2IO 



THE FORESTER. 



September, 



Every effort of the American Forestry 

 Association and the friends of forestry 

 everywhere should be bent to the unifica- 

 tion of the present triune system of gov- 

 ernment forestry work, and to the subse- 

 quent enlargement of the service in the 

 Forestry Division, until it is developed to 

 the necessary strength for dealing ade- 

 quately with our great forestry problems. 

 Then we may expect the local superin- 



tendent of the Sierra forests to watch his 

 opportunity to secure for the United States 

 any private claim of Big Tree timber, and 

 we may confidently expect, moreover, that 

 the confidence reposed in the Division by 

 Congress will be so strong and the admin- 

 istration so efficient that eventually four- 

 fifths of the primeval Sequoia land will 

 come back to the government from which 

 it should never have passed. 



FOREST LAW IN THE UNITED STATES.- 



BY TREADWELL CLEVELAND, JR. 



IX. LINES OF STATE ACTION. 



We cannot attempt within the straitened 

 limits of these papers to give a detailed 

 review of forest legislation in all States 

 having important forest laws, or even to 

 treat exhaustively its whole course in a 

 single State. All we can do is to give 

 its general tenor and perhaps to indicate 

 probable lines of further growth. 



In 1867 there was appointed in Wis- 

 consin a committee of the State Agricul- 

 tural and Horticultural societies to report 

 upon the disastrous effects of forest de- 

 struction; and the following year an act 

 was passed "for the encouragement of 

 the planting and growing of trees," etc., 

 which provided an exemption from tax 

 and a bounty for the growing of timber 

 belts. The appointment of the committee 

 of inquiry is an early instance of the gen- 

 eral movement which is marked in a num- 

 ber of States by provisions of law es- 

 tablishing commissions of investigation, 

 notably in the cases of Ohio and New 

 x > ork in 1884. Sometimes such commis- 

 sions have been continued, sometimes 

 their terms have expired and been re- 

 newed, as in New Hampshire, where the 

 first commission was appointed in iSSi, 

 the second in 1885, and the present com- 

 mission in 1893. Sometimes again, from 



* For Mr. Cleveland's first and second articles 

 on this subject see the July and August num- 

 bers of THE FORESTER. ED 



a variety of causes, they have ceased to 

 exist, as in the cases of California, and, 

 recently, Wisconsin. 



It has become the custom to cite the 

 example of New York as typical for com- 

 missions, and the examples of Pennsyl- 

 vania, Minnesota and Maine as typical for 

 forest-fire laws. Certainly these States 

 offer a wide legal horizon, which suggests 

 instructive inferences. 



Since 1885 New York has persisted in 

 dealing with its forest problems through a 

 several-headed commission having charge 

 of a definite area of reserved State forest 

 lands. From the first it has possessed a 

 well-framed fire law and the support of a 

 widening and deepening public sentiment ; 

 and up to 1894 ^ possessed also ample 

 opportunity for experiment in forest man- 

 agement. Unhappily, however, the ear- 

 lier personnel of the commission was not 

 exemplary. Shrewd suspicions of mal- 

 practice disturbed the public confidence, 

 and by an amendment to the State Consti- 

 tution, adopted in 1894, the hands of the 

 commissioners were tied. Since that date 

 no timber can be cut, destroyed or sold 

 from the State Preserves, and forest man- 

 agement is consequently impossible. To 

 say that at least the forests are safe is but 

 a very partial truth. They are safe from 

 dishonest use on the part of their guardi- 

 ans ; but this could be an important gain 

 only so long as dishonest use was to be 



