Federal Forest Policy. 489 



Service is developing under the paternalistic and 

 socialistic tendencies referred to before, which may 

 ultimately lead to the purchase and federal control 

 of forest reserves in the Eastern States. Such ex- 

 pansion, was, indeed, proposed in the establishment of 

 reserves in the White Mountains and the Southern 

 Appalachians, propositions which have been resisted 

 by Congress for the last seven years, but with ever 

 weakening resistance. Finally in 1910, success was 

 attained, and the federal government placed in po- 

 sition to acquire these forest areas, to the amount of 

 $10,000,000. 



Meanwhile the single states have begun to develop 

 their own policies. 



Outside of legislation aiming at protection against 

 forest fires which nearly every State possessed from 

 early times, ineffective for lack of machinery to carry 

 it into effect and outside of the futile attempts to en- 

 courage timber planting referred to, no interest in 

 timberlands was evinced by State authorities for the 

 first two-thirds of the century, since practically all 

 these lands had been disposed of to private owners, and 

 the authorities did not see any further duties regarding 

 them. 



The first State to institute a commission of inquiry 

 was Wisconsin, in 1867; but with the rendering of the 

 report, prepared by I. A. Lapham, one of the active 

 early propagandists the matter was allowed to ma- 

 ture for thirty years. 



The next State to move, in a feeble way, in 1876, 

 was Minnesota, the legislature making an annual 

 grant of money to its forestry association. 



