MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE FOR- 

 EST SERVICE AND THE RECLA- 

 MATION SERVICE 



BY 



C. J. BLANCHARD 



Statistician, U. S. Reclamation Service. 



THE Forest Service and the Recla- 

 mation Service are the infant 

 prodigies of the Department of Agri- 

 culture and of the Interior. Neither 

 has emerged from its swaddling 

 clothes, but both are mighty healthy 

 infants and are attracting a good deal 

 of public attention. Since they be- 

 came big enough to sit up and take no- 

 tice they have been occupying places 

 at a table upon which the principal 

 dish was a large piece of the public 

 domain. Like Jack Sprat and his wife, 

 they have proceeded to lick the platter 

 clean ; but they have been well-behaved 

 children and have not quarrelled over 

 their portions. 



The forestry infant has shown an 

 exceeding fondness for mountain tops, 

 steep-sided hills, old pine barrens, and 

 high altitudes generally, while the Re- 

 clamation Service has selected the val- 

 leys and mesas. 



Great national movements are not 

 developed suddenly. The movement 

 for a common-sense national forestry 

 policy, like the movement for national 

 reclamation of arid lands, has been 

 gathering lungs and body for many 

 years. The promoters of both experi- 

 enced many grievous disappointments, 

 and more than once all but gave up the 

 fight. For more than a quarter of a 

 century the best minds in the West, in 

 season and out, urged the wisdom of 

 the nation engaging upon the work of 

 making its richest lands habitable, but 

 prejudice due to lack of knowledge of 

 the West's resources blocked every 

 move for national irrigation. 



The forestry movement travelled 

 over the same stony thoroughfare. 

 From first being declared chimerical 

 to later being denounced as paternal 

 and sectional legislation, both move- 

 ments drilled their way through the 

 opposition and won national standing. 



Neither, however, would yet have 

 achieved congressional endorsement 

 and have become crystallized into law 

 had it not been for the forceful, tact- 

 ful, and persistent efforts of our Chief 

 Executive, the first occupant of the 

 White House whose knowledge of the 

 West was not gained solely from 

 books. For him the desert held no se- 

 crets, and in the forest he was at home. 

 With his strong and virile personality 

 behind both movements the prejudices 

 against these measures gave way. The 

 clogged and cumberous wheels of leg- 

 islative machinery were set in motion, 

 and in the brief time of one adminis- 

 tration, fruition long withheld, came to 

 the hopes of the advocates of national 

 forestry and irrigation. 



Three years of field work by the 

 Reclamation Service years full _ of 

 things accomplished, great engineering 

 works begun, and the real battle with 

 the desert well under way have 

 served to emphasize the wisdom of the 

 forestry law. The investigations of 

 the reclamation engineers and hvdro- 

 graphers have carried them over many 

 thousands of miles of valley and plain 

 and to the distant headwaters of the 

 streams. It has been forcibly im- 

 pressed upon them that the greatest 

 present need in many sections is forest 



*Read at Annual Meeting of the American Forestry Association, Washington, D. C.,. 

 January 16 and 17. 



