In September, 1915 I was appointed an inspec tor. I had an office in San Francisco. And my job then was to go out and see what the heck the fellows were doing anyway in the woods. Fry: You mean the Forest Service rangers — what they were doing? Kelley: Yes — what they were doing — what the supervisors were doing. 11 Fry: When you were supervisor, what dealings did you have with the lumber industry in the Placer- ville area? Kelley: Not very much because there just wasn't big com pany work in that territory. Two big companies. They had their own timber. That was the big El Dorado Company. They have a big mill now up in Placerville. It's about six miles above Placer- ville. They're still operating. Then there was one at Diamond Springs, a big mill way back there in the mountains. But they had their own timber. And we just sold their little timber to anybody in those days. Fry: You were in this area then during its conversion from land which was really unassigned to land of the forest reserve. What was the local public reaction? Kelley: Up in Downieville there was opposition because that was mining country. And they [the Forest Service] had ditches for water. And they were rowing with the stockmen up there all the time because their old cows would get in the ditches and break the ditches down, and then they'd have to repair the ditches. And they would object to the cowmen all the time. But he [a cowman] said, "The hell with you. I'm not going to worry about your ditches. We're worrying about our cows." And they were after me, in the early days, to do something about those cowmen, to keep their cows out of my ditches. So there was some opposition there, but they didn't go out and set fires at all. But that was the great opposition there. Fry: In other words, they were opposed because of the grazing then. Kelley: Yes, that was their trouble. Fry: You didn't get much opposition from the lumber industry? Kelley: They didn't have any lumber industry in that area. Fry: They really had all their own timber lands then in those days? 12 Kelley: Over there, around Loyalton, there were some saw mills around that territory. But they bought lumber from people who owned the land, not from public land. The only opposition to that was out south of Loyalton, but it was small. Fry: Did you have any outspoken support for this from anywhere? Kelley: The only place we had open support was around Lake Tahoe, where people wanted to rent areas around Lake Tahoe that were owned by the Forest Service or the government, for the building of homes and places to rent to people. One outfit, I guess it still operates on one of those lakes adjoining Lake Tahoe, Fallen Leaf Lake, that place right on the west side of Lake Tahoe. I wrote that permit a long, long time ago. And it's still there I think. Fry: You didn't have any dealings with farmers, did you? Kelley: Not up in that area, no. Of course we had lots of dealings with the sheepmen and the cattlemen. From Nevada they'd come back into California. They had to get a permit from the Forest Service to bring their cattle from the East into California. And a lot of those fellows lost out. They wouldn't handle the sheep the way they should handle them, and their permits were cancelled in the course of time. 13 THE REGIONAL OFFICE IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1915-1917 Fry: From Place rvi lie you went to the Regional Office in San Francisco. And you told me before that Ed Kotok had followed you there to Placerville. Kelley: When I left Placerville, Ed followed me as super visor in Placerville. And he was there for quite a while. I forget how many years. I think a fellow named Smith followed him. Smith's still there in Placerville. Fry: I see. How long were you in San Francisco, then? Kelley: I was in San Francisco until July, 1917. Fry: During that time what was youz position besides inspector? Kelley: That's about all I did. Oh I did some other work. I did a lot of mineral examination. You see, in those days there were no mineral engineers avail able to the Forest Service at all. And I was the only man then working for the Forest Service who had ever had any experience in mining or had any idea or philosophy of mining, So I did a lot of mineral examination for the service. Somebody would go in there and locate a piece of ground or had a piece of ground, and make application for patent, and somebody had to go in there and pass judgment on the nature of the property. And I did a lot of that sort of thing all over that section of California. Fry: How did this work out? Did you find quite a num ber of bona fide mining claims or was this a problem? Kelley: That all depends on how big the mines were and how 14 Kelley: rich the fellows were that had those claims. And we had some bitter rows with some of those fellows. They'd go in and make an application. First they'd locate the mine. Then they'd prospect it and claim they'd prospected it. Then they'd apply for patents on the basis of their claims for what they'd found. And my job was to go in there and see how many lies they'd told. They were after the mines. And some of them were after timber on those claims . Fry: Do you mean you had more trouble with the big ones or with the little miners? Kelley: I never had any trouble with the little miners because the little miners just located. I never had anything to do with a small locator who ever applied for a patent. Just the largest people did that. Fry: Are they the ones who were apt to use it for the timber? Kelley: That was one reason. But it varied greatly. Some body would go in there and make out an application for a patent and they'd see that they were up against it. It wasn't so easy. They had to prove the validity of their claim and the validity of their purposes. And they'd just tear it up and say, "We're just going to quit. We're not going to try to get it." Fry: Oh, so they'd just give up. Kelley: And some of them were valid claims, of course. There was no question about that. I did a lot of that sort of work for the Forest Service. Fry: Who was the Regional Supervisor? Kelley: When I first went into the San Francisco office it was Coert Du Bois. He was a fine fellow, a bril liant man. Fry: He was here at a difficult time, wasn't he? When the forests were just being set up. Kelley: Oh yes. He came here before the Region was es tablished, you see. They had the Forest estab- 15 Kelley: lished but they didn't have the Region. And Du Bois came here and he was one of the inspectors of all this territory. Du Bois went to France with me during the First World War. 16 TENTH ENGINEERS, WORLD WAR I Fry: Oh, were you in the Tenth Engineers Corps? Kelley: Yes. I was a Captain in the Tenth Engineers. Then I became a Major in the Tenth Engineers, later on. I was in France by that time. Fry: According to some of the notes I've taken, in France it was the duty of the Tenth Engineers to try to locate the timber needed for war-time purposes. Is that right? Kelley: There were several men who did that, but they were in France before we got there, negotiating with the French for timber and getting agreements from the French that they'd give this timber here or that timber there to the Tenth Engineers. And when we got over there, some of that timber had been — I don't think any of it had been paid for — but it had been agreed that we could cut this timber or cut that timber. And later on, as time went on, we had the responsibility for finding more timber. And then these men who were over there first would come along and negotiate with the