166 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



But slight attempt, if any, has been made to correlate the efforts of 

 the forest schools, the States, and the Federal Government. 



This thoroughly American situation of individualistic rather than 

 coordinated effort, if allowed to continue, will reduce the total investi- 

 gative output of the country and the possible benefit to the cause. All 

 of our work is now in its early stages. It can be moulded to coordi- 

 nated effort much more easily now than later. The main question 

 which I wish to place before you today for consideration is whether 

 the time has not arrived for the formulation and adoption of plans 

 which will secure correlation of all the forest research in the United 

 States and cooperation among all the agencies engaged upon it, and 

 which will stimulate to greater efforts those organizations which now 

 are not living up to their responsibilities. 



It may be helpful to consider first in a general way the development 

 of the work in the Forest Service, some of the field which has been 

 covered, and some of the more important tendencies. Many of you 

 are familiar with the early work of the Service and the more im- 

 portant changes which have occurred in it to the present. The first 

 considerable activities, beginning about three decades ago, were con- 

 fined largely to research and forest extension, including popular 

 education. At that time little beyond a partial botanical description 

 and classification of American forest trees had been accomplished. 

 Their life histories had been studied not at all, nothing was known of 

 silviculture or management, and there was little or no demand for 

 knowledge of this character. On the side of forest products there had 

 been developed in the United States a lumber industry of great magni- 

 tude, the product of the wilderness conditions under which it operated. 

 The industry, however, had little or no exact knowledge of its product 

 and the consumer was no better off. All was empirical. Early Forest 

 Service investigations attempted to ascertain the properties of Ameri- 

 can woods and began the studies of the life histories of our most 

 important forest trees. 



A natural change occurred in the attitude of Service men toward 

 investigative work when early in the year 1905 the organization was 

 made responsible for the administration of the National Forests. The 

 enormous task of building up an administrative machine, training a 

 personnel, creating new policies adapted to primitive conditions and 

 a new work absorbed the initiative and energies of all the men who 

 could be secured. For a number of years the force of trained foresters 



