YALE IN THE FORESTRY MOVEMENT 
By Henry SoLton GRAVES 
Director of the Yale Forest School, 1900 to 1911, now Chief of the 
United States Forest Service 
The Yale Forest School was established when the movement 
of forestry in this country was in its infancy—at a time when 
the majority of the people of the country were ignorant of, 
indifferent to, or opposed to the aims and methods of forestry. 
The history of the School has been coincident with a most 
remarkable development of forestry throughout the country. 
The Yale School has a very large share of credit for this develop- 
ment; without Yale and the other forest schools the results of 
the last decade could never have been achieved. No country 
has yet succeeded in establishing forestry on a permanent footing 
except through well trained foresters. Forestry had its real 
beginning in the United States when there were men to initiate 
the work of putting its principles into actual practice. 
In the minds of the founders of the Yale School there was 
not only a recognition of the need of trained men to carry on 
the work of forestry, but there was also a determined purpose 
to set a high standard of education that would train its students 
for leadership in the development of the science and practice 
of forestry. No task before the School has been more difficult. 
In the early days the technical demands on the forester were 
small. Oftentimes his first work was purely administrative, for 
which a very elementary knowledge of forestry would suffice. 
The demand for men was at that time so great that a young man 
with but little training could secure a place with the Government 
or elsewhere. There was therefore a tremendous pressure for 
a short-cut education, and to omit many fundamental features 
of technical training that did not seem of immediate practical 
application. But the School consistently maintained its high 
technical requirements, because it was training men to develop 
forestry and not merely to fill certain positions that might be 
available. 