French for that timber. Fry: I see. And what parts of this operation were under you? Kelley: I had to build the sawmills and see that the lumber was cut. And I also had to get the stuff hauled to some point wherever the operators would say they needed it. Fry: What did Du Bois do? Kelley: I don't know what Du Bois did. He went to France with the Tenth Engineers, but he was never a part 17 Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: of our organization. I never could understand that. [Henry] Graves was over there. And I think that Du Bois must have had some understanding, some connection with Graves, because Coert was never with our organization there. I never saw him over there . What did you think he did? I don't know what he did. He didn't stay over there anything like the length of time we did. He came home to organize the Twentieth Engineers in the West. I was going to ask you to give an evaluation of Du Bois and his work here in California. He was a fine, fine thinker, and a good presenter of problems . In some of these books I have around here, I had to do with writing a section on Du Bois for a book that Kotok wrote on forest fires. He was an able fellow and a very fine fellow to work with. He and I made a trip one- time from Lake Tahoe, from Truckee clear up to the top of the mountains there — the Truckee Range — and rode those tops all the way to the edge of the Walker River. We got along famously. Except that we came to such steep hills to go down on the Walker River that he couldn't go down those steep hills. It would make him dizzy. So he tried to go down backwards. [Laughter] I took the horses down, and he tried to go down those steep hills back wards. Then out on the Walker River we climbed up to the headwaters of the Cherry River, which heads way up in Yosemite Park. We ended the trip way up there at the headwaters of the Cherry River in the Park. Then we came out of there and rode west and got rid of our horses. What did you do then when you came back from World War I? Our regiment came home in January, 1919. I didn't come with my regiment. I stayed over there with part of the Twentieth Engineers, repairing roads that the American army had worn out, for the French 18 Kelley: people. I did that at the request of the Chief Engineer of the United States Army in France. And I had the wherewithal to crush a rock and cut it up in pebbles and pack it around and put it in the roads and repair the roads . Then the big job — it almost makes me sick to the stomach to think about it — we had a lot of lumber piled up in a place called Esertil. And the army wanted that lumber resawed to use for burying the boys who had been killed wherever their bodies could be found. Fry: Oh, to make coffins. Kelley: That's right. And I was told that I could put that job in the hands of young Germans who had been arrested and put in prison around Esertil. Fry: You mean prisoners of war? Kelley: Yes. So I went down there and signed up those boys. And they were just boys. And I put several of them to work remaking those sawmills. Making small sawmills out of big sawmills, and resawing some of those big boards and making small boards out of them. They landed on wagons and hauled them up into places where our boys were to be buried, which today are those big cemeteries that you've probably read about. And my job was to see that that lumber was delivered up there. Then when I was doing that I could see those trucks come in there with all those bodies in boxes — big boxes. And those boys of that organi zation having to do with burial, would pull those bodies out of those boxes and try and identify them. Some of them had their dog tags on and some of them didn't. And they were down in the bottom of the box. That didn't worry those men very much. Their job was to get those fellows in the ground. And if they had to put somebody else's little old iron metal on their bodies, it wouldn't worry them at all. They just tied it on. And I'd see that going on. And I'd say, "My God, that's a heck of a way to do a job." Fry: So there was a good deal of misidentification. 19 Kelley: Yes. Then a month went by and there would come the mothers and fathers of these young boys looking for their boy's grave. And they'd take the bodies out and take them back home. I never could see the justification of taking a dead man out of a hole in the ground and taking him back home to put him in another hole in the ground. Well, I did a lot of that kind of work during the time I was a major. A major is supposed to be a big guy, you know, but that's what I did. [Laughter] But in the course of time I came home. Fry: A question I'd like to ask you is if there was any intellectual cross-pollination between French lumbermen and foresters and American foresters on methods and techniques during this period? Kelley: The only place we had any association with other organizations was with the Canadians. They oper ated in the same general territory as I did when I was running the sawmill. Within two or three miles from where I was operating my sawmill were some Canadians operating the same type of sawmill. I never was around any other organizations. Fry: Then your job really didn't have a great deal to do with forest protection or silvicultural prac tices or anything like that. You were there to harvest lumber. Kelley: Yes. And the French told us what they wanted done. Their foresters came out and marked our timber. And they told us — some of their big gun foresters for the French — would tell their men what they should do and what they shouldn't do. And my theory was that we were over there to do the best we could to satisfy the French because maybe we would want some more timber. I never had any trouble with the French. Fry: Did they employ different cutting methods? Kelley: Oh yes, different philosophies entirely. Fry: Do you think it influenced us at all? Kelley: No. They were very reasonable as far as my exper- 20 Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley; ience was concerned. I meant for post-war development of forestry and cutting practices. No. The forester that I had most to do with when I left France — headed to leave France — I went up to a place called Pontarleille to say goodbye to him, and he was upstairs on tne third story, in the town of Pontarleille. And I had a very nice visit with him. I got so I could talk enough French to keep myself out of trouble. And he followed me down these three steps of stairs and out on to the street. And he had a moustache and he had long whiskers. And he had both his mous tache and these long whiskers and his nose all shined up with moustache wax. And when we got out on the street he grabbed me around and said, "Major, your men down there have been very, very cooperative and are very, very fine fe Hove to know. I've known lots of foresters in my experience with French foresters. But I've never had anybody any more agreeable to be with than you fellows. I'm greatly indebted to you." So with moustache and whiskers and all, he kissed me on both cheeks. [Laughter] That was just amusing. Then when you came home I supposa you were mustered out, but did you stay in the reserves? No. When I came home I didn't know what I was going to do. But I'll tell you what I did do. I came home to see my mother. She lived in San Francisco at that time. I went to see her one morning. That same morning I went down to the Forest Service office in San Francisco and walked down the hall and the first man I saw was Coert Du Bois. And he said, "My God I'm glad to see you.1 He wanted to see me because before Mr. Graves went to France he had worked for a long time in Congress to get an appropriation for the construc tion of roads and trails in California. And Con gress appropriated quite a lot of money to do that. Then Mr. Graves came back from France and he found out that none of that money had been spent, not a dollar of it, and he felt as if the Congress would think that he didn't play square with the Congress. 