98 



CHAPTER XV. 



A SYSTEM OF FOREST MANAGEMENT A NECESSITY. 



Forestry in the United States is still in its infancy. We have no 

 system of forest management. Forestry with us is ■without form and 

 void. The making of a forest system of management is before us in its 

 entirety. 



A Forest School, to provide a career for young men in the Ameri- 

 can forests, must formulate a system of management for the forests. 

 We have none, and so we are forced to make it. 



DEFECTS OF PRESENT METHODS. 



The Department of Agriculture has had for some years a Division 

 of Forestry. At the head of this division there have been several ac- 

 complished foresters and splendid men. The forestry division, how- 

 ever, has had no power. It has been, so far, little more than a literary 

 bureau for forest missionary work, with an occasional technical mono- 

 graph of value issued. Under its present chief, the work is developing 

 in a promising way, but it can never accomplish results in the gov- 

 ernment forests while these are not in its charge and in no way under 

 its control. The Department of War has sent detachments of the 

 army into those parts of the forest reserve called National Parks, for 

 some years. These army squads merely prevent injury to the 

 parks. There is no pretense that the army is doing forestry 

 work, except in preventing, or extinguishing fires. The power of 

 dealing with the public forests is in the Department of the Interior, 

 and is there delegated to the Land Commissioner, an officer with other 

 large and absorbing duties. We thus have really skilled men in forestry 

 in the Department of Agriculture, without power, and unskilled men In 

 forestry in the Department of the Interior with such power as there 

 is of making rules and regulations or a system, and of appointing a 

 number of executive forest officers. Then in the Department of War is 

 the only body of disciplined men in an organization of sufficient force 

 to execute anything. 



The forest officers of the Department of the Interior are all un- 



