EDITORIAL 



FORESTRY AS A PROFESSION FOR YOUNG MEN IN THE UNITED STATES 



THE great war has brought home to our people a num- 

 ber of very interesting facts regarding the necessity 

 for and the extensive use of wood, and with this, the 

 importance of the forest and its proper care. Suddenly 

 we learn that wood is not merely useful as lumber, fuel, 

 telegraph poles and pulp wood for newspapers, but that 

 even in this age of steel and cement we want enormous 

 quantities of wood for ships and camps, for railways and 

 corduroy at the front, a hundred million feet or more of 

 high-grade spruce for airplanes. 



Beyond this, we find that wood is made into clothing, 

 bedding, fiber for fiber cases and shoe soles, in short, 

 that it may be converted into anything from paper collars 

 to carwheels. 



Even this does not exhaust the list, for the laboratory 

 now tells us that sugar, and drinkable alcohol, as well as 

 the old products of wood alcohol, wood vinegar, etc., can 

 be and are made and used in enormous quantities. 



War has taught us also the simple fact, well known to 

 foresters but apparently unknown to our statesmen, that 

 a country with its forestry work properly organized and 

 supported has 20 years' supply of timber constantly 

 stored up and ready for use. Forestry has saved Ger- 

 many in this period of need. 



The sudden war demands have called attention to the 

 fact that while mere brush and uncared for woods, such 

 as are now a great part of our eastern woodlands, may 

 help the landscape in looks, and may be good hunting 

 ground, they are not forest, and are of little use now 

 when the United States needs one hundred and fifty mil- 

 lion feet of select spruce for flying machines. 



The nation has been stirred up in the last six months 

 regarding the importance of using our soil to its full ca- 

 pacity, and we are discovering that the choice of the 

 right crop is foremost in this work, and also that on hun- 

 dreds of millions of acres the right and only crop is the 

 forest crop. 



Our people realize now as never before that the food, 

 clothing and housing materials are products of the soil, 

 that they need land, labor and time for their production, 

 and especially that the forest crop needs a long time 

 that the spruce planted today requires a century and more 

 to make fit stock for airplanes. 



It is beginning to dawn on some of the people in power 

 that this care of one of the great crops of the world, the 

 care and planning for properties for a century hence, re- 

 quires a little more than a mere wood chopper, and that 

 certainly it requires policies which have some show of 

 continuance. 



What great field this offers for the young men choosinsj 



a profession. Today we have a consumption, in peace 

 times, of over forty billion feet of lumber alone ; a for- 

 est area of about five hundred million acres, or more than 

 16 times the State of New York, and a population over 

 one hundred million, and rapidly growing in numbers 

 and in wealth and in its demands on the forest. And the 

 care of this empire, the production of this yearly timber 

 crop for the greatest people of the earth speaking one 

 language, this great task is the work of the American 

 forester. 



A fine beginning has been made. Thirty years ago 

 forestry was not yet in our dictionary ; there was not a 

 forester in the land with an acre of woods or a log of 

 timber to sell. Today the Forester of the United States 

 cares for over one hundred and forty million acres, an 

 area larger than the combined area of all the forests of 

 the German Empire; and today the Forester offers tim- 

 ber for sale in quantities of over five hundred million feet, 

 and is in position to offer more than any other person in 

 the world. 



A number of schools have begun to prepare men for 

 this work, but so far the supply of real foresters is in no 

 proportion to the task before the profession. 



In Germany a forester cares for about 10,000 acres of 

 forest and usually has two to four assistants. On this 

 scale we would need a body of 50,000 foresters and about 

 200,000 assistants, besides a large body of specially 

 trained labor, to care for our woods as they should be 

 cared for. Today not the hundredth part of this number 

 of available men exists in our country. 



The American way is not to run after the salesman 

 the man who has his labor or his goods to offer must hus- 

 tle and prove his worth. 



It is a safe estimate that 10,000 good, capable, honest 

 and industrious men can find employment in the forest 

 work just as fast as they really hustle and prove that they 

 are worth having. And 5,000 more of stronger men can 

 force their way into the forest business and acquire for- 

 est property and be their own foresters. 



In Central Europe the forester is an educated, respect- 

 able and respected man, a power in his community, use- 

 ful in times of peace and exceptionally useful and effi- 

 cient in time of war. 



In the United States the young forester (for so far 

 there are practically no others) has already made a fine 

 reputation for himself. He has established a real admin- 

 istration over millions of acres of forest, over billions of 

 dollars worth of property ; he has surveyed millions of 

 acres, built hundreds of miles of roads, trails and tele- 

 phone lines. He has not only organized a fine protec- 

 tion for public forests, but has done this also for private 



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