21 Kelley; Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: So he called all the regional foresters together — the western regional foresters--to meet him in Spokane, Washington. And he gave all these regional foresters in Regions 5 and 6 the devil. He had said to Congress that it was absolutely necessary for the welfare and protection of those forests. So he laid down the law that these re gional foresters, just as soon as they got home, would get a hold of somebody of their organization that would start road building and do it quick. So the thing that Du Bois told me to do that morning when I got home to get busy and build these roads and do it damn quick. [Laughter] And spend that money. This was like the experience you had in France. Yes. Do something and do it quick. What about equipment for road building then? Oh we didn't have any. at that job — We had to buy it. I kept Excuse me, what was your title in this job? I guess my title was the same one as when I left. Anyway, I was supposed to go out and stir up a lot of enthusiasm on the part of the super visors building roads, and see what they needed. I traveled through the country to see what roads we should actually build and what prospect we had of getting machinery. 22 FIRE CONTROL INSPECTOR FROM THE WASHINGTON OFFICE- 1919 Kelley: Thanksgiving Day, 1919, I was up on the border between California and Oregon and I received a telegram from Roy Headley, who was then working out of Washington, D.C., to meet him in Sacra mento. I left that country and went to Sacra mento and met Headley there. And he gave me a job in Washington, D.C. as an inspector and various other things. So I went to Washington. I was an inspector in fire control, largely. There had been terrible fires in the fall of 1919 in Idaho and Montana and Oregon and Washington. So my first job after I got to Washington was to come back to San Francisco and find my suitcase and go up to Montana. And I was in Montana and Idaho all that year — 1920. Fry: So you were sort of a fire protection expert-at- large? Kelley: I wouldn't claim I was an expert. [Laugher] I was sent out on those jobs because I had the ability to do things and do them in a hurry. And I could see that men responded to that kind of urge to do things and get on the job, in other words. That's why I was sent on some of those jobs. Fry: So that when something really needed getting done and expedited, you could do it. Was this the time you were burned out in Missoula? Kelley: Oh, I was retired then. I retired in 1944. I came down here in 1942. But when the Second World War broke out this country was practically rubber less. And we needed rubber. And the only 23 Kelley: material that anyone knew about — I didn't know anything about that — some of the rubber men did know about it—that could be planted and grown in a rub ber producing condition was Guayule, and do it fast. Fry: I want to get your story of Guayule, but in order to keep this chronological, could we take your story of the CCC development first and then go from that to the Guayule? Kelley: Yes. I didn't work for anybody but the President of the United States on that Guayule job. And I had all the authority that I needed to get that job done. Fry: You had top priority — Kelley: I had top priority on all that kind of thing. And it was a great satisfaction to have the opening to do things when the pressure was keenest. 24 Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS IS BORN Roosevelt was elected at just about that time, and he had all kinds of damn fool ideas. And when I got home to Missoula I found more people in that office than I had in the whole organiza tion before I left — before I went to Guayule or any other time. In those days [before Roosevelt] a dollar was a dollar, and you had to ram the best we had in our brains to get the dollar to do things with. But here comes Roosevelt with all this money — For the CCC. Yes. And he passed it out. I came home and I saw all this organization there. And I knew very well that they were [weren't] using the dollars economically. But it hurt my sense of justice to go so far in the opposite direction from what we had to go way back during the years when we had to scrape to get the things that were absolutely necessary. That's why I re tired. I couldn't stand that stuff any more. You mean in the '40s? . Yes, in the late '40s. You mean you thought they were being wasted? Oh, they were wasted and they're still wasting it in my view. Now about the CCC. Were you in Washington at about the time this thing broke? 25 Kelley: No, I was in Missoula on New Year's Day, 1932. I was working every day during those years. I came down to the office, and as I came into the office the telephone rang and it was a call for me from Washington from Greeley. He said, "Have you got a big suitcase? You get a big suitcase, and take the first flight out of Montana and come to Wash ington." So I did. He said, "You tell your wife you don't know when you're coming home." [Laughter] And all the other regional foresters were in Wash ington, or they came there within a short time thereafter. ! Our Chief Forester was a good fellow. But he was a Republican. And we were going into a Demo cratic administration. And when we got there we saw, or I did and Show saw, a copy of a little order from President Roosevelt which roughly out lined what he had in mind for the CCC. And roughly how it was to be organized arid how he wanted it done quickly. After about a day and a half Bevier Show and I could see very clearly that we weren't going to do things quickly as the President asked. And no one seemed to know what should be done. We went through that for a couple of days , always winding up at the same place — not a damn thing being done. So Bevier and I walked home one night and we de cided that somebody had to do something or the President would fire the whole Forest Service and get somebody that was going to go ahead and do it. And the next day we went down there and Bevier and I got all the other regional foresters together and told them how we'd been horsing around down there, just talking, talking, talking, and no one arriving at any decision for anything. And we thought that that would have to be called to a halt. Bevier and I both felt that Stuart, the man in charge, was just not on the ball. Something was going wrong. And I figured tnat it was his fear that the Democrats would be firing the whole outfit of us and put the Democrats in power. I don't know whether it was true or not. So we pro posed that all the regional foresters go in to the chief forester and tell him what we thought we ought to be doing. Then they said, "Who's going 26 Kelley: to tell the Chief Forester?" [Laughter] They went out, and when they came back they said, "We've decided that you ought to go and tell the Chief Forester what this is all about." So I did. He was so unable to get his thoughts together that he didn't answer us at all. Until the next day, he got thinking. • Fry: Could you give me a kind of outline of what you told him? Kelley: I told him that the President's outline, which he