638 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



sire to protect and properly utilize the 

 forest resources he holds in trust and 

 increasing the public sentiment which 

 will encourage him to do so. We be- 

 lieve that mutual benefit lies in mutual 

 understanding, confidence and co-oper- 

 ation. 



In bringing before forest owners the 

 actual profit of better forest manage- 

 ment and the equal advantage to them 

 of earning popular credit by it, we de- 

 pend little upon the conventions, asso- 

 ciations and publicity methods com- 

 monly used to arouse forestry senti- 

 ment in the general public. We break 

 into his own trade meetings and jour- 

 nals, where he has to listen, and take 

 care to show that what we say is with 

 full knowledge of his many problems. 

 We write him letters and circulars, but 

 do him the honor of making them as 

 thoroughly his as would be a talk across 

 his own desk. We ask him to make no 

 sacrifices for posterity that we are not 

 making ourselves, but we do try to sh< >\v 

 him that he can do much without sacri- 

 fice or at a profit. Particularly, when 

 we do get his money or backing, we 

 try to give him tangible return in some- 

 thing he really wants, like fire protec- 

 tion, as well as in things we think he 

 ought to want. 



If he wants to interest his neighbors 

 in protection, we help him get them to- 

 gether, draft one or two prominent men 

 who have tried it to go along and tell 

 how it worked, carry with us an array 

 of practical figures on cost elsewhere, 

 and practically bulldoze the gathering 

 into organizing a modern co-operative 

 patrol. After they try it, they continue, 

 and we .see that they get a copy of 

 every new idea in fire work that is ever 

 evolved afterward anywhere. If a new 

 spark-arrester is invented, they get a 

 description of it. If someone discovers 

 that powder will throw a trench faster 

 than shovels under certain conditions, 

 we tell them about it. If a supreme 

 court passes on some doubtful point of 

 a fire law, we analyze the decision and 

 send it around. If a law is inefficient 

 generally, we write a new one, organize 

 a campaign for its passage, and pay the 

 bills. 



But probably you are more interested 



in methods of general public education. 

 In this we follow the advertising prin- 

 ciples of continual effort to keep the 

 impression from fading, and of novelty 

 to insure attention. Probably the first 

 form of anti-fire publicity was the old- 

 fashioned fire-warning synopsizing the 

 law and its penalties and printed on 

 cloth for durability. We originated de- 

 parture from this to a poster saying 

 little of the law but bearing catchy epi- 

 grammatic appeals to the reader's com- 

 mon sense and personal interest, and 

 printed on paper so it can be replaced 

 with a new one next year. Each year 

 we use different text, type and color, 

 and are now branching into pictorial 

 signs depending little upon text of any 

 kind. 



Each spring we issue immense num- 

 bers of short circulars, with paper, 

 colors and picture covers so attractive 

 that they are not quickly tossed away, 

 taking up in some new form the im- 

 portance of forest protection to com- 

 munity welfare. One year it may be 

 straight narrative, another a cathecism 

 with answers, another a parallel column 

 device. Always different, always catchy. 

 These are distributed in countless 

 ways as letter fillers by business 

 houses, in railroad folder racks in pub- 

 lic places, handed out or enclosed in 

 packages by merchants, attached to 

 documents and licenses by county of- 

 ficials, distributed from pulpits by min- 

 isters, dropped in rural mail boxes by 

 riders, left at houses and on hotel tables 

 by hundreds of fire wardens. Almost 

 anyone will help if you give him the 

 material and suggest how. 



Similar distribution is given small 

 gummed labels bearing terse sentences 

 or symbolic pictures and issued by hun- 

 dreds of thousands. They are placed 

 on envelopes, advertisements and the 

 like, also stuck on walls, signs and 

 posts. 



Every spring we get out something 

 especially designed for school children, 

 both to get them thinking rightly and 

 to be shown their parents, and the State 

 school authorities instruct the teachers 

 to distribute these. Last year it was a 

 sort of catechism with a picture cover, 

 this year a little story investing a tree 



