A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 663 



few years become invaluable for demonstration purposes as well as 

 for the research for which they are primarily created. 



From the somewhat scattered statements in the preceding pages 

 regarding the component parts of a forest experiment station a more 

 comprehensive picture may be drawn. A station consists for one 

 thing of a headquarters in a town which serves for the permanent 

 residence of the technical and clerical staff, which offers the oppor- 

 tunity for laboratory work, and which preferably permits affiliation 

 with a high-grade educational institution with a strong graduate 

 school. It consists also of a series of experimental forests each of 

 which is as representative as possible of the conditions of an important 

 sub region. Wh ere range problems are involved, similar experimental 

 ranges are utilized. These experimental forests and ranges are in 

 fact branch stations at which the bulk of the field activities of the 

 station are concentrated. Each station works on the problems of an 

 entire region and covers silvicultural or forest management investiga- 

 tions, range investigations, those of forest and range influences, forest 

 economics, and to a minor extent investigations of forest products, or 

 all classes of forest research except those which can be handled best 

 in a national unit. 



To the stations also, wherever satisfactory arrangements can be 

 worked out, representatives are detailed from the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry for investigations of forest pathology, from the Bureau of 

 Entomology for investigations of forest entomology, and from the 

 Biological Survey for investigations of forest wild life. 



ADEQUATE FINANCES 



When the Branch of Research was established in 1915 only a 

 relatively small amount of research was under way in the Forest 

 Service. As the National Forest administration became more 

 intensive and the forestry movement on lands in other ownerships 

 gained headway, the size and complexity of the research job and the 

 magnitude of the Federal obligation for even a part of it were grad- 

 ually realized. With the rapid exhaustion of virgin timber supplies 

 and relatively small effort toward their replacement, with the tech- 

 nique of timber growing largely unknown throughout the United 

 States, with forest products at a decided disadvantage in competition 

 with practically all other commodities because of lack of knowledge 

 of their properties and how to use them effectively, and with enormous 

 areas of land available for timber growing and apparently suitable for 

 no other purpose, there seemed to be little question about the urgency 

 of research. The conclusion was accordingly reached that the 

 national interest required expansion of the work as rapidly as increased 

 finances could be made available, provided, of course, that suitable 

 personnel could be obtained and the organization developed to handle 

 the work effectively. It had to be recognized that adequate finances 

 constituted one of the main essentials or objectives for doing forest 

 research. Before increased finances could be obtained, however, both 

 the public and Congress had to be convinced that the work contem- 

 plated was actually necessary and in the public interest. 



The effort to meet financial needs finally led, among other things, 

 to the passage of the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act of 

 May 22, 1928. In its broader aspects this legislation is the organic 



168342 33 vol. 1 43 