sent, we ought to get busy and do something about it. And we told him roughly what we thought ought to be done. I don't mean to convey the idea that we knew exactly what ought to be done. But we knew that something had to be done to get things started. It's lost in my mind just exactly how it came about, but anyway, Bevier and I in the next couple of days sat down at a table there up on the fifth floor in Washington, D.C. and started to work out an outline. And we worked like the dickens, night and day. And we laid out jobs for all these regional foresters to do. Fry: When I talked to Mr. Show he mentioned something about making up maps . Kelley: Yes, the President wanted maps made where all these [CCC] companies would go. He didn't know exactly how many companies there would be. Then Bevier and I told these other regional foresters, "You'd better get those maps made." And we outlined the maps that we thought needed to be made. And as the days went by the President told how many com panies he'd want, and where these companies would be placed, where 'd they go on the maps. And he'd want to see the maps . When we took them over there he never looked at them. [Laughter] Fry: He saw that you had them. Kelley: Yes. The President had a little secretary, a little bit of a fellow. But he was a smart little fellow, Robert Fechner. Then Bevier undertook to determine the per sonnel that would be needed. And I undertook to write up the materials we'd need — the machines 27 Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: that we'd need and what kind of machinery we'd need, and the trucks that we'd need, and all about that. Bevier estimated the number of people. I estimated the number of machines and the cost. Was this just for Region One and — No, all the regions. And the only people that they had to tell them anything about what we were going to do were Bevier and I. Because we were the only fellows who thought we could work the thing out. We weren't too sure of that, but we knew somebody had to do it. Don't get the idea that we thought we were God Almighty himself. Somebody had to do it and we were willing to risk ourselves to get the thing done. And we worked all that out. There were many, many steps to this. One of them was that somebody determined that the states had to have a look in on this. So the President told us to get the states in on the job. Somebody wrote to the governors and asked them to get their men into Washington and do it quick. The state departments of forestry? Yes. So they were there too. They were there. Now it came down to, who's going to run this thing? So all the regional foresters decided that all the Eastern regional foresters would be led by an Eastern National Forest repre sentative, Bob Evans. And Bevier and I took all the rest of the regional foresters, state foresters. And we got them all together and outlined to them what the job was: to make the maps of their res pective states and why they had so many camps es tablished and all about it. That took several days. Then the politicians came in on the picture also. They wanted some local men employed, inde pendent of the CCC, because those fellows were out of jobs. They had to give them jobs. In the interim the man that the President had appointed to run the CCC had come from Boston. He was sick when he got there. He was sick for a 28 Kelley; Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: week or more in a hotel in Washington. He got on the job. He was just as green as the grass, you know. He didn't know the first thing in the world about what to do or how to do it or what to do. So Bevier and I and some of the other fellows went up to his room and told him what the politicians wanted to do. They wanted to hire local men, for get all about the CCC, hire local men. He said, "We can never do that. I have my instructions from the President." He was a good politician. "I'll put a limit on the number of local men employable by each company." And things were worked out that way. And we established the amount of wages to be paid to the local men. And that made other prob lems. Politicians wanted to hire the local men, you see. They didn't want any foresters to hire the local men. They wanted to say what local men would go where. We couldn't handle that thing that way. And they didn't do it. Then later on, after the whole thing got started, then the poli ticians got bigger and bigger and bigger. I see. You found this was true in Montana also? In some places yes. Butte was one of the places that we had trouble. But around Missoula we didn't have any trouble like that at all. The Democrats there — he was an optometrist. "I don't know any thing about what you fellows have got to do. I don't know the first thing about it." This was your representative in the House? That was our representative of the Democratic Party. He was a big gun in that country. And he told us, "You select the men that you want. I don't know what kind of men you need. It's foolish for me to pick out men that are going to go out to the for ests and do things that I never heard of. You let me know who you want and I'll see that you get those men." And it worked very well. We had some Idaho counties, too, that were very satisfactory in that respect. Did you have political flunkies in higher positions later on in the CCC — supervisory or technical? We had, yes. But the man in Washington who repre- 29 Kelley; Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: sented the President, he had his men who were some big guns. We didn't see very much of them; we had to see some of them. After we got all of our estimates made and all the maps made and all things ready to go for the President, Bob Stuart then told the secretary of the President that we were ready to present a plan. And Bob Stewart went over there and Chris Granger went over there and Show and I went over there, and that represented the Forest Service. But he also had the army men. They were supposed to have a function in this thing, and we had put down in our plan what that function would be. The chief of finances was there — Director of the Bureau of Budget. And by that time the represen tative of the Park Service was there. What is his name? He's still there in the Park Service. Conrad Wirth is his name. The Park Service wasn't in this at all. When the President wrote to the Forest Ser vice, he didn't have the Park Service listed at all. Bevier Show and I were in that office there on the sixth floor of the building and in comes John Coffman with tears in his eyes. He said, "How is it that you fellows haven't even asked the Park Service to sit in here with you on the discussion of this problem?" I said, "John, just bear in mind that all the Forest Service has been asked to do is, to do what the President asked them to do. He didn't mention your organization. If you want to come in on this, the best thing you can do is go back to your boss and tell him that you're not in on this thing and it's important that if he wants to be in on it to go to the President and tell him what he wants." His boss [Ickes] was capable of doing that, too, wasn't he? [Laughter] So he went out. The next tiling we knew was that the Chief of the Park Service had gone over to the President and the President said, "Go ahead, of course you ought to be in on this." 30 Kelley: Bevier and I were asked to present our case because we had the only case to present. Then this array man said, "Hold on here, the army has a look- in on this. I'd like to present the army's plan," and he presented