MUNICIPAL CONTROL OF SHADE TREES 229 
datory should be sufficient to prevent injury from lack of 
care of work already begun. A period of minimum care 
and attention, while a board and the people or their repre¬ 
sentatives are coming to a new understanding of one 
another’s position, is not necessarily a detriment, provided 
a reasonable maintenance has been possible in the interim, 
but without such care the results are ruinous, and work 
would better not be started than be undertaken with the 
possibility of such a period of neglect occurring. 
In New Jersey, 100 towns and cities have manifested 
recognition of the worth of trees by creating shade tree 
commissions. Every community in Massachusetts is 
safeguarding its trees through an appointed guardian, 
vested with adequate power. Other states and individual 
cities are giving increasing attention and appropriations 
to undertakings of the same nature and are making 
increasingly liberal expenditures to preserve existing trees 
and provide new ones to meet recognized needs. In the 
face of this, it is safe to assume that the practical American 
spirit will not be slow to insist that, if the municipality 
spends public funds for planting and protecting its trees, 
every precaution shall be taken to prevent private agen¬ 
cies or individuals from causing trees damage, which would 
undo the work and destroy the fruits of the labor and 
money expended for the conservation of shade and the 
beautification of the community. 
After a proper governing board is provided, the secur¬ 
ing of a competent executive is a matter of ordinary busi¬ 
ness procedure. It is usually desirable that he shall be not 
only a good executive but also a man with a knowledge of 
trees and trained in their care, so that he may be a com¬ 
petent adviser of the board as well as its executive. 
There has been a most unfortunate tendency to call 
such a man a “Forester” and the department that employs 
