A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 745 



the forest to which they had been accustomed. They eagerly took 

 up tree planting, to make the country more habitable and homelike. 

 Still farther west irrigation was important. Soon the idea became 

 generally accepted that the semiarid plains region, popularly included 

 in the " Great American Desert/' must be made habitable for civilized 

 man and reclaimed for agriculture, if it was to be reclaimed at all, by 

 means of tree planting on a gigantic scale. Thus, it was thought, 

 the climate might be changed and the rainfall so increased as to alter 

 the character of the whole region agriculturally. 



WHY THE EARLY MOVEMENT ACCOMPLISHED LITTLE 



The widespread interest in " timber culture" or "tree culture" and 

 the efforts to promote forest planting through public encouragement 

 and assistance did not turn into new channels the earlier current of 

 thought regarding what forestry should primarily be concerned with 

 in the United States. Even today, in the popular mind, the inaugu- 

 ration of forestry tends to be thought of as tree planting. That 

 forestry should as a rule concern itself with established forests and 

 that the application of silviculture is accomplished mainly through 

 skillful utilization, which controls and directs the later growth of the 

 forest, is a conception not readily grasped by the average man. In 

 the seventies of the last century even those best informed on forestry 

 and most active on its behalf gave surprisingly little attention to the 

 possibilities of forestry as a substitute for the current practices of 

 utilization. One reason for this was the fact that the chief early 

 agencies seeking to promote forestry were agricultural and horticul- 

 tural societies. Another was that the scientific knowledge necessary 

 for the application of silviculture to American forests was completely 

 nonexistent. A third was the tendency among early leaders of the 

 forestry movement to assume that the old forests were doomed and 

 if there were to be future forests they would have to be planted and 

 grown, like other crops. 



The very considerable effort made on behalf of forestry prior to 

 1885 accomplished little of permanent importance, in spite of the 

 strong moving forces back of it, partly because of inadequate knowl- 

 edge and fallacious conceptions, partly because the forms of govern- 

 mental organization then established provided no suitable machinery 

 for the kind of undertakings required. That the climate of the semi- 

 arid regions could be profoundly altered by inducing settlers to engage 

 in "timber culture", and that if the desert were to be reclaimed for 

 agriculture it must be by means of extensive afforestation, were of 

 course complete misconceptions. But irrespective of whether the 

 objectives of the forestry movement in its early stages were right or 

 wrong, their achievement was impossible because the people of the 

 United States had not then gone far in developing the capacity of 

 government to meet the needs of a complex, highly organized eco- 

 nomic life. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the field of 

 government had to be broadened in many directions. To assume the 

 new duties, new machinery had to be set up. The creation of the 

 machinery necessary for the successful conduct of public activities in 

 forestry proved a slow process indeed, it is even now unfinished. 