the army plan all nicely written: the Forest Service and the Park Service weren't in on it at all; the army was going to do the whole job. The President's secretary, after the army man had presented his case, said, "I can't understand that. That wasn't according to the President's plan." And this bombastic colonel said, "That's what the Chief of the Army wants to do." And he said, "I have it right here in his own writing. If the army can't do all these things the way he outlined it, we don't want anything to do with it at all." Well, the little secretary over there at the desk said, "Well, Colonel, I want you to understand and I want your superior to understand that the Chief of the United States Army is the President of the United States." And this fellow said, "Yes, sir." He just quit right then. Then we came in. Bevier had put down his personnel organization — for the number of person nel and what kind of jobs they would do. And I came down with all my technical organization. We added that up and it ran to $400 million or some thing like that. And this big guy who was going to be the President's money man said, "Take that all apart. We don't have any money like that. We can't buy all this equipment that you listed here. We can't employ all the men and technicians." And he went on and on and on. And the little old fellow across the table said, "That's all in keeping with what the Presi dent would like to have. He knows that they have to have equipment to build roads and what not. He knows that they have to have technicians to mark timber and supervise the cutting." And [the money man] said, "We don't have that kind of money." The next morning the Washington Post came out saying that that man had resigned — just that quick. 31 Kelley: What happened that day was that that man went over, after we sat there outlining our estimates, and told the President what we did in a general way and that we didn't have that kind of money and we couldn't provide that kind of money, I think the President then told him, "I'll get somebody that can provide that kind of money for me." And this fellow quit. [Laughter] He must have because it just followed just like that, you know. Then, that put us on a straight course. And with the help of Mr. Fechner, we went to bat. And Fechner said, "The next step is to put all this plan up to the President as you presented it to me. I'll talk to the President. I know what you have in mind. And I know he will be very enthusi astic about what you want to do." So he called us a day or two later and said the President would see us at 10 o'clock some morning. We were loaded down with maps and everything else; he thought the President should have this. We went into the President's office and he greeted us very nicely. And he sat right down in his chair there in his office and began to talk. And he didn't ask us to show him anything, absolutely nothing. He started in by telling us how his in terest in forestry was stimulated by his cousin. And he went on and on and on. Fry: Which cousin? Kelley: T. R. [Theodore Roosevelt] And he told us all about it, what T. R. did for him to start him on the ranch up there in New York. He didn't ask us to show him anything. He just went on and on and on. And fin ally he looked at that ship clock that he had in his office, and he said, "Gentlemen, I've been here forty-five minutes. I've got other things to do." He said, "Goodbye." [Laughter] And he went out. And we loaded up our maps and things and left, too. Fry: Bevier Show told me how the girls worked overtime on the weekend to get all these things out — Kelley: That meant then that the next step was to get the state foresters, tell them what had happened, and tell them to go home and start their ball rolling. 32 Kelley: And the regional foresters went the same way. Bevier Show and I worked like dogs on that thing — I don't know how many days — night and day. Fry: Could you evaluate this as a government program — Do you think that it accomplished what it was sup posed to? Kelley: No, it didn't accomplish what some of us thought it might accomplish. But I think in general it worked as well as could be expected in view of all the politics and everything else that was involved. And it worked out, too, very greatly from point to point. Now the states never got anything like the work done that the Forest Service did. They just don't work that way you know. Fry: What was their problem? Kelley: Well, they're politicians. Fry: It was easier to control it on the local level by politicians? Kelley: Yes, absolutely. But some of the states did very well. New York, for instance, did very well. Minnesota did very well. But [in the] other states, [it] depend [ed] upon the kind of organization they had. Fry: From your vantage point in Missoula did you think that the camps were able to accomplish a great deal of things which otherwise would have been postponed indefinitely? Kelley: I think the Forest Service in Montana and parts of Idaho with very few exceptions did far better than the states did because the states were all mixed up with political pressures that interrupted what they had in mind — what the state foresters had in mind — and what they'd like to do very independently to reach their own decisions. And they had a lot of men employed in superior positions that would hamper the work of the Forest Service. Fry: Mr. Show mentioned that one advantage the Forest Service had was that there already were plans drawn up for construction projects and improvements 33 Fry: and developments that were ready to go at the time CCC broke. Did you have any such plans up in Montana and Idaho? Kelley: No, and neither did California. They had ideas of what they were going to do. But they didn't have finished plans. Fry: But they did have it at least in the beginning stages of making a structured outline of what they wanted to accomplish? Kelley: Oh yes, they did that. 34 THE FIRE JUMPERS: FROM STUNT MEN TO FIRE FIGHTERS Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Also at about this time there was some new develop ment in fire control and fire suppression, I think. Your friends in the Forest Service tell me that you had something to do with it, such as the fire jumpers. Did this occur first in the Montana region? It's not clear in my mind anymore just how and why we got such an organization started. When we started there we had men who could make jumping outfits and make them themselves. You mean parachutes? Yes, parachutes. Some of them were just show- jum pers in California and they came up there. And they could make parachutes and everything else that they needed. Of course they didn't make them all as time went on. But we had them. And we made those kind of things down in Idaho and made some of them for places in Washington and Oregon. They had some fellows there who did part ahead of the thing and were pretty v/ell gone when we finally got to where we started. But those fel lows that came up to our country from California who had been jumpers — entertainers — they were well- equipped to start this. Those fellows knew how to jump, and they'd train men to do jumps. We had more trained men than I think any of the other organizations did. Because it's not that we had been doing the same but because somebody else had, somewhere along the line. Did you send for these men from California? No, I didn't do it myself. But somebody in our organization did. I don't know who it was. Who ever did it, did it with my okay. At that time 35 Kelley: Fry: Kelley; Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: