American Forest Congress 179 



conserving the rights of the humblest Hcensee, while 

 granting to lumber companies and heavy individual 

 investors considerable latitude in timber operations. 



The visit of Mr. Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the U. S. 

 Bureau of Forestry, to the Philippines, resulted in 

 much benefit to the forest service, due to his assistance 

 in preparing the present forest act. 



The forest regulations were amended to carry out 

 the requirements in a forest act, and a forest manual 

 containing both the forest act and forest regulations, 

 indexed and annotated, with extracts from other laws 

 bearing upon forest revenue or service, and some 

 additional notes, were compiled and gratuitously dis- 

 tributed to all forest officials and licensees. 



In the forest act, several important changes may be 

 noted, which it is confidently hoped will give an 

 impetus to forest development. Not the least of these 

 is the reduction of tarifif on forest products from 

 about 60 to 35 per cent. ; the reclassification of native 

 woods into four groups; the adoption of the metric 

 system of weights and measures in conformity with the 

 revised U. S. statutes and similar action on the part 

 of most advanced countries; the division of the prov- 

 inces into two classes, A and B, and granting of licenses 

 for a period, within the discretion of the Secretary of 

 the Interior and the Chief of the Bureau, not to exceed 

 20 years. 



The liberality of these provisions may be seen at a 

 glance, especially the first and last. In dividing the 

 provinces, encouragement to licensees has governed 

 action. The provinces in Class B are those in which 

 it is desirable that the larger timber operations be 

 carried on, and provision is also made for exclusive 

 licenses, wdiere the party at interest will have sole 

 privilege of gathering a certain forest product on the 

 area of public forest designated. 



