774 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



be "a State forester who shall be a trained forester. " He was to be 

 appointed and his work directed by a State forestry board of 9 

 members, of whom 1 was to be the director of the forestry school 

 and 1 the dean of the Agricultural College of the University of 

 Minnesota; 2 were to be appointed upon the recommendation of the 

 regents of the university and 2 more upon the recommendation of 

 the Minnesota Forestry Association; the other 3 were to be appointed 

 upon the recommendation, respectively, of the State agricultural 

 society, the State horticultural society, and the State game and fish 

 commission. 



Generally speaking, the State forestry departments which were 

 created in the decade 1901-10 started off as principally agencies for 

 gathering and disseminating information and performing an educa- 

 tional function with respect to forestry and its possibilities, partly 

 through practical advice to landowners. State forestry had to feel 

 out its way and make its own place. The State foresters were 

 young men, their pay was small, and the interest of State legislatures 

 in their undertaking slight. To obtain authority for its expansion 

 and increased funds for its strengthening was slow and uphill work. 

 Most politicians found little account in giving it backing, unless 

 public demand made action expedient for them; and public opinion 

 unless organized and led by men of determination and good judgment 

 registered only spasmodically, if at all. There was little inclination 

 anywhere, except in New York and Pennsylvania, to inaugurate 

 policies looking to extensive undertakings of public forest ownership 

 and administration. Nor was there in most States any strong desire 

 to create a centralized, efficient system for the control of forest fires. 

 The function of protecting privately owned forest property against 

 fire, it was prevailingly thought, should fall to the owner rather than 

 be undertaken at public expense; and to the extent that some means 

 was needed for organizing and leading collective effort to control fires 

 which threatened to spread widely, local wardens not tied in or at 

 most only tenuously tied in to the State Forester's office were supposed 

 sufficient. 



There was one striking exception to this. In the Northwest, 

 where yearly fires were doing great damage and enormous holdings of 

 private timber were being built up, the unprecedented fires of 1902 

 accelerated a movement to obtain organized protection. In Wash- 

 ington and Oregon this movement at first took shape along much the 

 same lines as in the East. The Oregon law of 1899, imposing on the 

 State's game officials the duty of acting as forest fire wardens, and the 

 Washington laws of 1903 and 1905 have been indicated above. In 

 1903 Governor Chamberlain vetoed, in Oregon, a law similar to that 

 passed in Washington during that year, on the ground "that it called 

 for a small appropriation." In 1905, however, Oregon passed a law 

 requiring the county courts to appoint as fire rangers the persons 

 named by one or more property owners desiring protection from fire. 

 The cost of the rangers was paid by these property owners. This 

 established the principle of fire protection maintained with the back- 

 ing of public authority but at the cost of those desiring it. 



Protection of his property by each individual timberland owner 

 was both unnecessarily costly and of limited value, since fires paid 

 no regard whatever to the invisible boundary lines between holdings. 

 To provide for joint systems of protection, western timberland owners 



