THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



373 



In the first, to consumers, dated August 1st of this 

 year, it is said : 



''We know fairly well the extent of the wood con- 

 sumption of the nation, except for fuel and domestic 

 purposes. No satisfactory data upon these items are in 

 existence, and it is extremely difficult to estimate them." 



He then asks for figures on the consumption by the 

 persons addressed. 



In the second one, to dealers, dated September 8th, 

 a month later, it is said : 



"The Forest Service has been asked to secure data 

 for a report to the Commission upon the extent of our 

 forest resources, the rate at which they are being con- 

 sumed and the measures necessary in order that they 

 may be perpetuated and utilized to the best advantage." 



There was appended to this thirty-four questions, 

 to which answers were requested. 



This is most remarkable, as the last circular con- 

 tradicts the first as to knowledge of. the rate of general 

 consumption, and the two read in connection with each 

 other, show that the Bureau does not know either of the 

 things which its chief has long been putting before the 

 public as unquestioned facts. 



Is it possible that bureau wires have got crossed, 

 'and truths are sparking off? 



We have also been accused by Mr. Pinchot of wast- 

 ing our water power, and no doubt will soon be accused 

 of wasting the air and the sunshine, although we are 

 using all we need and they return to us by natural laws 

 in apparently undiminished quantity. 



Nothing more pertinent on conservation for poster- 

 ity has been said than the remarks made in Congress 

 recently by Hon. M. A. Smith of Arizona, as follows : 



"I am afraid that we are going a little fast in the 

 hysterical ardor to conserve our resources for the benefit 

 of posterity. If we save our coal, iron and lumber for 

 the use of posterity, then posterity, actuated by the lofty 

 example of their fathers, must likewise preserve these 

 resources for their posterity, and time will at last show 

 a nation of fools sitting among the unused resources 

 essential to its growth and happiness still preserving 

 things for posterity still 'conserving their resources/ " 



A recent writer on the subject has also hit the 

 mark by saying: 



"The cry raised by Mr. Pinchot has been par- 

 rotted by the newspapers and magazines until the man 

 bold enough to suggest that these predictions of- 

 alarmists have never in past history been verified, is 

 regarded as almost a blasphemer.* * * A large and 

 worthy portion of the people accept the Forester's dic- 

 tum implicity as any text of Holy Writ; but when his 

 time limit shall have expired, some other scare will be 

 worrying the hysterical, and his predictions, if remem- 

 bered at all, will be relegated to the ridiculous, along 

 with the others." 



"These pet bugaboos of the self-appointed guardians 

 of posterity are really as baseless and insubstantial as 

 the ghosts that peopled dark stairways and closets in 

 the days of our early chfldhood." 



At the Public Lands Convention at Denver last 

 year, there were presented, by myself and others, some 

 instances of flagrant abuses by the Forest Service, and 

 Mr. Pinchot, who was present, was called on to answer 

 or defend them, and he promised the chairman in the 

 presence of the Convention to do so when he got the 

 floor. 



Instead of doing so, however, he merely waived 



them aside by saying that "all those which were abuses 

 have since been corrected, and we will therefore wipe 

 them off the slate." 



He then said he wanted only to hear from the 

 man himself who had the complaint, and not from those 

 not using the forests. 



In the first place it was not true that any of the 

 abuses mentioned had been corrected. Most of them 

 were of a nature which could not be corrected, as the 

 injury done was irreparable, and our complaint was that 

 his rules made it possible for such incurable outrages 

 to be perpetrated on poor men who were trying to make 

 homes. 



He also knew that few of them were able to travel 

 several hundred miles, pay hotel bills and take their 

 chances of getting his ear, and that we were fully 

 authorized to present their cases. 



Such evasion and trifling as this is unworthy of a 

 representative of a great government. 



In McClure's Magazine for July 1st, an article 

 appeared entitled "Gifford Pinchot, Forester," written 

 by one Will C. Barnes, and embellished by a portrait 

 of Mr. Pinchot, and one or more pictures of the ruin 

 which he says was wrought by the early settlers of the 

 West. Some of these pictures had before done duty in 

 illustrating other magazine articles, boosting the Forest 

 Service, and evidently were furnished by Mr. Pinchot. 



The writer of the article in question, in order to 

 impress the reader and give extra weight to his praise 

 of the Forest Service, prefaced it by the following state- 

 ment : 



"That the writer, then a range cattle raiser in 

 Arizona, was one of the first to feel the effects of the 

 new forest policy, gives him all the more right to speak 

 as he does of these things; that he joins with loud 

 tongue and bitter pen in the general denunciation of the 

 'Pinchot policies' makes it all the more a pleasure to 

 him now to defend and explain them in so far as he 

 can." 



He does not, however, state or intimate that his 

 former denunciation of these policies was wrong or in 

 any way mistaken, nor does he give any reason why he 

 has changed his mind, which ordinarily would be ex- 

 pected, in order to add weight to his fulsome praise of 

 what he once condemned. 



On reading the article it seemed obvious that the 

 writer was under cover, and if his trail could be found, 

 something would develop. On looking into the report 

 of the Secretary of Agriculture made in response to a 

 resolution of Congress requesting the names, etc., of 

 forest employes who had been accused by members of 

 Congress of "pernicious activity" in attending various 

 conventions and public meetings where the forest service 

 was to be discussed, I found on page 58 the following: 



"Will C. Barnes, inspector of grazing. Place of 

 employment, Washington, D. C. In attendance at meet- 

 ing of Trans-Mississippi Congress Nov. 19 to 22, 1907, 

 at Muskogee, Okla., by direction of Forester, and as 

 delegate from New Mexico. Expense, $14.50." 



This sufficiently explains Willie's change of heart, 

 but it also leaves his article utterly barren of merit. 

 How thrifty the Forest Service is to get one of its em- 

 ployes in Washington appointed a delegate from New 

 Mexico to .attend at government expense. 



But a worse phase of it is that the writer has put 

 before the people what he would have us believe is a 

 real conversion of a man once an honest and "loud- 



