10 A BOOK-LOVER S HOLIDAYS 



tracts. Continual efforts are made by dema 

 gogues and by unscrupulous agitators to excite 

 hostility to the forest policy of the government; 

 and needy men who are short-sighted and un 

 scrupulous join in the cry, and play into the 

 hands of the corrupt politicians who do the 

 bidding of the big and selfish exploiters of the 

 public domain. One device of these politicians 

 is through their representatives in Congress to 

 cut down the appropriation for the forest ser 

 vice; and in consequence the administrative 

 heads of the service, in the effort to be econom 

 ical, are sometimes driven to the expedient of 

 trying to replace the permanently employed 

 experts by short-term men, picked up at hap 

 hazard, and hired only for the summer season. 

 This is all wrong: first, because the men thus 

 hired give very inferior service; and, second, 

 because the government should be a model em 

 ployer, and should not set a vicious example in 

 hiring men under conditions that tend to create 

 a shifting class of laborers who suffer from all 

 the evils of unsteady employment, varied by 

 long seasons of idleness. At this time the best 

 and most thoughtful farmers are endeavoring 

 to devise means for doing away with the system 

 of employing farm-hands in mass for a few 

 months and then discharging them; and the 



