1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



he cannot afford to ignore its principles. 

 Frequently enough he is ready, both as a 

 business man and as a citizen, to substitute 

 economic for wasteful exploitation ; all he 

 is waiting for is the requisite knowledge 

 and the encouraging example. After prac- 

 tice has established theory, he is generally 

 eager, when economic conditions permit, 

 to learn and to apply the principles of 

 conservative management. 



These observations will perhaps help to 

 explain the course of forest legislation in 

 our country, which, because of the exist- 

 ence of conditions such as those indicated, 

 has had of necessity to be tentative and 

 empiric. Forest law in the United States 

 has taken a number of forms, which may 

 be conveniently classified as follows : (<?) 

 Federal and State protective laws against 

 theft and against injury by fire; () Fed- 

 eral and state laws in encouragement of 

 tree planting; (c) Federal laws governing 

 the disposal of public timber and of 

 public lands bearing timber; (</) Federal 

 and State laws establishing and regulating 

 forest reserves ; (e} Federal and State 

 laws creating commissioners or bureaus of 

 statistical inquiry. 



The present paper deals with the earlv 

 State laws and with the Federal laws 

 down to the year 1891. 



II. THE EARI/V SETTLERS AND THE 

 FORESTS. 



The first colonists imported from home 

 some appreciation of the value of trees and 

 in the new country enacted for their pro- 

 tection laws which have an ancestry 

 abroad. The colonies of Massachusetts, 

 New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, 

 especially, made speedy provision against 

 the wasteful use of trees and against fire. 

 The value of Pine timber for the masts 

 and spars of ships and for naval stores- 

 pitch, tar, turpentine and rosin was par- 

 ticularly recognized by the loyal and en- 

 ergetic Earl of Bellomont, governor of 

 New York, in the last decade of the seven- 

 teenth century ; and a provision against 

 fire from the burning of clearings became 

 a law in Massachusetts as early as 1631. 

 In 179! New York passed the first law 

 enacted in this country for the encourage- 



ment of tree planting, providing a bounty 

 for the successful cultivator of Mulberry 

 trees. This was done through the influ- 

 ence of the New York Society for the Pro- 

 motion of Agriculture, Arts and Manu- 

 factures, and in 1795 a committee of this 

 society made a report upon the best ways 

 of growing useful trees. Through Lord 

 Bellomont's efforts New York passed also 

 an act restricting the cutting of Pine tim- 

 ber fit for masts. 



Such laws were, however, of foreign 

 pattern, and though many of them, the 

 forest fire regulations in particular, were 

 retained upon the State statute books after 

 the formation of the Union, they were but 

 ill adapted to our conditions. The same 

 is true of the forest fire laws which States 

 early enacted. Though still to be found 

 in the statute books of nearly all the States, 

 these laws have become dead letters and 

 they now possess little more than historic 

 value. This is chiefly explained by the 

 fact that in the early days, while only the 

 resources of the Atlantic coastline were 

 known to the settlers, there seemed to be 

 real danger of a timber famine. When 

 pioneers began to push inland the profu- 

 sion of the forest growth was both a sur- 

 prise and an impediment. The forest 

 resources then opened up must have ap- 

 peared to the pioneer truly measureless if 

 not inexhaustible. Agriculture, moreover, 

 could take root only where the forest had 

 been cut and burned away, so that the 

 woodsman's ax became a natural symbol 

 of civilization and progress. Interest in 

 forest preservation died a natural death, 

 and this interest was not to be resuscitated 

 till the lusty settler found that the enemy 

 with which he had been forced to contend 

 had become transformed into a friend upon 

 whose bounty he would have thereafter to 

 rely. In the first tide of settlement the 

 consumption of wood, only a small per- 

 centage of which was economic consump- 

 tion, rose above the prudent limit, and the 

 farmer found himself with tilled fields, 

 indeed, but without the woodlot to supply 

 his needed fence and building materials or 

 his fuel. The first broadly correct esti- 

 mate of the actual value of our virgin 

 woodlands really dates from this turning 



