Unprofessional Forestry. 187 



paid about the wages of a cook or foreman. One man in the course 

 of three months in the fall will mark all the timber that two or three 

 camps will cut all winter. Here^ if anywhere, in the matters of 

 marking and inspection of logging work, is the weak place in the 

 company's system. 



The work of the Hollingsworth & Whitney Co. is believed by the 

 writer to come very close to securing true forestry, as near certainly 

 as any logging work carried on in the spruce woods of New Eng- 

 land; and yet it is seen that in the company's organization there is 

 no man of technical forestry training, no man who even calls him- 

 self a forester. That suggests to the mind of the writer that per- 

 haps we who assume the professional name may in our enthusiasm 

 and eagerness have valued our own usefulness and efficiency too 

 highly. While we have been theorizing about forest management 

 and drawing up plans which may or may not have had some effect on 

 the lands to which they applied, other men in their own territory 

 have been going ahead without advertisement or parade actually se- 

 curing the real thing. The idea is worth pondering and the ques- 

 tion that follows it — whether it is not they rather than we who are 

 the real foresters of the country. 



The writer believes that there is much truth in this suggestion; 

 yet further reflection will show that neither forestry educators nor 

 technically trained men need depreciate their services in the past, 

 nor feel discouragement over future prospects. It is true in the 

 first place that any attempt at conservative lumbering, such for in- 

 stance as that described, is not altogether self-developed or self- 

 maintained. In a measure the way in which they have gone to work, 

 and in still greater degree the fundamental attitude of the Hollings- 

 worth & Whitney Co. toward the timber land tributary to their mills 

 are very largely the fruit of the literature with which the country 

 for the last twenty years has been thickly sown. Business perman- 

 ence as dependent on the woods, the forest as a field not a mine, the 

 time element in the production of timber crops, the essential value of 

 reproduction, the achievements of forestry in Europe — these ideas, 

 propagated through forestry literature, are behind every attempt at 

 better forest management today, and nothing has been or is more 

 necessary than their propagation. 



In regard to future management and the school-trained man there 

 is just one thing to be said, but that is full of meaning and cuts in 

 a multitude of ways. It is that when technically trained men can 

 do the work required better than those who are now conducting it, 

 they will get it to do. 



Austin Gary. 



