182 Forestry Quarterly 



made up of nine members. Such a nine-head Commission 

 which was one of the large reasons for opposition by certain 

 organizations in the State to the Constitution, was thought by 

 the Conservation Committee of the Convention to solve the 

 problem of putting the forest work of the State out of politics. 

 The State Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees of vari- 

 ous State Educational Institutions were used as examples for 

 the nine-headed Conservation Commission. It was felt that a 

 Commission of public men interested in the forests of the State 

 appointed or elected for a period of years would serve as a buffer 

 between the technical forester selected by the Commission as 

 Superintendent and wrong political control. It was not the idea 

 of the Conservation Committee of the State Convention, as the 

 writer understands, to expect the Commissioners to act as execu- 

 tives in any way whatever, but they were to select a technical 

 forester as a Superintendent as the Board of Regents of the 

 State selects a State Commissioner of Education or as the Board 

 of Trustees of the College of Agriculture selects a Dean. The 

 chief executive, who would be the Superintendent or the For- 

 ester, would then have a free hand in carrying out the forest 

 work of the State backed by the united strength of the nine 

 members of the Commission. The fact that there have been six 

 changes in the head of the Conservation Commission of the State 

 in the last five years would seem to indicate that something must 

 be done to take the Conservation Commission and the forest 

 interests of the State absolutely out of politics. 



The Conservation Articles of the 1915 Constitution made pro- 

 vision for more extensive reforestation than can now be carried 

 out by the State, and called for the classification of the forest 

 lands of the State and the demarcation of boundaries. All these 

 things are advances over what is allowed under the present Con- 

 stitution and must eventually come about in the development of 

 the Conservation policies of the State. It is possible to bring 

 these about in the next five, ten or twenty years and it is believed 

 that every forester in the State and every forester outside who is 

 interested in forest policies in the country will hope that some of 

 these advances may come in five or ten years, which is entirely 

 possible, rather than to let the present policy toward our forests 

 of "hands off" continue until the next Constitutional Convention 

 which may be held in 1915. Hugh P. Baker. 



