NATIONAL CONSERVATION AND WATER POWERS 



985 



itself in the best possible condition, and insure the great- 

 est benefit to the public, but at the same time induce capi- 

 tal to venture on large and prolonged investments which 

 are entirely dependent on the guarantees given in such 

 contracts, and on the interpretation placed upon their 

 enforcement by public officials. Under the old order of 

 political appointees, incompetent and often unscrupulous, 

 the answer would be an emphatic negative. The new 

 wine of public responsibility and efficiency would crack 

 the old bottles and the eflfort would come to naught. 



The solution of this problem was the creation of a new 

 national service, for the direct purpose of coping with 

 these new responsibilities and 

 proving to the country that as a 

 nation we were not incapable of 

 rising to our opportunities. The 

 best example of this is the For- 

 est Service, in the Department 

 of Agriculture, which was grad- 

 ually built up partly by rigid 

 competitive examinations in 

 technical forestry, which re- 

 quired for passage the equiva- 

 lent of five years of college 

 training, and partly by appoint- 

 ment of local men as forest ran- 

 gers on the basis of merit and 

 examinations. A widespread 

 system of forest schools sprang 

 up, located in Washington, Cali- 

 fornia, Idaho, Montana, Colo- 

 rado and in eastern states, the 

 graduates of which sought em- 

 ployment in this branch of the 

 government service. The Yale 

 Forest School alone has gradu- 

 ated over three hundred men, a 

 large majority of whom are or 

 have been employed in this na- 

 tional work. The writer desires to add that of this entire 

 number, with most of whom he is personally acquainted, 

 he has yet to hear of a single instance of dishonesty or 

 favoritism in their administration of the national pos- 

 sessions. 



Many of these men have now had ten to fifteen years 

 of continuous experience with the problems of public 

 business, complex and diversified, which have presented 

 themselves for solution during the development of the 

 system of co-operative use of timber and other resources. 

 In the ten years since 1905 the service has effected a 

 complete change in the attitude toward the national for- 

 est administration of that portion of the public in the 

 western states who have had occasion to use these re- 

 sources, and who would be the first to criticize an unjust 

 and unefficient system. They have established a reputa- 

 tion for honesty, impartiality and efficiency which goes 

 far towards the final solution of even the most compli- 

 cated questions of procedure. The result is that while 

 the champions of private ownership have waged continu- 

 ous warfare upon public reservations and have tried in 



every possible way to break down the system and to 

 demonstrate its failure, the spirit of efficiency and emu- 

 lation developed in the Forest Service has triumphantly 

 solved the big problems of public administration in the 

 face of and even aided by this opposition. 



This is best illustrated by the timber sales policy of 

 the Service. Lumbermen were at first bitterly hostile to 

 the withdrawal of the timberlands, for timber was the 

 raw material of their business, and its ownership in large 

 quantities was the guarantee upon which rested the 

 security for its continuance. The idea of being forced 

 to purchase stumpage from the government, and to com- 



HAUSER LAKE PLANT OF THE MONTANA POWER COMPANY 



This plant, on the upper Missouri River near Helena, Mont., is one of six developments operated by this 

 company on the Madison and Missouri rivers, of which one is operating under a Forest Service 

 permit and two under permits from the Interior Department. The power developed at the plants 

 of the Montana Power Company and associated companies supplies the general market throughout 

 central and western Montana and is used principally in mining operations. It will be used to 

 operate the trains of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul R. R. as soon as installation of the neces- 

 sary equipment along the line of the railway is completed. 



ply with new, costly and untried regulations, which com- 

 pelled them to burn slash, leave part of the stand, and 

 protect this residue from damage during logging, was 

 ofifensive and aroused much indignation. But the opera- 

 tors have found that they could do all these things. The 

 period of experimentation is past. Mistakes, due t-o 

 inexperience, have been remedied. Today contracts are 

 in force for billions of feet of timber, in which the 

 operators are entirely dependent on the government for 

 stumpage. The annual revenue from timber sales totals 

 over $1,300,000, and the lumbermen of the west are 

 practically united in support of the principle of national 

 retention of the residue of publicly owned timber lands. 

 The principle of co-operative use of national timber has 

 stood the acid test of actual application. 



In the use of the grazing lands included within national 

 forests, an even more satisfactory development of busi- 

 ness customs and regulations has occurred. Based on 

 the principle of allotting the government range to those 

 most entitled to it, and to the homesteader and resident 

 in preference to the owner of large migratory flocks, the 



