602 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



State, and private owners. Appropriations by all three agencies 

 have been made for a cooperative drive to control the pest, which can 

 be done by the practical measure of destroying the wild currants and 

 gooseberries which are the indispensable alternate host of the disease. 

 What has been done so far, however, is wholly inadequate to meet the 

 situation. For the national forests alone, in the north Idaho region, 

 not less than $400,000 per year should be appropriated, and this will 

 probably have to be continued for at least 10 years. 



BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS 



A major objective of the Forest Service has been to bring the utmost 

 efficiency into the business management of the national forests. 

 The organization has been developed with that purpose constantly in 

 mind, and has been adjusted whenever necessary to promote that 

 object. More economical ways of doing work have been constantly 

 sought. The men of the Forest Service have done much of their own 

 inventing in the development of time-and cost-saving devices. Thus 

 special fire-fighting tools have been developed to lighten the fire- 

 chaser's pack and get him on the fire more quickly; plows have been 

 developed for machine or horse traction to speed and cheapen the 

 construction of fire trenches; a similar method has been adopted for 

 much of the trail construction; notable pioneer work has been done 

 in devising inexpensive machinery to lower the cost of the simple fire 

 protection roads constructed by the Forest Service; a cheap portable 

 radio has been built to afford quick communication with remote fire 

 crews and avoid telephone line investments. In all ways the effort 

 has been to make the public dollar buy the utmost in net public 

 benefit. 



While business on the national forests has been growing at a steady 

 and rapid rate, the Forest Service has steadily reduced the number of 

 its ranger districts by putting more territory under one ranger, and 

 has likewise reduced the number of year-long employees engaged in 

 national-forest protection and administration. In several cases two 

 national forests have been combined under one head. Figure 7 

 furnishes a comparison between 1920 and 1931 in the matter of ranger 

 districts and the entire year-long administrative personnel of the 

 Forest Service, and the major items in protection and administration 

 handled by these employees. 



Toward this, several major factors have contributed. One of the 

 most obvious is the much greater facility of transportation by the 

 substitution in large measure of the automobile for the saddle and 

 pack horse, enabling one man to cover much more territory and work 

 in a given time. The great extension of the telephone system has 

 been helpful in expediting business. The formerly sizeable jobs of 

 examining lands applied for as forest homesteads, of examining and 

 reporting on a large number of homestead and mining claims coming 

 up for patent, of getting evidence for action on timber trespass com- 

 mitted chiefly before active administration of the national forests 

 began, of running lines to find out where the national-forest boundaries 

 really were, of making long trips for mail and supplies, have all greatly 

 diminished, leaving more time for more productive business. 



Changes in factors such as the foregoing, and in volume and char- 

 acter of work, have been caught up periodically by searching analyses 



