568 



Warden Garmon, when he was put, on the stand, says that there 

 was thirteen foresters, thirteen or fourteen, gave the districts, and 

 I was surprised to learn' that in several of those dis- 

 tricts thefe were no State lands or none to speak of, 

 notably in his own district where he and Commissioner 

 Basselin both reside. A forester there must have a pretty 

 soft time of it, and the only service that he did was to be sent over 

 to Minerva to spy out on Lynch and report. That is the only service 

 he has mentioned. Forty dollars a month for four or five years. 

 Warden Garmon says that he has been in some districts once in a 

 year and in some of them been two or three years since he has been 

 there. What sort of an administration is that? Of what use is such a 

 commission and subordinates ? On referring to the minutes at page 

 335 you will find that he details the districts, what the foresters have 

 done and what he has done, and that is the only evidence there is before 

 this committee that anything has been done there except some outside 

 fires away out on the borders of the clearing. It is an old police law 

 where the justice and supervisors of the town attended, and it was 

 transferred to the forest commission. After the Governor's practical 

 message they sent out some of these foresters to survey and describe 

 lands that did not belong to the State, brought in a pile of pape"r as 

 high as the table to disclose that information. 



Warden Garmon complains that one of the reasons they couldn't 

 bring trespassers to justice and better discharge their duties was, they 

 did not understand their lands, »the lines, the boundaries. Why 

 didn't it occur to him to send the foresters to make report upon the 

 State lands for their protection rather than the outside lands 1 In all 

 this matter of fires, gentlemen, you will remember that there was only 

 one fire on the State lands, and that was way over on the extreme 

 eastern border, toward Lake Champlain all these , five years. But all 

 this noise and braggadocia about looking after fires, there was only 

 one upon the State lands and that an inconsiderable one. 



So that, as I have said, the expenses of this commission since it has 

 been established, down to this time, have been more than $150,000, 

 and all that there is to show for it is contained in the account of the 

 Treasurer I have produced, where less than $19,000 have gone into 

 the State treasury in these whole five years, and for the last three 

 years the amount has not come up to $2,000 a year. Early there 

 were two or three large cases, one where they collected $3,000 and 

 one $5,000, but the rest has been inconsiderable. 



Commissioner Basselin and Warden Garmon made a great parade 

 of the usefulness of this commission, because they had reduced the 



