858 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



was no record even of the sawmills existing on the forests ; fire busi- 

 ness was handled wretchedly on practically all forests ; here and there 

 a few rods of old prospector trails were cleared out, but generalh 

 there was no improvement — none done, none recorded — save a few 

 unmeaning (and often untrue) statements in the ranger's report, put 

 there because the whole organization and control was one grand non- 

 sense performance. 



What the local people thought of the outfit need not be repeated, but 

 there certainly was no respect for this affair anywhere. At the Wash- 

 ington office there was more knowledge of land law in the old Division 

 R than would be needed in all the land cases of a century, and yet it 

 was notorious that the Forest Reserve outfit could not win a case, and 

 when it did win one in Montana the supervisor went on a spree. 



In 1905 the Reserves were turned over to the Department of Agri- 

 culture, particularly to the then Bureau of Forestry — a handful of 

 school-bred, young foresters, with little or no real experience in for- 

 estry and, for the most part, in anything else, but a bureau under the 

 direction of a well-schooled, able forester. The school and the book- 

 had told these men what a forest is and what must be done to make it 

 into a business. They had traveled and seen things ; they had got 

 together and talked things ; they had worked in the woods, not scaling 

 or digging post-holes, but making forest surveys, learning to know the 

 distribution of our forests, the types of stands, the species which com- 

 pose them, and, incidentally, they heard and saw a great deal about the 

 wood industries and about the range aftairs. Most important of all 

 was the fact that they had a common taste and interest, common school- 

 ing, and ambitions. It was a small handful and the body of the field 

 force of the Land Oflice organization, as well as of the Washington 

 office, were simply taken over. But the leaven of the forest school was 

 there. Lack of experience on the part of the young foresters led to 

 many mistakes, perhaps, but the zvork took shape at once; it was headed 

 toward forestry, toward an orderly management of these vast proper- 

 ties. There came instructions and more instructions. The small hand- 

 ful had to work largely from the Washington office, and by traveling 

 and getting not only instructions to the old crews, but also a new spirit 

 into the old organization. It Worked, and as the schools turned out 

 more men the progress became more rapid. What the Service is today 

 is known. It is organized forestry in the New World ; it has gathered 

 more useful information in thirteen years about our forests and our 

 ranges, the very geography of our western country, than all the forest 

 and range industries and all other similar agencies put together had 

 gathered in the 100 years and more of their existence. 



