A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 641 



limited to payment for services and proof must be submitted that 

 no charge is made for the timber as such. While this method of 

 handling cutting is of some community benefit it cannot be applied 

 except on a very small scale. 



As might be expected, the volume of timber disposed of under these 

 various acts is too small to play any definite part in the timber situa- 

 tion of the Nation or to make any worth-while contribution to com- 

 munity business. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1931, there 

 was a total of 1 1 sales of timber the total value of which was $2,582.52. 

 During the same period 112 permits were issued for the free use of 

 timber. 



Widespread trespass cutting has occurred on the public domain, 

 particularly during the period of colonization and initial development 

 of the West. Railroad construction, home building, mining develop- 

 ment, and other new business enterprises required a large quantity of 

 timber. There being no legal means of obtaining green timber from 

 the public domain and no sentiment adverse to the theft of public 

 timber, trespass cutting resulted. Unfortunately this cutting was 

 usually of the type most destructive to forest values and the devasta- 

 tion often was made complete by broadcast slash fires of either inten- 

 tional or accidental origin. No value was then attached locally to the 

 possibility of future crops of timber and therefore no effort was made 

 to insure regeneration of the stand. Large areas were so thoroughly 

 denuded that they have since reverted to grass or brush cover and 

 are not now considered forest land. This reversion is well illustrated 

 by conditions in the California foothills, where over large areas the 

 lower timber line has been pushed back more than 10 mSes. 



The volume of timber cut in trespass has generally exceeded that 

 cut legally ; however, it has long since dropped to the point where it is 

 of little consequence. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1931, 

 action was taken for the removal in trespass of timber, coal, gravel, 

 and turpentine in 1,664 cases for a total value of $23,164.32. The 

 portion of this amount chargeable to timber trespass is not known, 

 but the total from all sources is extremely small considering the num- 

 ber of actions involved. (It is safe to assume that only a small per- 

 centage of the cases of trespass on the public domain are discovered 

 and prosecuted, as the areas making up the public domain are widely 

 scattered and are not systematically supervised.) 



Prior to 1919 the Federal Government recognized no obligation to 

 control public-domain fires. The limited field force of the Land Office 

 gave the question of fire control such attention as time would permit, 

 but effective action was precluded by the fact that no funds were 

 available for this purpose. In 1919 a series of large and disastrous 

 fires originating on the public domain in central Idaho threatened or 

 actually spread to near-by national-forest or private lands. The 

 situation became so acute that the Government made funds available 

 to meet the emergency, of which $160,000 was spent. 



The 1919 situation established a precedent, and except in the fiscal 

 year 1921 the Government has made some financial provision every 

 year since then for fire control on the public domain. Beginning with 

 the fiscal year 1927 a portion of the appropriation has been made 

 available for fire prevention. The extent of Federal expenditures for 

 forest-fire control on the public domain is shown in table 2. The 

 funds, although they have increased more or less steadily, are entirely 



