FOREST FIRES IN NORTH AMERICA 



A GERMAN VIEW 



By Professor Dr. E. Deckert, Frankfort. 

 Translated Bt Gioeoe Wetmoie Coixes. 



(This article is condensed from the essays of the author in Nos. 241 and 243 of 

 Franlifurter Zeitung. It is valuable as showing the view of a trained German observer 

 who has traveled extensively through our American forests. Naturally there are minor 

 errors of fact, which it does not seem necessary to correct as it is the general viewpoint 

 that is of value. Editor.) 



OEVASTATING conflagrations of an extent elsewhere unheard of have 

 always been the order of the day in the United States. From time 

 to time they have swept Boston, Chicago, Baltimore and San Francisco. 

 Forest fires also have always occurred in the domain of the Union far more 

 frequently and have been more devastating than in any of the countries of 

 Europe, and in numerous cases have raged over many thousand acres, continu- 

 ing for weeks and even months, until they have been brought to an end in one 

 way or another. Human measures for confining and extinguishing them, such 

 as ditches, earth-walls and back-fires have met with success only in rare cases ; 

 in the majority of fires it was rather the greater natural boundaries, such as 

 broad streams and lakes, bare rock and sand-wastes, or heavy precipitation 

 of snow and rain, which put an end to the fire. Burning limbs have been 

 quite frequently borne over considerable obstacles, even over streams three 

 hundred feet in width, so that the fire continued on the other side. 



The damage which the natural resources of the United States have suffered 

 from forest fires has long been known to be colossal, but to state it in exact 

 figures, in a country in which lumbering, until the present, has almost always 

 been carried on in the most extensive and wasteful manner, is extremelv 

 diflScult, if not impossible. Moreover, the causes of the fires, the manner and 

 reasons for their propagation and the possibility of effectually fighting them, 

 have long been a matter of doubt and dispute, so that the most contradictory 

 and absurd views on these points have obtained currency. In American 

 lumbering circles the conviction began to grow in the eighties that the first 

 cause of the evil was bad American customs and want of conscientiousness, 

 and that the "ghost of the American forests" could be laid if a change in this 

 respect were brought about. 



The first effort to determine the number and extent of forest fires for the 

 different sections of the country and hence the most necessary foundation for 

 the proper diagnosis of the root of the evil was made by the well-known 

 American economist, Francis A. Walker, who took advantage of the United 

 States census figures of 1880. He found from the incomplete reports which 

 he collected that in the year 1880 there had been 2,580 fires, and about 



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