24 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



employment if the scenic attractions of their town are converted into the scorched 

 and blackened desolation that remain after a forest fire. 



The property owners and taxpayers of a town are the ones who have the greatest 

 interest in providing against such disastrous results, and should pay more for this 

 special local protection than the citizens at large. It is just and reasonable that the 

 men who own these forests should pay at least half the expense of this local protec- 

 tion. It was absurd to enact that the farmers of Chautauqua county must pay just as 

 much for protecting the property of Adirondack lumbermen and hotel men as the 

 owners of such property do themselves. 



While we are willing that the State should pay one-half of the expense incurred 

 by a firewarden and the posse warned out by him, we would recommend that the 

 entire bill be first audited and paid by the town, after which the State, through the 

 Comptroller, may refund to the town one-half the sum thus expended, all bills for 

 such rebate to be first forwarded to and approved by this department, or by such 

 official as it may designate for this purpose. 



It must be evident to all that the members of the town board of auditors, which 

 exists in every town for the purpose of auditing local bills, are much better able to 

 pass upon the items in the firewarden's account than the officials at Albany who may 

 have no knowledge of the facts aside from the bill itself. The members of a town 

 board are familiar with the facts relating to a fire in their town, its extent and nature. 

 They know whether it was a serious forest fire requiring the services of all the men 

 that were warned out, or some smoldering smudge that needed only a little watching 

 by one or two men. They know how long it lasted, and whether the number of days 

 charged for was a just and fair item ; whether the men were fighting fire or sitting on 

 a rail fence telling stories. 



Furthermore, if the town has to pay half the bill, each item will be carefully 

 scrutinized. But if the State is to pay it all, even if first approved by the town board, 

 questionable items will receive little attention, the tendency being to give a neighbor 

 the charitable benefit of each doubt. He is a good fellow ; it is hard times in the 

 town ; the State is rich ; let it go. 



Then again there has been altogether too much carelessness in many towns with 

 fallow fires. These fires, incidental and necessary in agricultural work, have been 

 started hitherto without the proper precaution to prevent their spreading into the 

 forest. A careful observation and collection of statistics relating to this matter indi- 

 cate that fully nine-tenths of the burned areas in the Adirondacks and Catskills is 

 due solely to carelessness of farmers in burning their fallows. Many a five-acre 

 potato patch has cost 5,000 acres of forest. Now, since the law of 1885 made the 

 expense of fighting forest fires wholly a town charge, the residents and taxpayers 



