664 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May 25, 1912 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and STREA^r Publishing Company, 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
Charles Otis, President, 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary, 
S. J. Gibson, Treasurer. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
Forest and Stream is the recognized medium ot 
entertainment, instruction and information between Amer¬ 
ican sportsmen. The editors invite communications on 
the subjects to which its pages are devoted, but are not 
responsible for the views of correspondents. Anonymous 
communications wdll not be regarded. 
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THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
CARE OF NATIONAL RESERVATIONS. 
The haphazard slap-dash way in which our 
national parks, national monuments and other 
reservations are managed is disgraceful. Scat¬ 
tered about in different departments and under 
different bureaus, they are far more expensive 
than they should be; and there is no settled 
policy with regard to their administration and 
no co-ordination in their management. 
Last .year Mr. Fisher, Secretary of the In¬ 
terior, took steps to secure information about our 
parks by calling a conference which was held at 
the Yellowstone National Park in September, to 
which were invited all interested in the matter, 
including the transportation companies, the con¬ 
cessioners and those charged with the adminis¬ 
tration of the parks. In the discussion and the 
papers read there, much interesting material was 
brought out, and this has recently been pub¬ 
lished by the Interior Department. 
In the proper care of our parks the public has 
the greatest interest of all, but the railroad in¬ 
terest is .scarcely less. People wish to visit the 
parks and to be well -served on the way. Many 
of them would like to go from one park to an¬ 
other, and the railway companies should be able 
to sell tickets which would enable travelers to 
make the round of two or more national parks 
at moderate cost. It is to the interest of rail¬ 
roads and public alike that the way through the 
rational parks should be made smooth and easy. 
This will mean comfort for the public, and so 
greater popularity, and a constantly increasing 
number of visitors, and this means greater earn¬ 
ings for the railroads. 
The local officials of the park are in some 
cases army officers and in others civilians. The 
troops in charge of the parks have, we believe, 
invariably done their duty remarkably well. So 
also for the most parts, have the civil employes; 
but in some cases, where these have been ap¬ 
pointed through political influence, they have not 
been efficient. The position of superintendent of 
the national parks or national reservations should 
not be given to a good political worker without 
regard to his fitness for the place. 
A bill now before Congress providing for the 
establishment of a Bureau of National Parks 
deserves careful attention, and after having been 
studied and amended, and approved by the Sec¬ 
retary of the Interior, ought to be passed. 
The national reservation—by whatever title it 
may be called—is as necessary to the public wel¬ 
fare as is the city park, and if there is no politi¬ 
cal advantage to be gained by legislating for its 
proper care and management, there is at least a 
great advantage to the public. 
SHORTSIGHTED ECONOMY. 
The agricultural bill, which passed the House 
of Representatives a month ago, contains a re¬ 
duction of over one million dollars from the 
present appropriation for the Forest Service, and 
this cut is made almost wholly from the funds 
available to prevent and fight forest fires. The 
current appropriation of $500,000 for building 
roads, trails and telephone lines needed to call 
and get men quickly to the fires is reduced to 
$275,000, and of the emergency fund of $1,000- 
000 for fighting forest fires, only one-fifth re¬ 
mains. The House, by a vote of seventy-four to 
seventy, restored the $225,000 cut from the ap¬ 
propriation for roads, trails and telephone lines, 
but on the final reading of the bill, the amend¬ 
ment for this increase was defeated. 
These cuts are made in the face of the record 
of 1910, in which seventy-nine fire fighters and 
twenty-five settlers were burned to death in the 
National forests, and twelve million dollars’ 
worth of timber was destroyed, and in the face 
of full knowledge that as the result of insuf¬ 
ficient appropriation, the National forests, wh'ch 
constitute about two billion dollars’ worth of 
public property, are in grave danger of even 
greater loss from fire. 
The protection of public property and of the 
lives of settlers, their wives and their children, 
as well as of the public servants within the Na¬ 
tional forests, lies close to the public welfare. 
It is easy to malign the Forest Service, as cer¬ 
tain members of Congress are accustomed to do. 
But it is much easier to malign the forest 
ranger than it is to do their brave and efficient 
work on the fire line. We must not let false 
economy further imperil the safety of public re¬ 
sources and the protection of human lives. 
It is time for Congress to face the facts. Be¬ 
fore the National forests can be made reason¬ 
ably safe against fire, they must have ten times 
the present trails • and six times the telephone 
lines now built. It has taken six years for Con¬ 
gress to appropriate enough money to build this 
small part of what is urgently needed. The 
standing timber alone on National forests is 
worth not less than five hundred million dollars. 
In twenty years it will probably be worth well 
over one billion dollars. If Congress gave the 
Forest Service the five hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars a year it asks for, to build trails and tele¬ 
phone lines, it would give only one-fourth of 
one per cent, of the value of timber standing 
to-day in the National forests. 
The preservation of this standing timber con¬ 
trols the preservation of stream flow, whose 
value is many times that of all the wood which 
the National forests contain. The value of the 
range in National forests, which again is largely 
dependent upon forest preservation, is incalcul¬ 
able. The fees for grazing alone bring into the 
public treasury every year twice the appropria¬ 
tion asked for trails and telephone lines. With¬ 
out these improvements the forests cannot be 
made safe, even with ten times the present 
patrol. 
The one million dollars asked for actual fire 
fighting and cut by the agricultural committee 
to one-fifth that amount is simply a fund made 
available for the use of the Forest Service in 
times of grave emergency. It may be less neces¬ 
sary than the money required to build roads and 
bridges, telephone lines and trails. Unless the 
fires occur, this money would be neither needed 
nor spent. But should the need arise, there could 
be no more criminal extravagance than not spend 
it. It cost $900,000 beyond the appropriation of 
the service to fight the big fires of 1910. If this 
money had not been spent, these fires would 
probably have wiped out the bulk of the forests 
of Northern Idaho, Montana and Western Wash¬ 
ington. 
It would be hardly less unpatriotic and unwise 
to withhold money to equip troops against an in¬ 
vading army than to refuse the appropriation 
needed to fight these fires and prevent the greater 
fires which may easily follow. 
A remarkable illustration of what an earnest 
worker in a worthy cause may do without money 
was given at the recent Forestry Conference in 
Nashville. The game and fish department of 
Tennessee receives practically no support from 
that State, its expenditures being guaranteed by 
J. H. Acklen, State Warden. Despite this handi¬ 
cap, Colonel Acklen has had safety devices put 
on all railway locomotives that are run through 
the forests, and has induced the railway compa¬ 
nies to maintain clear rights of way as a pre¬ 
caution against woods fires. Last year not one 
of the forty-three woods fires reported to his de¬ 
partment originated along a railway. Colonel 
Acklen pointed out the need of a paid warden 
service in Tennessee. He has given time and 
money to this work for eight years, and there 
is a limit to human endurance. 
After all, what does it matter whether Ameri¬ 
can athletic and rowing clubs are represented by 
a crew at the Olympic games. This class of 
sport in America savors of professionalism and 
is indulged in by only a very few. In all prob¬ 
ability crews from Oxford and Cambridge, the 
representative oarsmen of England, will not have 
an entry at the Olympic meet; therefore, should 
one of our crews win, it would not mean any 
great honor in the rowing or sporting world. 
It looks as though America would be just as 
happy if no crews went to Sweden this year or 
any other year. 
