EDUCATION IN FORESTRY. 61 



not merely indifferent but actually hostile. Naturally the tendency was to> 

 fight back more or less ; confronted by antagonism, men of spirit naturally felt 

 the necessity of holding up their end. After this stage, and as the spirit of 

 hostility died out, came a period of pressure from the Washington office for 

 better standards of work. The forest supervisor had to be a combination of 

 a good technical man and a good business man. The demands on him were- 

 constantly greater than he saw his way to meet, and compelled him to turn 

 all his attention on the forest. A third stage came strikingly into view during^ 

 the war. The forest officers had gradually gained a position in local esteem 

 which caused them to be turned to as community leaders in all kinds of public 

 activities. By and large, the forest supervisor has come to be not merely a 

 Federal official, not merely a capable forester and business agent, but a public 

 man. We are now entering on a fourth stage, in which the forest officer com- 

 bines with the public relations viewpoint the assumption of definite and special- 

 ized public relations activities. 



It was primarily due to our fire problem that we moved forward to this 

 stage. Three or four years ago our District 5 office came to the conclusion 

 that altogether too much money was spent in fighting fires which should never 

 have started. A remedy was sought along the interrelated lines of law enforce- 

 ment and education, each helping out the other. The educational task con- 

 sisted of finding out and utilizing as many agencies as possible that would 1 

 affect the ways of thinking of the public with regard to forest fires. Ainong- 

 these are the newspapers, the schools, the " movies," and public talks by local 

 forest officers. The results had much to do with bringing us to our present 

 recognition of public relations. 



The question whether the men who come into the Forest Service from the- 

 forest schools should receive in connection with their technical training some- 

 specific preparation for work of this character can not be answered as an iso- 

 lated question. It must be coordinated with the whole broad question of the- 

 type of man that the schools should seek to turn out, and the relative value- 

 of the different subjects needing to be taught, and the time that each should 

 have given it. The dean of the school of journalism in the University of 

 Montana instructs the forest school students in newspaper work. The reason,, 

 he told me, is because a forest officer who does not know how to furnish the- 

 press with the kind of information that it wants, who does not understand the- 

 function of the press in our national life and does not appreciate the impor- 

 tance of establishing good relations with his local newspaper editors, lacks- 

 proper equipment for his work. That is significant, but not to my mind con- 

 clusive. For the question is not what is important, but what is most im- 

 portant. 



There has been an extraordinary broadening of the conception of the field 

 of the engineer. The profession no longer concerns itself merely with mechani- 

 cal and physical forces and problems, with machines and structures and energy. 

 It deals with all that enters into production, including the human element 

 with questions of labor, of public welfare, of Government. Unless we are to 

 consider all this as without logical basis, there is need for recognizing that in 

 the field of engineering we now have an entirely new set of concepts, and a 

 necessity for a corresponding readjustment of education for the work of engi- 

 neers. It must be broadened and humanized. 



An undergraduate four : year course in forestry will closely approximate that 

 of the engineering schools, if both are worked out along the right lines. It 

 has been generally agreed here that in such a course for foresters the first t\vO 

 years should be the period of foundation laying, with emphasis on a broaol 



