SUGGESTED FORESTRY LEGISLATION 65 



This law requires the railroads to clear off a strip one hundred feet wide 

 on each side of their track, where it runs through woodland. It has been 

 demonstrated after careful study that most of the live sparks from railroad 

 locomotives fall within the zone between fifty and one hundred feet on each 

 side of the track, and very few fall beyond that distance. Keeping this strip 

 clear would then prevent most of the fires caused by railroads and logging 

 roads, which, as we have seen above, constitute about one-third of the fires 

 in the State. 



Fire Warden System. — The most important problem in the formulation of 

 forest laws is providing effective machinery for putting them into force. 

 Eighteen States have already organized fire protective systems, the purpose 

 of which is to enforce the forest fire laws of these States. Little or nothing 

 has been accomplished in States without such systems, though several, like 

 our own, have some excellent laws. A fire warden system generally consists 

 of district, township, or county wardens, who, as a rule, are responsible to 

 some one State official, either the State Forester, the State Forest Commis- 

 sioner, or State Fire Warden, who is specifically charged with fire-protective 

 work and usually also with the forestry work of the State. It is the duty of 

 the wardens to extinguish fires, arrest offenders against the fire laws, investi- 

 gate the causes of fires, post warning notices against fire, and in some cases 

 to patrol the forests during dry weather. They are paid by the State, or by 

 the county, or by the State and county combined, usually by the hour or day, 

 for the time actually employed. In fixing a rate of payment, care is taken not 

 to make it high enough to tempt unscrupulous men to set fire to the woods 

 with the object of drawing pay for extinguishing it. This practice may, of 

 course, be occasionally resorted to, even where the pay is not high, but an 

 efficient county fire warden would soon discover the perpetrators, or at least 

 have his suspicions aroused, and one or two drastic sentences, upon convic- 

 tion, would put a stop to the practice. There are many counties in North 

 Carolina where fire wardens are not needed, but in counties having fifty per 

 cent and over of their area in woodland they would quickly pay for their cost. 

 If only a few counties were given the advantage of such a law to start with, 

 the demand for fire wardens would rapidly spread, as their usefulness became 

 apparent. The following bill, in a somewhat different form, was introduced 

 into the Legislature of 1911, but failed to pass, chiefly because a special tax 

 of half a cent per acre on all woodlands in the State was asked, to provide 

 revenue for its enforcement. This method of raising the necessary money is 

 perfectly fair and equitable, but until the system can be inaugurated and 

 tested in those counties that most need fire protection, it is thought that a 

 direct appropriation would be much simpler and more practicable. 



A Bill to be Entitled An Act to Authorize the Appointment and Payment 

 OF Forest Wardens. 



The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact: 



Section 1. On petition of four or more owners of timber lands in any one 

 township, owning in the aggregate five thousand acres or more, or the owners 

 of one-third of the forest land in the township, the county commissioners 

 shall appoint, subject to the approval of the Geological Board, a forest warden 

 for that township and as many deputy forest wardens to act with him as the 

 Geological Board may deem necessary for the proper enforcement of this act. 

 All forest wardens and deputy forest wardens must be legal residents of the 

 counties in which they are employed. 



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