Fire protection had been fairly well secured by the company for 

 many years before the engagement of a forester. 



ECONOMY AND WASTE. 



The first thing that impressed the forester upon entering the service 

 of the company was the great and needless waste in logging. Of 

 the several causes to which this was due, the most important and the 

 remediable one was that close thinking had seldom been put into 

 this side of the work. Old logging bosses had often formed practice 

 without regulation. Strange to say, too, the worst offenders were not 

 the logging contractors, but the company's own men, and these often 

 the most valued and the best. The amount of labor required to get 

 them to pick up small items was truly surprising. This was due, how- 

 ever, to their training. For years they had been judged mainly by 

 the cost of their logging. " Cheap logs, cheap logs," had been dinned 

 into their ears until they could hardly recognize any other tune; and 

 it consequently took two years of steady hammering before they could 

 really believe that the company wanted them to go to extra expense 

 to pick up inferior material. 



Waste in logging occurred in the following forms : (1) High stumps; 

 (2) large tops left in the woods; (3) the use of the ax instead of the 

 saw; (4) trees cut and left in the woods; (5) dead or down trees 

 which contained good lumber not taken; (6) merchantable logs used 

 in building skidways, roads, and camps. 



To secure complete economy it proved certain, in this case at least, 

 that regular, frequent, and thorough inspection was the one indis- 

 pensable thing. Supplementary to this, printed instructions were 

 issued to foremen which covered the sources of waste just given; and 

 where contractors were employed the question of w^aste was carefully 

 dealt with in the contracts. Usually the contract specified that 

 stumps should be cut as low as the swell of the roots, or within a 

 specified distance from the soil; that when deep snow lay on the 

 ground it should be shoveled from the base of the trees to be cut, or 

 else cutting should cease entirely; that the saw should be used in 

 place of the ax; and that lodged trees and merchantable timber used 

 in skidways and elsewhere should finally be taken for lumber or pulp. 

 Reform could not move too fast, however, or without clear under- 

 standing on the part of all concerned, for men might have been dis- 

 gruntled and work thrown out of gear. 



Greater difficulty was encountered in matters in which desired 

 standards could not be so sharply specified. Windfalls and dead 

 standing timber are common in the virgin spruce woods of New Eng- 

 land, and come under this head. The trees are often defective, and 

 are more expensive to haul than live timber, but with present lumber 



[Cir. 131] 



