702 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



you left would never be wanted ? 

 Were you so thoughtless as to think 

 worthless to-day always worthless? 

 You could not have hoped to make pas- 

 ture, for you must have known the soil 

 would burn before those tops. You 

 could not have thought it would pro- 

 tect you from fire in the dry season, for 

 you know the second, not the first, is 

 the fierce and dangerous fire the one 

 that comes after the leaves are gone 

 and the sun has had a chance. 



If you burned that claim the truth is 

 you burned it because your father and 

 grandfather did so, for the fire on our 

 western slope has crossed the conti- 

 nent - - never out when weather per- 

 mitted. It has come to be a tradition 

 among loggers that they must "burn 

 or be burned," and beyond that they 

 have not given the question thought. 

 They fight brush and tops while log- 

 ging the land, and it is with a quiet 

 chuckle they apply a match and get 

 even when the logs are off. 



The first fire burns only the leaves 

 and a few twigs that would have been 

 food for the new forest ; that and the 

 young trees waiting for sunlight ; that 

 and some seeds on the fallen tops. But 

 the second fire, often springing from 

 smoldering roots, takes seed and soil 

 and leaves all a desolate waste. 



I gave you an illustration of a cutting 

 where no fire had run. Two miles from 

 that location there are four sections cut 

 about the same time, and burned "when 

 safe," as the loggers say. Purposely 

 burned, think of it ! Deliberately 

 burned ! A clear case of grand larceny, 

 lacking only the law. An example of 

 the lumberman's criirc of the age. And 

 to-day there is no living thing there and 

 no soil. Fires deliberately set on those 

 lands have destroyed what to-day would 

 have been worth hundreds of thousands 

 of dollars. 



Had the first fire been kept out of all 

 our choppings all fir and cedar timber 

 left in the woods would still be pre- 

 served, and from this on, if the first 

 fires are kept out of our choppings, 

 what is not now wanted can be saved 

 for future use, and the growth of our 



young timber will yet furnish a large 

 percent of future needs. 



To those who say the first fires can't 

 be kept out (and there are many) we 

 answer the word "can't" and the phrase 

 "can not" are obsolete and no longer 

 admissible among Americans. Instead 

 we substitute the phrase "Will it pay?" 

 And again I answer, a man by night 

 and a man by day on each corner of 

 every section of old choppings for six 

 months each year would leave a fine 

 margin of profit and a new crop to 

 spare. 



Cut trails, increase the number of 

 our fire wardens, give them motor- 

 cycles, build them watch towers, con- 

 nect them by telephones, set mathemat- 

 ical instruments with which to define 

 the location of the first whiff of smoke. 

 Inspire the people with as healthy a 

 dread of setting a fire in the country 

 as they have of setting a fire in the city. 

 Take the idea out of the lumbermen's 

 heads that "it is only an old chopping." 

 Many a lumberman has remarked this 

 fall, "the fires did no great damage, 

 they burned mostly in old choppings." 

 Of the two never mind the green tim- 

 ber. If that burns it can be cut and 

 sawed, but guard and protect the old 

 choppings, nature's cold storage and na- 

 ture's new nursery, where she is trying 

 to replace man's depredations. And, 

 first of all, stop railroad locomotives 

 from emitting sparks. Nothing can be 

 done that will save our timber until the 

 railroads are prevented from burning 

 their greatest source of future revenue. 

 They are responsible for nearlv all the 

 forest fires to-dav. Along their routes, 

 go where you will, except oil is burned, 

 vou will find on each side onlv ashes and 

 brands, and if there is anything left to 

 burn and conditions are right you will 

 see it spring into flames as you pass. 



The object of this paper is to show 

 the crime, not the remedy. Study the 

 work New York is doing in the Adiron- 

 dacks, and the results obtained by Eu- 

 ropean methods, and the methods adopt- 

 ed by some of our other states, and take 

 a fearful lesson from the shocking re- 

 sults of our methods as they show for 

 themselves in Minnesota, Michigan and 



