wealth. Timber furnished most of the tax revenue for community im- 

 provements. Settlers were scattered throughout the forest territory; 

 their lives and properly menaced by fire, their crops and labor marketable 

 chiefly by reason of the lumber industry. Towns grew up, dependent 

 upon the forest and sending their inhabitants into the forest for recrea- 

 tion. 



Thus the stage of utilizing the wilderness arrived. And with its in- 

 creased human activities logging, roadbuilding, clearing, camping, etc. 

 came added hazard. While the population became proportionately less 

 careless, it also became a greater source of fire in the aggregate, with 

 the danger scattered instead of concentrated. This was particularly 

 true of the slashing menace. Where once a birdseye view would have 

 presented a sea of forest with here and there a fire-trap opening like 

 an island, it would now show these islands growing larger and more 

 numerous in the process which will eventually make them the sea with 

 mere islands of forest remaining. It was also true of trails and roads, 

 carrying the careless match and campfire in every direction. 



PROTECTION UNIVERSALLY DEMANDED 



This continuation of the hazard, with the increase of life and resource 

 values at stake, led to the establishment of protective measures; first by 

 the Government on the National Forests, then by forest owners, and 

 finally by the state. As in the contest of ordnance and armorplate, the 

 balance has varied a little, but on the whole forest protection has been 

 perfected to keep the loss of life and property down to a negligible 

 minimum in the ordinary season. It is comparable to the efficient city 

 fire departments which occasionally meet a Baltimore or a San Francisco 

 fire but as a rule make the difference between intolerable danger and 

 reasonable safety. 



So efficient is it that in all but the exceptional season its work now 

 goes almost unnoticed, like the block signal system which makes rail- 

 roads safe, but it is equally essential. And every year, in increased 

 perfection, in the extension of trails, telephones and lookouts, in better 

 cooperation between private and public agencies, it is overcoming the 

 handicap of the abnormal season. The season of 1914 was as bad in 

 hazard as that of 1910, but, thanks to the development of organized 

 protection, the loss of life and forest resources was insignificant in com- 

 parison. 



TO SLACKEN DEFENSE MEANS DISASTER 



With continued support it will eventually reduce even a worse hazard 

 to comparatively small proportions. Nevertheless there should be no 

 false sense of security to arrest such support and such progress. The 

 fact remains that the Pacific Northwest is a forested region subject to 

 great fire danger. Conflagrations beside which those of Hinckley, 

 Gaudette and Coeur d'Alene were insignificant have occurred many times 

 in the past and are even more likely to occur again, were it not for 

 protective measures, because there are more agencies to start them. 

 This need cause no alarm if such measures are adequate. Other countries 

 have conquered such menaces of Nature and become the most secure and 

 productive in the world. But just as Japan has evolved an earthquake- 

 proof architecture, as Holland has shut out the sea by dykes, as arid 

 lands have defied desolation with ditches; so must the forested North- 

 west keep its immemorial enemy in subjection by an intelligent and 

 liberally-supported protective system. 



