Part of National Forest Revenue For Roads and Schools of 



States. 



The bill makes the usual provision that 25 per cent of the 

 gross revenues derived from national forests, shall be turned 

 over to the states where the forests are located, to be applied 

 to the road and school funds. The new law also provides 

 that an additional 10 per cent shall be expended for con- 

 struction and maintenance of roads and trails. The Secre- 

 tary of Agriculture is authorized to co-operate or aid any 

 state wherein lies a national forest, in the furtherance of any 

 system of highways by which the forests will be benefitted. 



Gifford Pinchot, former chief forester for the federal gov- 

 ernment, has this to say about the appropriation bill: 



Appropriation Had Been Cut More Than $1,000,000 By the 



House. 



"The House reduced the appropriation of the Forest Service 

 by more than one million dollars. This money was needed 

 to protect the forests, hire men to fight forest fires, and build 

 telephone lines, bridges, roads, and trails needed to bring 

 them quickly to the line of fire. The reduction was made in 

 the face of the record of 1910, when seventy-nine fire fighters 

 and twenty-five settlers were burned to death in the national 

 forests, and twelve million dollars worth of timber was de- 

 stroyed, and with full knowledge that the national forests, 

 which contain about two billion dollars worth of public prop- 

 erty, are in grave danger of even greater losses. When the 

 country learned the facts, public indignation was aroused 

 over the needless risk of lives and property entailed by this 

 indifference to the public welfare, and a small fraction of 

 the money the House cut off was finally restored. This harm 

 was done under the guise of the much advertised effort to 

 save millions of dollars to the taxpayers. Yet in the end no 

 economy appeared, for this is a billion dollar session, like 

 the last. 



"But that was not all. The reduced appropriation was not 

 passed until nearly two months after it was due, so that the 

 appropriations of the previous year had twice to be extended 

 a month at a time, and the uncertainty and delay became as 

 costly and injurious as the actual reduction in funds." 



7 



