192 



CONSERVATION 



durable manner, the whole fabric of 

 forest-village life. 



But the genius of our American insti- 

 tutions requires that administrators of 

 public trusts, such as a forest, deal with 

 the local problem according to other 

 methods than the methods of Cromer 

 and Brandis. All of the frontier com- 

 munities form parts of the various 

 counties and states, and are often 

 American clear through. We belong 

 to them, and they belong to us. Cromer 

 and Brandis governed by obedience, in 

 letter and spirit, to Equity ; we, striv- 

 ing no less for Equity, must ever make 

 that Equity plain to plain men. We ap- 

 peal constantly to reason and good will. 

 Sometimes the most supreme tact can- 

 not avoid an issue without sacrificing 

 a principle. In such cases a forest offi- 

 cer must stay with the principle, must 

 sustain the issue at any cost of public 

 criticism, sure that he will be justified 

 in the end, even by many (if not by all) 

 of those who have attacked him. 



The underlying issues which are 

 raised with more or less distinctness by 

 many persons in frontier communities 

 are exceedingly simple. They have to be 

 understood, separated from irrelevant 

 problems, and made very plain to one's 

 own mind first, in order that they 

 can be cheerfully met from time to 

 time. The rangers are troubled by 

 them, and often fail to think them out, 

 so that excellent ranger material may 

 be lost to the Service if a supervisor 

 fails to discuss these things with entire 

 freedom and justice. 



The primary frontier issue with the 

 forest is that, away down in the bottom 

 of his heart, many a real, old-fashioned 

 mountaineer does not sympathize at all 

 with the setting apart of National For- 

 ests. He does not see any reason in 

 trying to conserve the natural resources 

 of his region ; he considers, in fact, 

 that there are none too many such re- 

 sources for the present generation, and 

 more particularly not anything more 

 than he wishes to use himself. He says 

 in effect, and when with his own kind 

 he says very often and with emphasis, 

 about this sort of thing : 



"It is downright wicked for Eastern- 



ers, an' city folks, an' rich tourists, an' 

 millionaire lumbermen, an' power- 

 plants to get up this here forest scheme 

 to take our rights away from us. This 

 region belongs to us. Our fathers set- 

 tled here in the rocks fifty years ago. 

 There ain't nuthin' to spare for the out- 

 siders. We want to 'take up' any tim- 

 ber land there is ; we want to cut trees 

 when and where we please ; we want to 

 burn brush in summer ; we want to run 

 our cattle any old way we like, with- 

 out paying a grazing fee. We do not 

 want any game laws ; we do not want to 

 go to any officer for permits, nor have 

 regulations of any sort put up over us 

 by men living somewhere else. We 

 have to live here, and all we want is to 

 be let alone." 



I think that perhaps I have been 

 more fortunate than many supervisors 

 in being able to get at precisely the 

 frame of mind of many mountain peo- 

 ple about the forest idea. I heard much 

 of this kind of thing long before I came 

 into the Service, twelve and fifteen 

 years ago, when President Cleveland 

 first established reserves and parks. I 

 used to go camping in the Sierras and 

 talk with many mountain people about 

 forestry and a forest system for Amer- 

 ica. The underlying question in nearly 

 every mind was a very human one : 

 ''How would such a thing affect me 

 personally?" And the almost universal 

 conclusion was that whatever lessened 

 the freedom of the mountain realm was 

 wholly bad. 



"Once," said one of them to me re- 

 gretfully, long ago, "I could ride from 

 Tejon Pass, north through the foothills 

 of the Sierras, clear to Shasta, more 

 than 700 miles, and never strike a 

 fence." 



"Before the forest was established,' 

 said another fine old mountaineer to 

 me, not a year ago, "any of us fellows 

 had all sorts of chances that we don't 

 have now. A lot of things that we al- 

 ways held belonged to us as a right, are 

 taken away." 



He did not necessarily mean that it 

 was less safe to shoot deer out of sea- 

 son, or track them in the deep snows. 

 He did not necessarily imply that the 