somebody had to be the fall guy. Yes. You were willing to try this new thing. I was willing to be the fall guy. [Laughter] Somebody had to do those kind of things, you know. Do you know where it was first tried? I know where it was first thought of and that was in Ogden, Utah. But it didn't have much support in Ogden, Utah. The fellow who first preached the philosophy of jumping down, knowing that it would save a lot of time and get more men thoroughly informed, started in Ogden. And it just died there. And then somehow it picked up again in Montana? Yes, we picked it up. And Washington picked it up, too, about that same time. But we had more to work with and more determination to go ahead with [it] I think than any others I heard of. Ed Kotok told me that the areas that you super vised consistently had very bad fire conditions. I'm not bragging but when I went up there in 1920, that summer Montana and Idaho had very, very bad fire conditions. went up there and spent a lot of time up there. And he saw that they lacked, in that section of tne country, a lot of leadership that didn't produce what ought to have been produced in the control of fires. So one thing — he told me what he saw and what he felt was necessary to be seen in that country, if we were ever to control fires in that section of the country. There were no roads and very few trails. So one of the first things that I had to do when I went up there was to try to bestir the men on those important jobs to get busy and lay out objectives in fire control. That didn't come about just exactly as promptly as I hoped it would for two reasons: One, they changed supervisors, that is, regional foresters. The man that they put in charge was a fine fellow from Denver, where they never had any big fires. And he had bad luck and had a nervous breakdown. 36 Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: Fry: Kelley: So he was taken out of there. Then it came to filling that position. Well, in the interim I'd been made Regional Forester of all that country from Maine clear to Arkansas, the East. And when that position was filled they were trying to find someone who had been in that North country, some one who knew his way around in that country and had some idea of what was needed in the way of action to control those fires. Well, I was sent to take on that job. So that was when you became Regional Forester there. Yes. And then I had control to do the things that seemed to me to be necessary to have been done several years before but they weren't done. When Kotok gave you that statement, he was talking about the time after I went over there as Regional For ester and I had the control of things and all the help of previous look-outs and previously seeing things underway there. This began when? That was 1929 when I went up there. That was nine years after I first went to that country. I'm not bragging. Oh no, this is information that is necessary for us to have. I think I'd better not question you any more tonight. You've been giving me answers for quite a while now. But I do want to get to the Guayule Project; maybe we could talk about that later. Anytime you say. Final Typist: Mary Millman 37 INDEX - Evan W. Kelley Army, and CCC, 30 CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) , 24-33 Co f f man , John , 2 9 DuBois, Coert, 14-17, 20-21 El Dorado Nat'l Forest, 9-11 Eliot, , 6-9 Evans, Bob, 27 Fechner, Robert, 26, 31 fire protection, 10, 22 fire protection, jumpers, 34-36 Granger, C. M. (Chris) , 29 Graves, Henry S., 17, 20-21 grazing, 11-12 Greeley, William B., 25 Guayule Rubber Project, 22-23 Headley, Roy, 22 Kotok, Ed, 13 lumber camps, 3-4 mining, 1-2, 4, 13-14 Plumas Nat'l Forest, 3-4, 10-11 Pride, , 4-5 Show, Bevier, 25, 27, 30-32 38 Stuart, R. V., 25-26, 29 Tenth Engineers (Forestry) American Expeditionary Force in France, 1917-1919, 16-19 Twentieth Engineers (Forestry) , 17-19 World War I: Tenth Engineers (Forestry) , 16-19 Yuba Nat'l Forest, 6-7 The Bancroft Library University ot California/Berkeley Regional Oral History Office John W. Keller RECOLLECTIONS OF GIPFORD PINCHOT An Interview Conducted by Amelia R. Fry Sponsored by Resources for the Future and the United States Forest Service © 1974 by the Regents of the University of California TABLE OF CONTENTS - John Weiman Keller INTERVIEW HISTORY FORESTRY SCHOOLS AND FORESTS IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NORTH CAROLINA GIFFORD PINCHOT AND FEDERAL ISSUES IN FORESTRY: 1930 's and 1940 's PINCHOT CHARACTERIZATION 16 INDEX 23 INTERVIEW HISTORY - JOHN WEIMAN KELLER John Keller was a trained forester in the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters from about 1906 on, including the period when Gifford Pinchot was Commissioner of Forestry of that state from 1920 to 1922. Pinchot became governor, and Keller continued as, among possibly other functions, Chief of the Bureau of Extension in the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters. Both men left the state "about 1935", according to Keller. This interview came about almost by chance in 1964. It was recorded in the knowledge that it mignt never be transcribed, since the interviewer was on a different project at that time, one designed to document the development of policy in the U.S. Forest Service, and funded for that purpose by Resources for the Future. While on a visit to North Carolina in the summer, the interviewer took the opportunity to confer with forestry authorities at North Carolina State University at Raleigh in order to build up a bank of information and questions for sub sequent interviews to be held in Washington, D.C. In the pro cess, she received repeated recommendations to tape record Mr. Keller because he had been so close to Pinchot, and also be cause his advanced age (seventy-seven) made postponement of any interviewing a doubtful course of action. On two hours' notice, he agreed to tape record. The interview was held on a stifling July day in his neat frame house, mercifully cooled by trees all around. The front room where we sat was cool, pleasantly dark, and he sat sideways by his old, probably oak secretary. He was most cordial, and he tried to ration his remarks on each topic in view of the limited time. Many specific battles which long since had been dimmed by subsequent, fresher ones, blurred into general statements; but he did manage to give glimpses here and there of Pinchot the talented administrator, the public relations man, the politician, and of course the forester. Three-quarters of the way through the session, the reels of the battery-powered tape recorder began noticeably to turn more slowly and finally to stop. This part of the interview has been reconstituted from the notes taken at the time. Afterwards the tape had to go into the limbo file until funds could materialize for transcribing and editing it. In 1974, under a grant from the United States Forest Service, it was possible to produce a finished manuscript; but, since in this case the edited transcript could not be checked and con firmed by the interviewee, the only editing done consisted of checking out names, terms, and dates, and adding topical headings. Where words are not clear or inaudible, this is appropriately indicated. Amelia R, Fry Interviewer 22 May 1974 486 The Bancroft Library University of California at Berkeley FORESTRY SCHOOLS AND FORESTS IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NORTH CAROLINA (July 3, 1964) Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: I understand that you worked for