84 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 



a beginning. He has yet to learn the laws tinder which 

 mining claims and forest homesteads may be located, 

 the routine of timber sales and the ins and outs of 

 the cattle business and when finally he has mastered 

 the business routine and the forms of the supervisor's 

 office he commences to be useful, for previously he 

 was a mere apprentice. From this time on more 

 responsibility is shifted upon his shoulders. He may 

 take charge of the office and try his hand at running 

 the forest for a week or two at a time while his chief 

 is in the field inspecting timber sales or fire protection 

 work. "When it is realized that the average unit of 

 forest administration, the National Forest, is 1,000,000 

 acres against 10,000 acres in Germany and that there is 

 one employee for each 125,000 acres in the United States 

 against one forest guard for every two hundred acres 

 in German forests, some conception of the man-size 

 job may be obtained. It is only by the exercise of 

 marvelous ingenuity that the Forest Service has been 

 able to protect the nation's woodlot as well as it has in 

 view of its meager appropriations and limited number 

 of employees. The very battle against odds has in- 

 stilled in men of the Forest Service a feeling of 

 comradeship, an esprit de corps which is largely respon- 

 sible for the outcome. The winning of the West, the 

 success in changing the feelings of the cattlemen and 

 lumbermen from open hostility to genuine friendship 

 is a striking example of good administration on a 

 gigantic scale. 



If the young forest assistant instead of being as- 

 signed to a forest had been placed in a reconnaissance 

 party his lot would not have been quite so varied but 

 even more strenuous, for life in a reconnaissance 

 camp is one of stirring activity. In some of the dis- 



