84 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 
a beginning. He has yet to learn the laws under which 
mining claims and forest homesteads may be located, 
the routine of timber sales and the ins and outs of 
the cattle business and when finally he has mastered 
the business routine and the forms of the supervisor’s 
office he commences to be useful, for previously he 
was a mere apprentice. From this time on more 
responsibility is shifted upon his shoulders. He may 
take charge of the office and try his hand at running 
the forest for a week or two at a time while his chief 
is in the field inspecting timber sales or fire protection 
work. When it is realized that the average unit of 
forest administration, the National Forest, is 1,000,000 
acres against 10,000 acres in Germany and that there is 
one employee for each 125,000 acres in the United States 
against one forest guard for every two hundred acres 
in German forests, some conception of the man-size 
job may be obtained. It is only by the exercise of 
marvelous ingenuity that the Forest Service has been 
able to protect’ the nation’s woodlot as well as it has in 
view of its meager appropriations and limited number 
of emplovees. The very battle against odds has in- 
stilled in men of the Forest Service a feeling of 
comradeship, an esprit de corps which is largely respon- 
sible for the outcome. The winning of the West, the 
success in changing the feelings of the cattlemen and 
lumbermen from open hostility to genuine friendship 
is a striking example of good administration on a 
gigantic scale. 
If the young forest assistant instead of being as- 
signed to a forest had been placed in a reconnaissance 
party his lot would not have been quite so varied but 
even more strenuous, for life in a reconnaissance 
camp is one of stirring activity. In some of the dis- 
