X PREFACE 



more than ten years. My connection with the 

 United States Forest Service in various parts of 

 the West has given me ample opportunity to study 

 every phase of the problem. I am attempting to 

 chronicle a wonderful accomplishment by a won- 

 derful organization of altruistic Americans, — an ac- 

 complishment of which every American has reason 

 to feel proud. 



Few people realize that the bringing under ad- 

 ministration and protection of these vast forests is 

 one of the greatest achievements in the history of 

 forest conservation. To place 155,000,000 acres of 

 inaccessible, mountainous, forest land, scattered 

 through our great western mountain ranges and in 

 eighteen Western States, under administration, to 

 manage these forests according to scientific forestry 

 principles, to make them yield a revenue of almost 

 $3,500,000 annually, and to protect them from the 

 ravages of forest fires and reducing the huge an- 

 nual loss to but a small fraction of what it was 

 before — these are some of the things that have been 

 accomplished by the United States Forest Service 

 within the last twenty years. 



Not only is this a great achievement in itself, but 

 few people realize what the solution of the National 



