CHAPTER II 



IN AMERICA 



SECTION ONE 



EARLY BEGINNINGS * 



Working plans are almost coincident with the beginnings of 

 American forestry. Before the control of the national forests 

 passed over to the Forest Service of the Department of Agri- 

 culture in 1905, the then Bureau of Forestry, through its offer 

 of cooperation with private owners, prepared many working 

 plans for timber tracts in the Eastern and Southern States. 

 Since these plans were for very irregular, extensive conditions 

 and were generally intended for execution by la}Tnen who had 

 little or no conception of the purposes of forest management, 

 it was inevitable that they exceeded the confines of mere forest 

 organization and often consisted chiefly of elaborate forest 

 descriptions and estimates, emphasizing the sil\ical character- 

 istics of the more important species, of logging methods and rules 

 to prevent waste. x-Vctual calculation of the cut was con- 

 fined to a rather crude diameter-lunit method which emphasized 

 the possible periods of return for an equal or approximately 

 equal cut. Little or no attempt was made to distribute the 

 cut according to the needs of the individual stands: the regu- 

 lation was by volume alone. 



As working plans these were, probably, with rare exceptions, 

 failures; for no plan can hope to five that is made from the 



* See " Working Plans: Past History, Present Situation, and Future Develop- 

 ment," by Barrington Moore, Proc. See. Am. Fsters., Vol. X, No. 3, pp. 217-258, 

 especially pp. 220 to 224. 



226 



