320 REPORT OP THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



fences, but who of us would permit the people to walk over the sidewalks and 

 destroy our flower beds? Would that be good policy? But how about the 

 fisherman or the hunter who goes from the city, by thousands, and goes into our 

 forests with packed baskets, and they will take a tree as big as they can find, 

 climb that and skin the bark off and make a shanty and let the tree stand there 

 and die, and in two years it is brush ready to be set afire. Every man who is a 

 hunter or a fisherman generally smokes or drinks, and I tell you, gentlemen and 

 ladies, that we must get after the pleasure seeker and the camper, and, as the 

 gentleman said who read the report, we ought to make it so J:hat if they go into 

 the woods for a good time they will have to be careful of fire. 



Up in the Adirondacks, where we have just been building a railroad for 



you are going." They went ten miles, they got off the train and shot their deer 

 and killed a couple of big bucks, and they wanted to go to Utica, put their game 

 on the train, ride the train back, and suggested that we send a special train to 

 take them up to Utica. Our bookkeeper asked them for $5 for special permit, 

 and they said they were poor men. 



The lands we represent in the Adirondacks would make a right of way for 

 a railroad sufficiently long to reach from New York City to California and back 

 again and from Canada to the Gulf. The lands we own in Vermont would make 

 another track ffom Vermont to the Gulf and back, and the lands we own in 

 Pennsylvania would make another one from there to California and back. I 

 merely give you those figures, and you can guess there is some land and I would 

 like to ask you how the owner can patrol that during the dry hunting season when 

 these hunters are turned loose in them? Gentlemen, we must do something to 

 prevent those fires, and we cannot put the tax on men who are trying to carry a 

 $3,000,000 tax on it to preserve it for future generations. I believe in insurance, 

 but every time you add another insurance price, you add the price that my brother, 

 naturally, and everyone else who sells to the consumer, would add on the sale to 

 the consumer. 



Mr. J. G. Peters, of Washington, D. C: May I ask Mr. Chapman for a 

 brief statement as to the advantages of the Weeks Law, in cooperation and fire 

 protection in the Pacific Northwest? 



Mr. C. S. Chapman: I might, on the Pacific Coast generally and in Oregon 

 particularly, say that we have found the Weeks Law assistance of a good deal of 

 benefit. The State forester, under the Weeks Law, has a great deal to say about 

 the disposition of these men. 



A hard country to have patrolled in our State is the foot-hill country and 

 the sections where the timber is so scattered or in such small ownerships that no 

 individual will look after it, and the Weeks Law men are covering a great deal 

 of territory of this kind in high points around the headwaters of streams and 

 places of that nature. Last summer, for a short time, I think there was something 

 over fifty Weeks Law men in the forests there, and every one of them did 

 excellent work. I might say, too, that the extension of that cooperation on the 

 part of the Federal Government has been a very great stimulation to the private 

 owners themselves in doing more work along the line of forest protection. 



Mr. Elwood Wilson, of Canada : Mr. Chairman, we have in Eastern Canada 

 one of the largest cooperative fire protective associations on this continent. For 

 this cooperative association we are largely indebted to an American, Mr. W. R. 

 Brown. We have brought out in the work of this association one novel point 

 which has not been touched upon by this report, and that is, we have gone a 

 step farther than simply charging the men who are cooperating in this work a 

 pro rata share for the expense. The association, as we are now conducting it. 



