336 REPORT OP THi; FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



Study of woods and their uses and of the maintenance of supply. That this great 

 resource for its proper care needs a clear-cut, uniform policy, based on accurate 

 knowledge and scientific study, seems to have been lost sight of. That in its 

 development and care the collaboration of other scientific services of the country 

 is essential is overlooked. The word "practical" is made to do yeoman service, 

 and it is almost a matter of reproach that one should really know something more 

 of forests than that lumber can be made of them. 



EXPENSE OF ADMINISTRATION 



TAKE, for example, one item of cost alone, — preventing and fighting fire. 

 It must be presumed that every one will concede that this protection 

 must be furnished, in the interest not only of property but of human 

 life. In this instance we have irrefutable proof of what the States will do and 

 how difficult it is to secure the limited aid now furnished. It is a fact that in 

 any Western forested State if it were not for the means furnished by the general 

 government, literally millions of dollars of property would be destroyed every 

 year. In Oregon alone there is expended by the general government in patrol 

 and prevention about $480,000 a year, an amount nearly one sixth as great as 

 the State's total expenditures for all governmental purposes. This figure does 

 not include sums expended in actual fire fighting, which in destructive seasons 

 amounts to thousands of dollars more. Fires and accompanying losses and 

 disasters are not confined to State lines. This dread destroyer knows neither 

 geographical nor governmental divisions. 



ENCOURAGEMENT OF SETTLEMENT 



WHILE the Forest Service is often charged with retarding and dis- 

 couraging settlement and development, the reverse is the truth. Its 

 telephone lines, trails and roads are often the forerunners of settle- 

 ment and the only means of communication in remote sections. If the Forest 

 Service is given the opportunity with the next few years, through the efforts of 

 the forest road builder the remote sections of our Western States will be brought 

 into communication with the other portions thereof. Instead of retarding devel- 

 oprnent, the Forest Service will be a powerful factor in opening up to settlement 

 and use lands on which as yet the foot of man has scarcely trod. With the work 

 there is to do, in every portion of the Western States, it would seem that ordinary 

 business judgment would welcome the aid of the National Government in the 

 care of the forests and suggest only the closest co-operation by the respective 

 State authorities with the Forest Service. 



TAX ARGUMENT FALLACY 



THE loss of taxes to the State by reason of the national forests being non- 

 taxable is another favorite argument of those who contend for State 

 control. The use of this argument is sufficient if this in itself is the 

 object to be sought. Those who advance this argument cannot believe in a public 

 forest, State or national, for it would be non-taxable in either event. The argu- 



