WHAT MINNESOTA NEEDS IN FORESTRY. 225 



WHAT MINNESOTA NEEDS IN FORESTRY. 



GEN. C. C. ANDREWS, STATE FOREST FIRE WARDEN. 



I don't know what to say without saying what I have said 

 before. I make the same speech about every time. It was Count 

 Moltke who said it was better to start wrong than not to start at 

 all. Gen. Lew Wallace started wrong on the first day of the 

 battle of Shiloh, but he got around to the right road and did a 

 splendid work on the second day of tli£ battle. The state of 

 Maine made a start in forestry in 1891. The state of New York 

 had passed a law in 1885, when Mr. Cleveland was governor, creat- 

 ing a forestry board — and, by the way, Samuel J. Tilden was one 

 of the first members of the forestry board of New York — and the 

 state of Maine in 1891 passed a law providing for the extinguishing 

 of forest fires and providing that the selectmen should be fire war- 

 dens in their respective towns, and that they should turn out to 

 fight fires, and that the town should pay the expenses for such 

 services. They limited that expense so it did not amount to but 

 little. Now, after some years' trial, the state of Maine in March, 

 1903, passed a law authorizing the town supervisors to take pre- 

 cautions to prevent fires, which the former law had not done, and 

 appropriated $10,000 out of the state treasury to make the law 

 effective. They also appropriated $2,500 for education in forestry 

 in the state. In the month of April there was but 73-100 of an 

 inch of rainfall, and from May 4th until June 9th not a drop of rain 

 fell, and the consequence was that there was an unprecedented 

 drouth. Forest fires prevailed in the state of Maine, as also in 

 New York and Pennsylvania, and the town officers under this 

 law fought the fires with persistence. 



The forest commissioner of that state in his report says that the 

 law passed in March appropriating $10,000 saved the state millions 

 of dollars. Maine got onto the right track. The state of New York 

 expended $150,000 fighting fires that spring of 1903, and Col. Fox, 

 the state forest superintendent, stated that if the law had per- 

 mitted the expenditure of money to prevent fires it would have saved 

 a large part of his $150,000, but they had no means. The law did 

 not provide for the prevention of fires. 



Now our law fortunately does say that the town supervisors 

 shall take precautions to prevent fires, and an amendment which 

 was passed two years ago provides that they shall be paid for 

 patrolling their districts in dry weather, and that they shall be paid 

 ior preventing and extinguishing prairie fires. The best feature of 

 our Minnesota law is that money may be expended for preventing 

 as well as fighting fires. The appropriation which the legislature 



