758 A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



management. While the lands of the forest preserve must "be 

 forever kept as wild lands", the commission was 



to maintain and protect the forests now on the forest preserve, and to promote 

 as far as practicable the further growth of forests thereon; 



the commission was authorized to prescribe rules or regulations for 

 the use, care, and administration of the preserve; and a subsequent 

 section directed the commission to pay over to the treasury of the 

 State "all income that may hereafter be derived from State forest 

 lands." However, the ^ commission plainly felt that before it could 

 undertake to sell any timber from the preserve it must have further 

 legislative authorization. In its 1892 report a draft of recommended 

 legislation was incorporated authorizing the sale of spruce and tama- 

 rack having a diameter of 12 inches or more, and of poplar without 

 a diameter restriction. Two years earlier the commission had sug- 

 gested the possibility of acquiring land for purposes of blocking up 

 through exchanges of timber for land, with the cutting limited to the 

 softwoods and the same 12-inch diameter limitation. That this 

 suggestion would meet with opposition, however, was evidently 

 realized. 



Your commission is fully appraised of the prejudice that exists in many quarters 

 against selling trees of any sort, and under any circumstances, in the Adirondack 

 forest. 



The report of the commission continued 



Considering the manner in which trees have been heretofore cut, and the 

 devastation that has been wrought by crude and thoughtless methods, this prej- 

 udice is not surprising; nevertheless it is a prejudice. * * * No scheme of 

 forestry is complete that does not contemplate the preservation and cultivation 

 of timber for the sake of wood to be used for merchantable purposes * * *. 

 Forestry is not opposed to having trees cut down in the proper way. They must 

 be cut to supply the world with timber. * * * It is the unwise, improvident, 

 stupid method, or want of method, by which the cutting has heretofore too often 

 been done, that is deplored. 



And so on. 



The "prejudice" which it was thus sought to dissipate was not 

 confined to New York. It was to find expression not much later 

 in Congress, during the discussion of proposed legislation to permit 

 sales of timber from the Federal forest reserves. In 1891 Congress 

 authorized the President to establish forest reserves; but not until 

 8 years later was any provision made for their administration. In 

 the interval the friends of forest conservation directed their principal 

 efforts toward getting the necessary legislation through. Inasmuch 

 as water conservation held overwhelmingly the first place, in the 

 eyes of the West, as a reason for having forest reserves, to open them 

 to lumbering seemed to many not merely dangerous but a complete 

 abandonment of the reserve policy. As one Congressman put it 



You might as well turn a dozen wolves into a corral filled with sheep and expect 

 the wolves to protect the sheep as to expect your timber to be protected if you 

 permit the lumbermen to go upon the reservation at all. 



While unfamiliarity with the practices of forestry doubtless in part 

 explained this attitude and fear, it is far from being the whole explana- 

 tion. In very large part the basis of the fear was the distrust, based 

 on long experience, of the ability of any body of public servants to 

 maintain against pressure and corrupting influences a high standard 

 of competence, vigilance, and integrity. Indeed, a good many of the 



