COOPERATION WITH STATE IN FIRE PATROL 383 



both by the Forest Service and the Geological Survey, can be purchased 

 before the end of the fiscal year, although two members of the Commission 

 are personally examining them and the Commission voted to meet the 2Gth day 

 of June before the close of the fiscal year. 



Were it possible to buy the two tracts named above, only a very small 

 portion of the two million dollars could be used. The remainder of that 

 appropriation, so far as this Congress is concerned, is lost to the Commission. 

 The next Congress may vote to make the unused portion in the Treasury 

 payable to the Commission at some future time. 



The purpose of the Weeks bill, which became a law March 4, 1911, has 

 been frustrated. The Director of the Geological Survey may find himself in 

 the disagreeable position of having to answer to the people of the country for 

 what he has failed to do and what he has prevented others from doing. 



COOPERATION WITH STATES IN FIRE PATROL 



By J. G. PETERS, 



Chief of State Cooperation, United States Forest Service. 



^^=::^HE first tangible results of the Weeks law came on June second, when 

 ^ J the Secretary of Agriculture and the president of the New Hampshire 

 ^^^ Forestry Commission placed their signatures to a cooperative agree- 

 ment for protecting the forests of the state from fire. The Secretary's repre- 

 sentative in putting this agreement into effect is the Forest Service. 



The section of the Weeks law, which authorizes such cooperation, carries 

 an appropriation of $200,000 to enable the Secretary of Agriculture to coope- 

 rate with the states in protecting from fire the forested watersheds of navi- 

 gable streams. The Secretary is authorized to cooperate in the organization 

 and maintenance of a system of fire protection on private or state forest lands 

 situated upon such watersheds. The states in order to receive federal assist- 

 ance of this sort must have provided by law for a system of forest fire pro- 

 tection, and must have appropriated funds for the system. The federal 

 government can not expend in any state an amount to exceed that expended 

 by the state. 



New Hampshire, among other states, requested cooperation under this 

 section of the Weeks law. The state had fulfilled all the requirements of the 

 law. It had a system of forest fire protection ; it had made an appropriation 

 for such protection; and it proposed to expend an amount equal at least to 

 that requested of the federal government for i)rotection on the forested water- 

 sheds of its navigable streams. The state requested a federal allotment of 

 $7,700. It was approved for |7,200. This amount will provide the services 

 of 24 forest patrolmen at |2 a day from June 1 to October 31. The state, 

 on its part, will expend at least this much, perhaps twice as much, in the 

 salaries of patrolmen, the construction and maintenance of lookout stations 

 and telephone lines, the fighting of forest fires and the like. Although the 

 expenditures of the state, which are to offset those of the federal government, 

 may properly be for various purposes of protection, the expenditures of the 

 federal government are to be exclusively for the employment of patrolmen, 

 including men assigned to lookout duty, railroad patrol, and so on. This is 

 advisable in order to simplify the fiscal operation of the cooperative agreement 



