286 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



Forest Service will depend somewhat on the point of view taken. Com- 

 pared with private business enterprise at its best, probably nearly 

 all government bureaus are inefficient and extravagant ; but the Forest 

 Service has been one of the most efficient bureaus in Washington. As 

 a matter of fact, that is one of the reasons why the Service was sub- 

 ject to so much criticism during Pinchot's regime. The Service was 

 going ahead with much the same energy and enterprise that is sup- 

 posed to characterize private business, and this brought it into con- 

 flict with interests which were represented in Congress. Officials and 

 bureaus that follow the humdrum, cut-and-dried methods of the aver- 

 age office in Washington are seldom or never criticised. As a rule, 

 nothing speaks so well for a public official or department as a generous 

 amount of criticism from the politicians. 



The figures given above, to show the "insolvency" of the reserves, 

 do not really prove anything. The reserves were self-supporting in 

 1908, and they might have been maintained on that basis had that 

 been a wise policy to pursue. In 1908, however, Pinchot recommended 

 a change of policy, recommended that there should be provision for 

 more effective protection and administration of the reserves, even if it 

 resulted in a deficit, and this policy was adopted. It should also be 

 noted that some of the figures given for expenses include, not only the 

 actual cost of forest administration, but a great many items — sal- 

 aries, rents, cost of investigative work, etc. — which have nothing 

 directly to do with the national forests. 



The statement that only 15 per cent — ^later 25 per cent — of the 

 money appropriated went directly to the protection of the forests, is 

 at least misleading, for it is difficult to say what money is used 

 directly in the protection of the reserves. It can hardly be said that 

 the work of a clerk or draftsman is less essential to the protection of 

 the forests than the work of a ranger. A great many clerks there are 

 in any government office, but this seems to be required by the "red 

 tape" of officialdom. When Henry Graves was made chief of the Ser- 

 vice, he took some steps toward a greater decentralization of the 

 administration and tried to use more of the appropriation for pro- 

 tection and investigation.^ 



7 Forest Quarterly, 12, 397 et seq. 



