BABBITT: Timbersales take more of a rangers time 

 than any other of his manifold duties and rightly so, ae 

 they are his most important branch of duty. Yet in spite of 

 this tine and attention thus spent, these sales are a'never 

 ending source of trial to the ranger, his diplomacy, his 

 tenper and his Supervisor. Our great trouble with almost all 

 of tho srles hes beon Tith the brush piling and this is 

 traceable to two factors, the first of v:hich is the ignor- 

 ance and indifference of the V70od3 foreman ao to what we are 

 sttonptin- to accomplish, with his desire to jet through with 

 the job as quickly and vrith as little personal attention as ho 

 ccn bestow upon it. The second factor is the aversion of the 

 average lur.ber- jack to what he considers the degrading Job 

 of the brush piler. 



~/e cannot educate the woods foreman, but we can teke 

 him at his v:ord rhen he says, "You know what you wr.nt, take the 

 men and do it yourself." Of course r,-e do this in a way now 



le the officer is on the ground everything goes smoothly, 

 but horo enters the second factor, that of the disll?ce of the 

 con for the work. Each time the rancor visits the sale he finds 

 a no.7 orovr at tho v;ork ~ith no idea of how it should be done. 



t of our sales are so snail that they do not Justify keep- 

 in-: a man on the ground all of the time and the only remedy" 

 thct nu-^osto its self to ray mind, is that of making an 

 additional charge per M. ft. 3. II. and ourselves take over tho 

 v-or . I bollevo that we could contract the piling and by 

 securing an effective crew, get exactly what v:o went at 



roxlnately the sane expense to the Service that we now 

 ir.cur for a piece of work unsatisfactory to us and unnecessarily 

 expensive to the lumbermen. I believe ^ith ouch an arrange- 

 ment we could dispose of much of the dangerous littor of tops, 

 limbs and rotten logs that v;e do not now even attempt to handle. 

 I rould li':o to try this experiment, or even try hiring men by 

 the da^, es I am confident that tho quantity end quality of 

 tho work done in this line this pest season can be improved 



Several very disastrous fires, during tho past season 

 on some of tho oeot timber sale areas in the state hr.o led the 



.rict office to appropriate money for fire breaks end the 

 rencral cleaning up of all areas with a view to lessening this 



?er. This is boyond a doubt a step in the right direction. 

 It appears to me, hov.over, that if this expenditure is to be 

 'a, the proper time for cleaning up would be rhen tho brush 



-ilecl end burned. I an confident that this appropriation 



on with the sum advanced by the loggers to cover brush 

 piling would enable us to do the entire clearing up of the 

 area more expeditiously end at e considerable savin? of ex- 

 pence over our present operations. 



Our new contracts embody a clause requiring the 

 loggers to fall all snags and diseased trees and if these trees 

 could be burned within a reasonable tine, it would oorve in a 





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