is not made in a spirit of faultfinding; it 

 was not to be expected that lumbering should develop forestry ; it did 

 nothing of this kind abroad, where it had plenty of leisure ; how could 

 it here, where the work was rushed at top speed and where help was 

 scarce and men with proper education simply not to be had? 



Matters in the range business were no better. This line of work is 

 rather important in the National Service, and a word here seems not out 

 of place. The owner of a large stock of cattle in the Big Horn coun- 

 try was in London, England ; the owner of large range herds in Texas 

 is a New York banker; the big sheepman of Wyoming is in Salt Lake 

 City or in the United States Senate. His real expert is the herder — in 

 many cases an illiterate Portuguese, Mexican, or even Hindoo, and in 

 almost all cases unschooled men. Range devastation was common ; a 

 knowledge of range plants and what they re(|uired for existence and 



