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The chief object of our new State Forest Service is the 

 protection of our forests from fire; the new idea is the pre- 

 vention of fires rather than the fighting of them after they 

 have started. The old law provided for the fighting of fires 

 that had already started, but did not make any provision for 

 measures looking toward the prevention of fires. A man 

 could be paid for the work he did in actually putting out a 

 forest fire, but he could not collect for the time he put in 

 looking up the cause of a column of smoke. The natural 

 consequence of such a law was that the fire wardens were 

 not willing to trust the old proverb that "Where there's a 

 smoke, there's a fire," but waited for some more conclusive 

 proof that their services were really needed. Result: twenty 

 men for two days fighting a fire that the warden could have 

 put out alone if he had been there in time; and an expense 

 to the State that would have more than paid for the warden's 

 full time for a month, not to mention the damage done to 

 the timber and the soil. 



The new law aims directly at the prevention of these 

 fires. If a fire does get a start the law provides for its 

 extinction, but every effort is made to catch it in its incip- 

 ient stage, or to prevent it entirely by the cleaning up of 

 dangerous brush around logging camps, highways and clear- 

 ings, by enforcing the use of spark arresters on locomotives,, 

 and by educating the people. 



Naturally, such a change in the law necessitated a change 

 in the field force. The only way to prevent fires was to 

 create a body of men whose sole business it was to watch 

 the forests continuously throughout the fire season for any- 

 thing that looked like a fire or anything that looked apt to 

 start a fire. 



The Forester decided that the only way to do this suc- 

 cessfully was to divide the forest section of the State into a 

 number of districts and put a competent man in charge of 

 each. Twenty districts were created. The number was lim- 

 ited by the size of the appropriation. It is clear that they 