Gifford Pinchot as a forester. Where was this? Pennsylvania? I can tell you exactly what he did after he came to Pennsylvania. That was about 1922; he was ap pointed Commissioner of Forestry at that time. From then on I worked with him quite in detail right on up until we both left the state. Which was when? He left about 1935. He was first appointed by the Governor as Forest Commissioner/ and he reorganized the whole department. The reason I can't tell you much about federal forestry is that we were having our own troubles in Pennsylvania. You know, we were the first state to start it, way back before there were any forestry schools. In fact, we couldn't even get Pennsylvania State College interested in a forestry course, and the Legislature told us to start our own forestry school. That's the way Mont Alto began. Then they just went along in a sort of unorganized way as far as the forestry part was concerned. They were buying land. They bought the first million acres of land up there, forests, at an average of one dollar an acre, so you can tell how cheap it was at that time. This was when? They started buying in 1898, and they bought a little bit to start with. Then I went down to Mont Alto in 1906, as a student, and at that time they were sort of increasing the purchases Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: of land, and by the time I got out in the field they were buying land in very large quantities. Our land purchase program was the biggest thing that ever happened because it gave the foresters something to attach themselves to. People weren't interested in forestry at that time. They were thinking only of protecting the headwaters of the streams; that's the only reason they were buying the land. And then when we started the forestry school, the first class graduated way back there in 1906, the year that I went out. And then from there on we graudated students regularly up until 1928, when the state forestry school at Mont Alto and the state college forest school were united. So then Mont Alto ceased to exist and everything went over to the state [college]. And I understand, the junior and senior classes and the dean picked up their baggage and came down here about 1929? That's right, that's the way the North Carolina school started. I understand you were going to talk to Dr. Hoffman. I hope to today. Dr. Hoffman was the fellow who left up there and brought the senior class down here, and that's how he started the forest school here in North Carolina. Some of them were disgruntled, you know; they didn't want to give up and they didn't like the way it was transferred. And they just picked up stakes and came down here, but it was a good thing because they've got a. good forestry school here now, mighty fine. Yes, he must have been a leader in forestry as a field of study. When he came to Mont Alto, he was supposed to be a protection man, versed in forest protection. And he was working on this business of fore seeing dangerous fire seasons by humidity and temperature, and combining the two of them. But then when he came down here, he spread out in all fields. He got to be quite an intellectual fellow. Keller: Fry: Keller: He did something down here that no one has ever done, and I don't know whether Walter [Hoffman] is too modest to tell you about it or not. He started to buy forest land for the school of fores try, state of North Carolina. And the way he did it was to go to the insurance companies, and he told those people, "Now, here is a good investment for money, buying forest land. Buy it in the name of the school here, and we'll take the forester graduates out there and give them practice working on that, and we'll cut enough timber every year to pay the interest on the investment and a little bit on the principle." And his story was good enough that he convinced the insurance companies that it was a good investment. He bought, oh, I don't know how many [acres]; they have the Hoffman Forest down there that's about 80,000 acres, and they've got the Hill Forest down here and quite a bit of land like that. They gave the students land to work on, and then about that time every thing spiraled, you know, and went up in price; and the land that they had bought for very little, now is worth twice as much. I understand that they have already paid it off from the sales of timber. And Hoffman himself, after he finished out there, he said, "Well, what's the use of doing all this for the school? I 'm going to buy a couple of tracts for myself." And the insurance companies he had been so successful with lent their money to him; he's got quite a nice little nest egg now, in his own right. But it was Hoffman who made the purchases and made it possible for the school of forestry to get that land. That will run the school of forestry without any doubt before very long, just from the receipts for the forest land. The forestry school gets the receipts? The forestry school gets it all. It was purchased in the name of the forestry school, North Carolina State College School of Forestry. It is run now by what you call a forest foundation, and while Hoffman is out of the school and is retired from that angle, Hoffman is still president of this forest foundation. So he's still guiding the operation. Fry: That's interesting. Keller; Fry: Keller Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Yes, it is interesting, and the majority of people don't know how it happened. So that Hoffman [should] get the credit for that whole business. This could be a good way to finance a lot of fores try schools; but you have to buy the land when it's cheap, I guess. That's right, but now the same principle applies up there in Pennsylvania now. The forest land in Pennsylvania is bringing in enough money to more than operate the Department of Forestry. And it goes into a foundation, or directly — Well, no, it doesn't go into a foundation: it goes back to the state treasury, and then they have the use of it for operating the forest. But they got a little too much politics in it; they injected the recreational idea into it. And the Department of Forest and Water up there is operating these big recreational activities in parks. Independence Square, down in Philadelphia, was a memorial to the Revolutionary War, way back there, and yet the De partment of Forest and Water operates it. Out in Pittsburgh, they spent $1.5 million down on the Golden Triangle developing a city park, which is operated by Forestry, so that is the sort of gad get that was put in politically; it wasn't good management to do that. But the Department of Forestry so far has been operating it without too much politics, except these legislators, they want a park in their home county, you know, their home district; and they're compelling them to spend a lot of money for local parks all over the state, and they are doing it. Do you mean without a master plan, without com parative quality of scenery and land in mind? They are doing a good job. They are hiring expert recreational people to carry it on. Are the historical parks also under the Department of Forest and Water? Oh, yes, all of the parks are. Fry: Keller: Do they operate these as a historian would? they give them adequate protection? Do Fry: Keller; Fry: Keller: Oh, yes, they take good care of them, but gee, they've got money galore. They get all of the oil and gas receipts, which amount to between $6 and $7 million. And that is committed to be spent for these parks around, and that makes a nest egg for the politicians to fight over. But they are doing