1921-22 DEPARTMENT OF LANDS AND FORESTS 275 



interests should be included under the one administrative head. For example,, 

 the administrative care of the provincial parks and of all minor forest products, 

 such as game and fisheries, would naturally find its place in this Department. 



Having created a separate Department of Forests, and appointed a Com- 

 missioner of Forests, who from a business standpoint will always mean the 

 business manager of the public forests, this business manager must be required 

 and permitted to manage the public forest business. That is to say, the public 

 which deals with the department must quickly learn that he is the real executive 

 officer, to carry out the policies, laws and regulations of the Department as en- 

 acted by the Legislature or ordered by the responsible Minister. 



It is high time that all the public having business with this great depart- 

 ment should understand th^t hard luck stories of sick wives and children, per- 

 sonal losses and interesting angles of local political situations and such, have 

 absolutely no place as a part of a business transaction having to do with the care 

 of the public forest lands or the sale of the public forest products. For many 

 years the harassing of the Minister and his secretary with personal and other 

 appeals in the settlement of simple business matters, fully covered by law and 

 departmental regulations, has wasted a vast deal of exceedingly valuable time, 

 and greatly hindered the regular functioning of the Department. 



IL — Sundry Other Matters. 



Should the Department be reorganized along the lines suggested, it may 

 safely be left to the forestry staff, in conjunction with the responsible Minister to 

 work out the further reorganization in the office and in the field. I shall, how- 

 ever, as you request, comment on some of those problems which my previous 

 connection with the Department and long acquantance with its work have con- 

 vinced me need special attention at this time. In this I have been greatly 

 helped by the information made available to the public by the Timber Com- 

 mission who have so long and carefully examined into the affairs of the Depart- 

 ment, and by the courtesy of the department officials who have assisted my 

 inquiry in every way possible. 



(1) Re Measuring Wood. 



The modern diversity of wood products has long since antiquated the 

 measurement of the main forest product — wood — by the Doyle rule, the Scribner 

 rule, Clark's international rule or any other product rule. The forest adminis- 

 tration of the Province sells wood, and it should not in the measurement of that 

 wood concern its mind with what the purchaser may do with it after he has 

 bought it and paid for it. The Province should sell its customers just so much 

 wood; so many cubic feet of wood; and let the buyer saw it into "feet board 

 measure" with a good or bad saw or a good or bad sawyer (getting, of course, 

 from the same sized logs various quantities of "feet board measure") ; or let him 

 pulp it, or burn it for fuel. Why, indeed, should the forest administration be 

 concerned if a customer should convert the wood, which is sold and paid for, 

 into sugar and eat it, or distil it for moonshine and drink it? 



The ridiculous side of using a product unit instead of a volume unit in mea- 

 suring wood has not been generally appreciated. This is no doubt due to the 

 fact that we can in time become accustomed to almost anything (we have used 

 the present product unit for over forty years), and perhaps more especially to the 

 circumstance that the evils of a product unit were of gradual development as 

 the methods of manufacture and the uses of wood gradually changed. Should 



