10 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The National Forests and the Forest Service. 



By Judge D. C. Beaman, Denver, Colo. 



[Continued from October number.] 



If he would confine the Forestry Bureau to its 

 legitimate purposes, as does the Weather Bureau, it 

 would be as popular and valuable to the people as the 

 latter. 



The outrages perpetrated by subordinates in hun- 

 dreds of cases, are by him excused because he cannot, 

 at the prices he pays, always get good men. A sufficient 

 answer to that is, that it is better to have no men than 

 to have bad men. 



It is unfortunate indeed that any good work that 

 Mr. Pinchot has done, and might continue to do, has 

 been so overshadowed by unwise administration, and 

 regulations wholly unnecessary to the protection of the 

 forests, as to cause political parties to make it an issue 

 in their platforms. 



It has been often stated in newspapers which are 

 blind supporters of the forest policy, that it is in perfect 

 harmony with the wishes of a vast majority of the people 

 concerned; that as rapidly as possible Mr. Pinchot cor- 

 rects all grounds for complaints arising from vexatious 

 and disagreeable acts of over-officious subordinates, and 

 that a man who has a real grievance should communicate 

 with him so as to enable him to correct it. 



This is a subject which neither the personal experi- 

 ence nor observation of most of these editors fit them to 

 discuss their forest experience having been chiefly ac- 

 quired in the potted forests in the palm rooms of the 

 metropolitan hotels and city clubs and in doing so they 

 utterly ignore facts that have been proven beyond dis-. 

 pute. They are evidently based on statements of the 

 self-laudatory bulletins put forth by the Forest Press 

 Bureau, and sent broadcast over the country and re- 

 printed in these papers as original editorials or corre- 

 spondence. 



The complaints of the people are not so much be- 

 cause the forest employes obstruct the homesteader and 

 the miner, as because the rules governing forests compel 

 them to do so. Mr. Pinchot is the chief offender, and 

 instead of his policy being in harmony with the wishes 

 of those chiefly concerned, the very opposite is true. 

 There is, and has been for several years, a hostility 

 thereto constantly growing in intensity, which has only 

 been restrained because the power of the government is 

 behind the policy, and those who are the sufferers are 

 helpless to secure justice. 



No policy of recent years has done so much to 

 alienate the friends of the government as the mistaken 

 policy of. the Forest Service in these respects, and if any 

 of the mountain states shall go democratic this fall, it 

 will be chiefly for that reason. If a state government 

 had treated its people in such a manner, it would have 

 been ousted at the next election. 



It is supremely silly to make the assertion that the 

 people generally are satisfied, when the recent platforms 

 of the Democratic Party, National as well as in Colo- 

 rado, declare to the contrary, and the Republican plat- 

 forms of Colorado and New Mexico are of like effect. 

 It will not answer this to say that the Republican plat- 

 form in Colorado does not directly condemn the policy. 

 It favors an administration of forests "which will not 

 retard our natural growth and development," and de- 



clares that the national government is not familiar with 

 actual conditions. This is not an approval, but by 

 strongest implication an affirmation that the present 

 administration does retard growth and development, and ' 

 a condemnation of it by the Republicans of Colorado. 



It is equally useless for a man to attempt to com- 

 municate with Mr. Pinchot for any relief. The com- 

 munication will probably never reach him, but if it does, 

 it will do him no good. 



Not content with discussing forest questions, and 

 boosting itself, the Bureau has a bunch of experts em- 

 ployed in advising those who live near the habitats of 

 wild animals, as to their habits. 



The profound knowledge which is put forth in 

 some of these bulletins, telling us how to conserve our 

 resources and save the nation, is simply wonderful. In 

 a recent one it was seriously stated that "a good way to 

 exterminate wolves is to find the dens and kill the young 

 ones." This method has been known to pioneers lor 

 some time, although some of them think that to kill the 

 old ones before breeding time is quite as effectual. 



One of the very latest is on prairie dogs. The 

 Forest Service has recently discovered that poison will 

 kill them if administered internally not hypodermic- 

 ally. It is scientifically estimated that 256 prairie dogs 

 of average appetite will eat as much grass as one cow; 

 that proper soil will yeild about twenty-five and one- 

 half dogs to the acre (this is probably half a dog too 

 much), and that there are in Texas enough dogs to eat 

 as much grass as 1,000,000 cows. This dog-goned slap 

 at Kansas, so long the banner prairie dog state, seems 

 uncalled for. 



It would seem that the time and talent of the 

 Bureau might better be employed in correcting abuses 

 and vicious rules than in compiling prairie dog statistics, 

 so long at least as these dogs do not inhabit the forests 

 or eat the timber. 



Besides the numerous other calamities which Mr. 

 Pinchot warns us about in his hysterical moments, is 

 that a billion of tons of our soil is going into the streams 

 and ocean annually. Where the data is obtained for 

 this estimate of tonnage we are not advised, probably 

 from the catfiesh, which should know most about it. 



Has Mr. Pinchot forgotten, or would it have dulled 

 his point to have also stated, that ever since the earth 

 cooled off, disintegration of the rocks and erosion has 

 been going on, and that the amount of soil has been 

 constantly increasing; that the wash and erosion into 

 the Mississippi river has formed much of the two great 

 states at its mouth, and that all the plains country of 

 the West was made from the rocks of the mountains ? 



There are, no doubt, some regions where soil erosion 

 has rendered a few acres of land almost, or quite, 

 valueless, but it is equally unquestionable, notwithstand- 

 ing these isolated cases, so vividly photographed and 

 emphasized in the bulletins and magazine articles of the 

 Forest Service, that as the rocks disintegrate the pro- 

 portion of arable soil increases until the soil area now 

 comprises more than 90 per cent of the land. 



This he proposes to remedy by preserving the 

 forests in the mountains, and, therefore, according to 



