710 



Yearbook, of Agriculture 1949 



Forestry, but he stayed only a year and 

 then left to head the forestry school 

 that was being established at the Uni- 

 versity of Michigan. 



Meanwhile, Dr. Fernow had left the 

 Government service in 1898 to organ- 

 size the school of forestry at Cornell. 

 The only other systematic instruction 

 in forestry at that time was the ele- 

 mentary instruction given at some 20 

 land-grant colleges and the short 

 course offered at Biltmore, N. G., by 

 G. A. Schenck, a German forester. 



Gifford Pinchot succeeded Fernow 

 as Chief of the Division of Forestry in 

 1898. He undertook to introduce bet- 

 ter forestry methods into the opera- 

 tions of the private owners, large and 

 small, by helping them make working 

 plans and by demonstrating good prac- 

 tices on the ground. There were then 

 only two technical foresters and nine 

 other employees on the staff of the Di- 

 vision, and probably fewer than a dozen 

 foresters in the country. Accordingly, 

 a start toward building up a profes- 

 sion was made by recruiting student 

 assistants who had an inclination and 

 aptitude for forestry and who would 

 supplement academic work with field 

 experience in the Division. In order to 

 provide a high grade of forest training 

 suited to American conditions, the 

 Pinchot family provided an endow- 

 ment for a 2-year postgraduate school 

 at Yale University. H. S. Graves and 

 J. W. Tourney were released from the 

 Division in 1900 to start the school. In 

 the fall of 1900, the Cornell school had 

 24 students, Biltmore 9, and Yale 7. 

 (In 1946 there were some 6,000 Ameri- 

 can-trained professional foresters. ) 

 During the next few years schools or 

 departments of forestry were organized 

 at the University of Michigan, Har- 

 vard, University of Nebraska, Mont 

 Alto, Pa., Pennsylvania State College, 

 and elsewhere. 



In 1900, under Pinchot' s leadership, 

 the Society of American Foresters was 

 founded. It had seven charter mem- 

 bers. The objects of this professional 

 society are: "To further the cause of 

 forestry in America by fostering a 



spirit of comradeship among foresters ; 

 by creating opportunities for a free 

 interchange of views upon forestry and 

 allied subjects; and by disseminating 

 a knowledge of the purpose and 

 achievements of forestry." 



In 1901 the newly christened Bu- 

 reau of Forestry was given broader 

 authority to make working plans for 

 private owners, and much larger ap- 

 propriations than had been available 

 to the Division. The forest-products 

 research that had been stopped shortly 

 before Fernow left was resumed, along 

 much the same lines as before. In 

 1910 the products work was centered 

 at the Forest Products Laboratory, 

 operated in cooperation with the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin at Madison. In 

 1902 the earlier experimental planting 

 in the Nebraska Sand Hills was fol- 

 lowed up by reservation of part of the 

 area and planting on a fair scale. 



The unsatisfactory situation in 

 which the Federal forest reserves were 

 administered, in a different depart- 

 ment from that in which the Govern- 

 ment's technical forestry work had 

 been established, rapidly became a ma- 

 jor issue. Theodore Roosevelt's first 

 message to Congress in 1901 and the 

 report of a commission on the organi- 

 zation of Government scientific work 

 in 1903 reiterated earlier proposals 

 that all responsibility for the reserves 

 be transferred to the Department of 

 Agriculture. Secretary of the Interior 

 Hitchcock also supported the proposal. 

 Finally, a special American Forestry 

 Congress met in Washington in Janu- 

 ary 1905 for the specific purpose of 

 bringing about the transfer. The meet- 

 ing was sponsored by the Secretary of 

 Agriculture, the heads of the Geologi- 

 cal Survey, Reclamation Service, and 

 General Land Office, the president of 

 the National Lumber Manufacturers' 

 Association, the presidents of the Na- 

 tional Livestock and National Wool- 

 growers' Associations, the presidents of 

 the Union Pacific and Great Northern 

 Railroads, and the head of the Weyer- 

 haeuser lumber companies. The reso- 

 lutions adopted by the gathering no 



