SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 11 



The super\dsor, normally a farmer and a man who has enough to do of 

 other work, is expected to be on the lookout for fires. But he gets no pay 

 unless actually at work fighting fires, so he must not travel around and prevent 

 fires, but must wait until he sees one or someone tells him of a fire. Then he 

 calls out all the help he can get to fight the fire, but he must be careful not to 

 do too much, for he must not spend more than the magnificent sum of $50 in 

 a whole year no matter what sort of fire he faces. But some of these fires 

 require considerable effort. Suppose a captain of a fire company was told 

 not to spend over $25 on anj- one building in case of fire. The absurd re- 

 sults require no picture, and yet is it not fully as absurb to stop the fighting 

 of a fire which may readily destroy $100,000 worth of timber because there is 

 a clause limiting the man to $50? Similarly every citizen is obliged, under 

 penalty, to help fight. But suppose $48 worth of fighting has been done, 

 is it not taking the man's labor without compensation to ask that he continue 

 fighting when he knows he gets no pay? Two-thirds of this pay comes out 

 of the town, that poor, forlorn town, the very concern least able 

 to pay; most likely a town in which the state owns three-fourths 

 of all the land and refuses to pay any taxes at all. The results 

 are what we see everywhere. The local fire warden never sees his 

 superior, the relation is one of the usual "reports" affair, the warden is dis- 

 couraged, the people see the uselessness of the thing. They are disgusted 

 with slow pay or no pay and, what is far worse, that it does not stop the fires. 

 For, after all, a forest fire once under way is an affair not readily overrated. 

 The fire which, if taken in time can be beaten out with a green branch, needs 

 only a few hours or few days to form a line of battle several miles in length, 

 and if fanned by a strong wind readily puts all direct efforts at extinguish- 

 ment to shame. Then we are usually told two things: "You can not stop 

 them" and "The fires did no harm, "both equally absurd, especially in our 

 state. 



That we might learn something from the people who have fought forest 

 fires for a thousand years; that we might try their methods and spend our 

 money in preventive effort, in effective patrol of all forest districts, this does 

 not seem to have occurred to anyone as yet. Strange as it may seem, there is 

 as yet not a single state where a state forest fire patrol, permanent or tem- 

 porary, exists, and while some European states have succeeded in reducing 

 the yearly fire damage in pineries to a burn of one acre in 15,000 (i. e., to 

 1-15 per mile), we allow millions of dollars' worth of property to be burned up 

 without as much as an effort to save it. 



Forestry we need and must have if we are to use the resources of our state 

 and our country. But forestry and fire go together as water and fire, the two 

 cannot exist together. As long as the country at large is subject to regular 

 yearly firing no person cares to invest money in forestry. Private enterprise, 

 after all the chief force in our development, can not engage in forestry until 

 some protection is afforded to the forest. What form this should take ought 

 to be one of the subjects of discussion of the Michigan Forestry Association 

 as a matter of vital importance to this State. It also should be a matter 

 of consideration from the Legislature at its next session, for surely it ought 

 to be clear to anyone that here in Michigan at least the right sentiment, the 

 right moral conception has returned with most people, that forest 

 interests are the states' interests, the interest of statesmen and press, and 

 that it is good politics as well as good journalism to help this important branch 

 of agriculture and thereby save millions of dollars every year to our state in 



