No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE FORESTER. 399 



These direct injuries, as great as they are, I believe are exceeded by the 

 indirect. 



Fires, or rather the fear of them, are our greatest obstacle to the practice 

 of forestry in this State, and on the practice of forestry depends the con- 

 tinued existence of our lumber industrj'. Approach an owner of wood- 

 land and urge on him a certain forestry operation, and what will be his 

 reply? "Oh, yes, what you say is true enough, but how am I to know 

 that my woodlands will not burn up next year?" 



Our lumber industry is more important than people realize. Our annual 

 cut amounts to nearly 500,000,000 feet. For this lumber there is paid 

 to the landowner $2,500,000, and there is paid out in labor to harvest 

 this crop at least $1,000,000 more. These figures deal only with conver- 

 sion of the trees into rough lumber, and have nothing to do with the further 

 conversion of this lumber into boxes, furniture and the thousand and one 

 articles into which our raw lumber is made. Unless we can induce our 

 land owners to take up the proper management of our forests, this im- 

 portant industry is sure to be wiped out, and there is nothing which will 

 give more encouragement to the proper management of our woodlands 

 than the reasonable protection of them from fire. To this end we have 

 labored hard to build up an effective forest fire protective system, and I 

 desire to take this opportunity to express to you my appreciation of the 

 splendid support that has been given by this association to Mr. Hutchins, 

 the State Fire Warden, and his four district men who have been in direct 

 charge of this work. 



It may be of interest to some of you to know just what our forest-fire 

 organization consists of. The State Fire Warden, who has supervision of 

 the work, is assisted by four district fire wardens who are supplied with 

 runabout automobiles. These men are charged with the supervision of 

 the observation stations within their district, and are also continually 

 patrolling the towns comprising their district, instructing the forest war- 

 dens and their deputies relative to their duties, assisting in extinguishing 

 fires, visiting the selectmen and impressing upon them the importance of 

 better equipping their towns with equipment for handling forest fires, and 

 towns with a valuation of $1,500,000 or under, the advisability of taking 

 advantage of the reimbursement act, whereby the State will reimburse 

 such towns one-half for forest-fire equipment that they may purchase, 

 the State's share not to exceed $250, and to be approved by the forestry 

 department. 



We also have an inspector who devotes his entire time to inspecting 

 locomotives and portable saw mills. Several hundred locomotives have 

 been inspected, and the reports show that while thej^ were all equipped 

 with spark arresters, as required by law, in many cases these devices 

 were so thorouglily out of repair as to make them absolutely useless. We 

 have also at the present time 23 observation stations established in the 

 Commonwealth, 4 new steel towers having been built this year as follows: 

 Manchester, Wakefield, North Hanson and Bournedale, temporary towers 



