144 FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Without enlarging on this important subject, it may be of interest to point out a few funda- 

 mental facts which may help to shape a policy: 



(1) All fires have a small beginning. The Peshtigo fire, by far the most terrific ever experi- 

 enced in Wisconsin, was known to be burning and gathering headway for fully two weeks before it 

 broke out in the final and then perfectly unmanageable form. The Phillips fire was heard and the 

 smoke seen and felt in the town for days before it reached the village and converted it into ruins* 



(2) All fires stop of their own accord after they have run for but a moderate distance, 

 evidently finding obstacles which gradually reduce their power. The Peshtigo fire did not involve 

 the fourth part of Marinette, the Phillips fire not a fourth of Price County, and a most intense 

 fire in northern Chippewa, which when at its best sent firebrands across a lake over half a mile 

 wide, did not keep on running, but stopped without going much, if at all, beyond the county line. 



(3) The majority of fires are small fires. When the " whole country is on fire, 77 it is not one 

 fire, but hundreds of separate fires, all or nearly all of which have had their origin in carelessness. 



(4) It is carelessness and not malice, and it is more carelessness of letting fires go than of 

 starting them, which has resulted in the enormous losses mentioned before. 



(5) Forest fires are both prevented and fought successfully in the wild forests of India, as 

 well as in all parts of Europe, in localities where hundreds of acres of the young sapling pine with 

 their fine and largely dead and dried-up branches (along the lower part of the stem) stand so thick 

 that it is almost impossible to pass through, and where, in addition, poverty and chagrin among a 

 dense population living close to the confines of the woods furnish willful and malicious incendiaries. 

 To the greater part of opponents of a determined effort to cope with the problem, it may also be 

 pointed out that for this country experience is as yet almost entirely wanting; that in New York 

 State and in Maine the fire police has done well ; that it is impossible for anyone to say at present 

 just how successful the fire police of north Wisconsin could be. The success depends, of course, 

 upon methods and organization, measures and men. 



Reforestation. — What maybe done to restock the land will vary from place to place, according 

 as the land is well under way to reclothe itself, or is a bare waste, or is a tangle of debris or covered 

 with worthless thickets of fire-<Jamaged woods. This work may be done at once or by piecemeal, 

 it may be done thoroughly or roughly, it may assist nature to a small or large degree, and any 

 detailed directions are beyond the scope of this report. 



To those who are frightened at the mere idea of planting forests, and who scorn European 

 methods as impracticable in this country, it may be of interest to know that in the government 

 forests of Saxony, which from 400,000 acres yield an annual net revenue of $1,900,000 continuously, 

 and where forests are largely planted with nursery stock, the sylvicultural work of planting, sow- 

 ing, etc., all told, amounts on an average for the entire woods to 10 cents per acre, and involves 

 only 6 per cent of the total expenses, all logging operations included. 



Whether similar efforts will pay here as long as the land is held by private owners whose 

 fortunes are only of to-day, and whose heirs will prefer to parcel the land out to inexperienced 

 settlers, can not here be considered. The experience abroad and also in this country indicates that 

 the State must at least undertake the most difficult and unprofitable parts, and that the greatest 

 good to the greatest number lies in State ownership of forests. New York waited a long time to see 

 private owners manage its woods rationally, but has found itself compelled at last to buy the land 

 and to establish a forest organization to keep its mountains from being converted into desert 

 brush lands and its streams from being alternately dry branches and mud torrents. 



THE NAVAL STORE INDUSTRY. 1 



The most important industry in the United States concerned in the utilization of by-products 

 from the forest is the tanbark industry, which was at great length canvassed and discussed in 

 volume 3, Eeports on Forestry. Next to it in importance stands the turpentine or naval store 

 industry, which is practically confined to the pineries of the Southern States within a belt of about 

 100 miles in width along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from North Carolina to Louisiana. 



The importance of this latter industry is found not only in the value of its products, namely, 

 nearly $10,000,000 worth per year, furnishing the bulk of the naval stores used in all the world, 



1 Reprinted mostly from Report of the Chief of Division of Forestry for 1892. 



