2 Forestry Quarterly 



Up to the present time the demand for technically trained 

 foresters has been almost entirely confined to governmental posi- 

 tions in National and State Forestry and for teachers in the 

 constantly increasing number of schools. In all governmental 

 positions the administrators have been far more important than 

 the technicians. The schools could not at first supply the men 

 needed, and scores of men without training and v^^ithout a for- 

 ester's point of view became the managers of the rapidly in- 

 creasing acreage of public forests. As the trained men from the 

 schools became available, they were often placed under and were 

 dominated by the non-technical men then in charge. In many in- 

 stances the older men, entirely without a technical training and 

 often without a college training as well, saw little or nothing in 

 technical forestry and looked upon their work as purely admin- 

 istrative in character. The school men were inclined at first to 

 over-emphasize the need for silvicultural operations and other 

 technical work on the wild lands that they found themselves called 

 upon to help administer and develop. 



What was the result? Almost up to the present time the non- 

 technical man has held his own with the school man, provided he 

 is naturally endowed with as strong personality and is equally 

 effective as an administrative officer. The reason for this is that 

 heretofore our forestry has been made largely of an administra- 

 tive character. 



More than one thousand men have received degrees in forestry 

 and presumably a technical training during the past decade in 

 the United States. These men without experience, but with their 

 heads filled with normal stand, sustained yield, and silvicultural 

 systems and the like, have rolled up their sleeves hoping to trans- 

 form the wilderness into orderly arranged woodland. Instead 

 of improvement thinnings, the development of working plans and 

 other operations requiring the application of their technical 

 knowledge, they have been chiefly engaged in fighting fire, build- 

 ing trails and cabins, and in doing an infinite variety of adminis- 

 trative work which the average non-technical man, because of 

 greater experience, is better able to perform satisfactorily. The 

 school men have often been told by the men without a technical 

 training, with whom and under whom they often work, to forget 

 their training because there is no place for it in American 



