ill 



DESCRIPTION OF SERIES 



Interviews: A Documentation of the Development of 

 the U.S. Forest Service 1900-1950 



This Resources for the Future interview series on the birth and 

 development of the Forest Service began as a sudden disturbance in the 

 ever-active brain of Ed I. Kotok in early 1964. One wintry day in early 

 1964, as we were putting away the tape recorder after one of our last ses-&quot; 

 sions together, I mentioned casually that I would not be in the Bay Area 

 for the summer: I had to go East. 



Ed s eyebrows shot up. It was obvious that a final piece had fallen 

 into place in a mental jigsaw that he had been carrying around for some 

 time. He said that there were quite a few of his retired colleagues still 

 in Washington, D.C., some of whom were the original &quot;Pinchot boys.&quot; If 

 only, he mused, the Oral History Office could find financing for an entire 

 series on the Forest Service, maybe from a foundation like Resources for 

 the Future. 



Henry Vaux, then Dean of the School of Forestry at Berkeley, was the 

 logical one to turn to. He gave advice and counsel on a priority system 

 for selecting the men to interview. From deep in his perspective of special 

 ized knowledge of forest policy, he saw the opportunity to preserve informa 

 tion that would otherwise be permanently lost.* At best, the tape-recorded 

 memoirs could reveal, more frankly than annual reports and official letters, 

 some of the political and economic facts of life that influenced the develop 

 ment of policy in the agency. The actual decision-making process, told 

 first-hand and linked with the official rationales and actions on particular 

 issues, could be useful in appraising contemporary policy questions and their 

 multiple alternatives. Today, as in 1905, forest policy is a field where 

 special interest pressures are in a state of varying equilibrium with the 

 public interest. To see the policies and decisions of the past materialize, 

 to witness through the administrators eyes the expected or (more often) 

 the surprising effect of those actions in the past - such a visible continuum 

 could provide a depth of experience for those who are presently wrestling 

 with the economic and political disequalibriums of resource management. 



Horace Albright, a veteran interviewee of oral history operations, 

 lent his encouragement to us and probably his enthusiasm to his friends on 

 the board of Resources for the Future. We contacted three top-priority 

 potential interviewees to see if they were willing to indulge us in our tape 

 recording scheme, and we received a yes, a no, and a maybe. This changed to 

 two yeses and, in place of the no, a substitute interviewee equally as val 

 uable. By late spring, a modest grant to the Oral History Office marked the 

 beginning of the series, Henry Vaux agreed to be Principle Investigator, and 

 we were off. 



See appendix, Letter from Vaux to Fry, March 20, 1964. 



