1901.] DISCUSSION-. 21 



to me that that is just the trouble. It is so discouraging I do 

 not think very many will take up the business. I should 

 judge that that would apply also to setting out forests. There 

 would be great danger from fire, and not much encourage- 

 ment for anybody to go into it. 



Dr. ROTHROCK. There are a good many in Pennsylvania 

 who are taking it up on a very extensive scale. We have 

 many lumbermen that have got young forests that they are 

 protecting, ten, fifteen, and twenty years old, and they are 

 protecting it by fire breaks running around the tracts so that 

 the fire cannot spread from one tract to another. We pro- 

 pose to have a force of forest guards and we are going to 

 make an attempt on the line of what I believe the United 

 States has done. W T hen you think of it in this country, for 

 the past one hundred years, many men have believed that 

 they had a divine right to burn forests, and it is hardly ever 

 that men have been punished for it. Under such circumstances 

 what can you expect? The fact is such men have got to be 

 apprehended and tried, and then the evil will stop; that is 

 all that is needed. They have got to be given to understand 

 that they have no such divine right. They have got to be 

 made to feel the hand of the law upon them. There has been 

 too much of that sort of thing, too much for the public good. 

 I am myself $5,000 poorer because of a forest fire on my own 

 lands. Until the public sentiment is aroused so that it will 

 not stand that sort of thing any longer, it is difficult to abate 

 it. But that is a part of my work. I propose to take every 

 opportunity to arouse public sentiment. In this case where 

 my property was burned I went to the county commissioners 

 and told them that I paid taxes for protection, and requested 

 them to bring the culprit to justice, but they told me that they 

 could not find the man. I went around the lumber camps and 

 paid detectives, and did it myself because our county officers 

 do not wish to incur the hostility of these pests of our country. 

 I have had some interesting experiences in this line, and pro- 



