quately provide against the exhaustion of the work- 

 ing powers which must inevitably take place in time, 

 and entail sacrifices from which employment is free," 

 Colonel Graves wrote, "the only course consistent 

 alike with self-respect and a regard for the public in- 

 teivsts seems to me to be retirement from office be- 

 fore efficiency has been impaired. 



"Present conditions, which amount to a heavy re- 

 duction in the rate of compensation in practically 

 every branch of the Government service, emphasize 

 this point of view." 



Important Work He Headed. 



During the ten years tof Colonel Graves' administra- 

 tion of the Forest Service great strides have been 

 made in national forestry. The system of operating 

 the public forests has been greatly improved and de- 

 veloped, both in business methods and in the appli- 

 cation of technical forestry to the problems of manage- 

 ment, while marked opposition to them has been trans- 

 formed to general support. 



Their use by the public has been vastly increased. 

 Individual timber sale transactions have risen from 

 5.398 to over 12,500 annually, and the timber cut from 

 379 million to 705 million board feet. The grazing 

 permittees have increased from .25,687 to 39,152: the 

 number of stock grazed under permit from 9.140,000 

 to 10,230,000, and the annual receipts of the forests 

 from $2,090,148 to $4,358,414. 



A gigantic task of land classification has been near- 

 ly completed. This segregates and opens to settlement 

 agricultural lands while insuring that the real forest 



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