FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



261 



the people while keeping it from the 

 corporations. 



"How, then, shall we protect our 

 timber ? ' It does not need protecting. 

 After building up the mightiest nation 

 on earth, one-third of our land still 

 grows timber; and while that may not 

 be enough for the future, we can draw 

 on the governor of Canada, who has 

 discovered the largest forest of the 

 world in his dominions, 4,000 miles 

 long, 700 miles wide, and offers to 

 supply us all we can use for a century 

 if we will merely take off the tariff. 



' ' But the sawmills are slaughtering 

 it." The poor sawmills! They have 

 borne more abuse than the early Chris- 

 tians. They only cut the big, ripe 

 trees. It was the farmers that girdled 

 the trees and made bonfires of them, 

 and then pulled everything up by the 

 roots. It was the farmers that turned 

 the impervious subsoil on top of the 

 spongy mold and caused the freshets 

 and dried up the springs. Yet Cleve- 

 land devoted his first term trying to an- 

 nihilate them. With more than Chris- 

 tian meekness they said nothing and 

 went on sawing wood. The sawmill 

 men appreciate their high vocation. 

 When they stop sawing the nation will 

 stop growing, and civilization will come 

 to a halt and the world start back toward 

 chaos again. They even get blamed for 

 all the bad weather, but if the chief of 

 our Weather Bureau knows anything 

 about climate, timber has no apprecia- 

 ble effect upon it. 



' ' But the sawmills should at least 

 run their business more scientifically." 

 Who is able to teach the sawmill men 

 the science of their business ? It was 

 they who perfected the ax, the most 

 perfect tool of man, the toolmaker of 

 the scientists. Gladstone considered it 

 an accomplishment to be able to chop 

 down a tree, and so does Roosevelt. 

 And no tool on earth requires the skill 

 the circular saw does. It is so delicate 

 that it feels the rotation of the earth 

 and runs better east to west than north 

 and south. Can our "forestry scien- 

 tists ' ' instruct them ? They want them 

 to pile and burn the brush, but any 

 farmer knows it had better lie scattered 

 and rot in order to enrich the soil. 

 " But it helps the spread of fire," they 



say. Not as much as bonfires ; and 

 big brush piles throw sparks farther 

 than scattered brush does. 



' But surely the government can edu- 

 cate them. ' ' With the editor's permis- 

 sion I will review : 



The Woodman's Handbook, Part I. 

 Henry Solon Graves. Bulletin 36, Bu- 

 reau of Foresty, United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. 



Gifford Pinchot, forester for the gov- 

 ernment, recommends it as " thoroughly 

 valuable to the lumberman and the for- 

 ester alike, a long step toward the better 

 understanding and appreciation of each 

 by the other. ' ' The author states that 

 his purpose is ' ' to give a collection of 

 tables and rules of practical use to lum- 

 bermen." He tells how over forty dif- 

 ferent log rules for board feet are in use, 

 ' ' many of them admitted to be accurate 

 and some almost absurd. ' ' These rules 

 are ' ' presented without discussion of 

 their respective merits." In fact, he 

 admits that he has ' ' made no sufficiently 

 extensive study to justify a positive 

 statement that any one of the rules is 

 best," and winds up his preface with 

 asking where he can find some more. 

 Then he gives forty-three log sca-les for 

 board measure alone, and modestly sug- 

 gests that the ignorant sawmill man 

 experiment upon them all and find out 

 for himself which is the best. This is 

 "valuable" science about as valuable 

 as anything our forestry scientists have 

 yet produced. If the author should 

 ever go into the grocery business with 

 forty-three different kinds of scales and 

 begin experimenting on his customers 

 he would have to be correct. If he does 

 not really know how to make an accurate 

 log scale I can show him in ten minutes 

 how to do it with 'a compass, a yard 

 stick, and simple addition, subtraction, 

 multiplication, and division, and he will 

 be able to figure a perfect scale in a few 

 hours without any more ' ' extensive 

 study." The other half of the book is 

 about as valuable, and as the author is 

 director of a forest school, there is little 

 doubt that it will turn out about as many 

 sawmill men as our agricultural colleges 

 do farmers. 



Let the sawmills alone. Drop the 

 timber question. Those two great world 

 builders, the settler and the sawmill 



