money and the result is often that the $2 

 tempts men to have fires. 



b. The county authorities are not required 

 by law and therefore do not enforce the law, 

 although logically they should be the very 

 people to do it. This has led the people in 

 the cities, village and county seats to take the 

 whole matter of fires as one of no concern to 

 them. 



c. The State under the present law: 



1. The State Fire Warden and deputies have 

 not used the power vested in them; they have 

 not organized their work nor made any effort 

 to call for extra authority on the claims of 

 emergency; they have treated their duty as 

 fire wardens as one which was forced upon 

 them and they did not need to carry it out. 

 The law does not compel them to, and there- 

 fore they did not call out the citizens all over 

 the northern counties, as they really have a 

 power to do. 



2. The power of the State Warden and his 

 deputies is crippled by restrictions of the law 

 limiting the allowable expense to $50 per town. 

 (That the fire wardens could have called out 

 the people regardless of this limit is probable, 

 but was not even attempted.) 



d. The laws concerning forest property and 

 farm property as well are too lax. They allow: 



1. General trespass at any time of the year, 

 including camping, hunting, berrying, etc. 



2. This is especially so in large forest tracts 

 where the danger is the greatest. 



3. Smoking anywhere and at any time re- 

 gardless of danger. 



4. Backfiring to the point of burning under 

 pretense of backfiring. 



5. Persons setting fires are not convicted; 

 the prejudiced juries as well as the demands 

 for evidence making it practically impossible 



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