THREE-QUARTERS OF THE WAY 101 



seventy-five per cent, of all the wood necessary to 

 permanently supply our needs. No Invective of 

 forest fires could be stronger, no statement of the 

 situation more definite. 



Why do we have these fires? It is not a hard 

 question to answer. Occasional conflagrations arise 

 from lightning, but the real cause is the carelessness 

 of man — the heedless smoker and the greenhorn 

 camper. Then, too, our people have never quite 

 outgrown the old conception of the forest as an ob- 

 stacle in the path of civilization, an obstacle which 

 must be destroyed to clear the land for good crops 

 and cattle grazing. For all that has been said and 

 written on the subject, there are stockmen and 

 farmers who still hold this belief, and there are 

 others, who, when burning the weeds and long grass 

 on their own lands, care little whether the flames 

 spread to adjoining woods. There are forest fire- 

 bugs just like those who occasionally crop out in our 

 cities and towns and set many a destructive blaze be- 

 fore the place becomes figuratively too hot for 

 them; and there are enemies of the timber owners 

 and the government who set fire to privately owned 

 or public land merely out of spite or some feeling 

 of injustice because rights which they have pre- 

 viously enjoyed have been terminated. 



It is not easy to catch the careless camper who 



