488 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



November 



Mr. Webster is a certified public ac- 

 countant of the State of Michigan, and 

 a Fellow of the Michigan Association 

 of Certified Public Accountants, and 

 at the recent convention he was elected 

 a member of the American Associa- 

 tion. 



Much interest was manifested at 

 the convention in the subject of co- 

 operation with the general Govern- 

 ment in its efforts to improve account- 

 ing methods. A committee was ap- 

 pointed to prepare an advisory report 

 to the Keep Commission on the sub- 

 ject, and Mr. Webster, who is chair- 

 man of the assistant committee on cost 

 keeping and a member of the com- 

 mittee on accounting, was consulted 

 as to the interest of the Government 

 service in modern ideas of bookkeep- 

 ing and auditing. 



In its desire to adopt such progres- 

 sive ideas the Reclamation Service has 

 been among the foremost of the vari- 

 ous bureaus of the Government ser- 

 vice. The idea has been that as this 

 was not only a work of great magni- 

 tude, but one wherein the Government 

 was virtually acting as trustee for the 

 people of the Western States, its ac- 

 counting system should be of a char- 

 acter comparable with that of its en- 

 gineering, and no pains have been 

 spared to accomplish this result. For 

 this purpose a committee consisting 

 of the chief accountant, a disbursing 

 officer, and a representative of the 

 Price Waterhouse & Co. public ac- 

 countants of New York, recently 

 visited the Uncompahgre, Truckee- 

 Carson, Salt River, and Yuma irriga- 

 tion project, and have made a report 

 looking to a uniform system for the 

 bookkeeping at all field offices. 



. , , The American Lumber- 



Fire Warden 



Service man prints a recent ex- , 



pression by Gen. C. C. 

 Andrews, Chief Fire Warden of 

 Minnesota calling attention to the ef- 

 ficacy of the fire warden service of 

 the State. Reviewing the work of 

 the service this year General Andrews 

 says : 



"The past summer was the dryest 



that has been experienced since the 

 year of the Hinckley fire, but we have 

 escaped with little damage from forest 

 fires. I doubt if the damage will ex- 

 ceed $10,000 in this State. The most 

 important fire, and it was hardly a 

 forest fire, occurred near Alborn when 

 some ties and poles were burned. It 

 was started by a man knocking the 

 embers from his pipe. 



"While the danger was very immi- 

 nent at times in various places in 

 northern Minnesota, the fires did very 

 little damage. The wardens were very . 

 alert and active. It is impossible to 

 tell how much or how little they may 

 have accomplished, but the fact re- 

 mains that they were alert and little 

 damage was the result. 



Minnesota has many square miles 

 of valuable timber, probably the most 

 valuable timber in the United States. 

 Those who own this property natural- 

 ly safeguard it to the extent of their 

 ability, their efforts along this line 

 being supplemented by the fire war- 

 den service established by the State. 

 Of course it would be possible for the 

 timber of Minnesota or of any other 

 state to pass through great danger 

 with little or no damage, but coinci- 

 dents of this kind do not occur fre- 

 quently. 



"Every hunter, trapper and camper 

 who enters a forest, every settler upon 

 its borders, constitutes an element of 

 danger. Some of these people are 

 uninformed ; many of them are care- 

 less or reckless. It is incumbent then 

 upon the State to provide some ade- 

 quate system of protection for this 

 kind of property, which cannot be re- 

 placed within the life of the present 

 generation, and this duty is an impera- 

 tive as the obligation of a city to pro- 

 vide facilities for fighting urban fires." 



At the meeting of the 



International Slack Co- 



Coopers 



and Forestry 



operage Manufacturers' 

 Association, held at Memphis, Tenn., 

 October 2 and3, the organization de- 

 cided upon the appointment of a per- 

 manent Forest Committee to coop- 

 erate with the Forest Service. The 