a good job so far, and they are doing it because they have got a good non-poli tical man as secretary of the Department of Forest and Water. If they put a politician in there, then it would be the other way around. Well now, are you acquainted with Project 70 in Pennsylvania? No. Well now, that is a project that they have up there; the people voted on it and agreed to ap prove a bond issue for $70 million, and the money is to be spent for buying lands for recreation around the cities , and the urban centers , not out in the woods some place; they have authority for that. But this is for land within reach of the city people. It's the only place that I know of that a project of that sort has gone into con stitutional amendment, because, you see, the people voted on it; now if both houses of the Legislature approve it and the governor signs it, they'll buy $70 million worth of land, purely for recreation, and that's looking into the future for the people in the cities. I think that it is a good idea, a far reaching plan. But that goes way ahead of what we ever thought in the early days. We were thinking of forest as forest to grow trees for the lumber business, and a little hunting and fishing, and that kind of thing. But not mass recreation. No. But that sort of talk comes back to Pinchot now. Pinchot was the man who came to Pennsylvania and organized the forestry department. He came to Washington under Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: organized the Forest Service. You knew that? Yes. Well, then he came up to Pennsylvania, and the first thing he did was to organize the Department of Forest and Water in Pennsylvania; and he set it up on a good firm foundation, which is still operating the same way he set it up. Oh, it is? Yes sir, it was a very excellent job of organizing. But before that time we just had a couple of political fellows down in Harrisburg who dished out the money that the legislature had. And we as foresters, we would — each fellow would get a certain amount of it for building roads, and fighting fires, and planting trees. But when Pinchot came up there, he organized the thing into the Bureau of Management, Bureau of Protection, Bureau of Silviculture, Bureau of Research — Office of Research, rather (we had a Bureau of Information, and Research was under Information) . He set it up that way, and then he picked out men who were inclined along that line to head up those departments. Everything went along very well, and that's that. GIFFORD PINCHOT AND FEDERAL ISSUES IN FORESTRY: 1930 's and 1940 's Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Did he ever talk over with you the part that he played in the controversy over the transfer of the U.S. Forestry Service from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Interior under Secretary Ickes? We used to talk about that, but we all knew about it before, because the forests were an extensive thing; you were very much interested in Pinchot's [inaudible] and the fight that they had. Oh, yes; you mean earlier under the Clarke-McNary Act. And we were always interested in those things. But Pinchot was never a fellow to brag about any thing he ever did; he never did. He was very modest when it came to those things. Somebody else had to talk it over. But when I got down to Washington [1940], down there they used to have the regular meeting, you know, of foresters. Pinchot still had his home up on Rhode Island Avenue, and that was the regu lar rendezvous for all the foresters who came in from all over the United States. And he had cer tain — for instance, in October he would always give an apple and gingerbread party. All the foresters would be invited, and that way we would get together, with state men and federal men. But as a rule, there wasn't so much of that until after Pinchot got out, and away from Washington. Then they started to mix up people. He was ex plaining to us what the value was of mixing up with these federal foresters. 8 Fry: Keller; Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller; What was his view on the value of this? Oh, he wanted foresters to get together. He wanted them to discuss their matters together. You know, when we were up there in Pennsylvania, a bunch of kids, we were together in a new profession. We were just a little nest together there, and we never went out. It wasn't until Pinchot came up there that we ever got into the Society of American Fores try. And up until that time, until Pinchot got his shoulder to the wheel there, very few of the states had foresters that belonged to the Society of American Foresters. But that was a big help because it let us brush shoulders with fellows who were doing the same kind of work under different conditions. So you were able to share information — That's right. But as far as lending influence to legislation for forestry, or anything like that, you don't think this had much to do with it? Or did it? Well, up until Pinchot got up there, we were only interested in Pennsylvania. I mean after Pinchot. After Pinchot, then of course we were interested in all of the stuff, because we had joined the American Forestry Association and the Society of American Forestry. We started to make our trips down to Washington to get acquainted with the fellows down there, and that way it broadened everybody . Did you ever take part in helping to ward off the transfer of the Forest Service to the Department of Interior? Oh, yes, we were all interested in that, very much so, in that controversy. And we had a few people along in Pennsylvania there that were very influential in Washington. For instance, I might name J. Horace McFarland; you've probably heard of him. Well, he always went over there to J. Horace and told him, "Now, you do so-and-so with Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: this man down in Washington, or this man." And J. Horace McFarland did a lot towards those national questions, much more than would have been done if we hadn't of had him carrying messages back and forth. I see. But we always took quite an active interest in that. McFarland served as kind of an informal lobbyist with his entree to the congressmen? He had an entree into the President, the senators, everybody down there. He was at one time presi dent of the American Rose Society; it was an or ganization that was composed of very influential people. And it was mainly through that organiza tion that he had so many contacts down there. But J. Horace never wanted anything political; he always wanted to do the things that were the right things; he just knew who to go to. Just to give you an example, when the ad ministration changed from Republican to Democratic in 1932, it had been Republican for forty years and the Democrats just turned things upside down. They didn't have anything like the Civil Service or anything like that. But we had one very good forester up there in Pennsylvania that we were all interested in, a fellow by the name of Swingler. At that time, I was talking with J. Horace about this man Swingler [and told him] when he gets down there in Washington to tell those fellows if they need a good forester, he's the man they ought to look at. And it was only a short time after that until Swingler was invited down there, and he became one of their real voices in the Forest Service. He either has retired or is going to retire, but he headed up private forestry for a long time. Was this when Franklin Roosevelt first came in? Yes, Roosevelt was first elected president at the time that Pinchot was governor the second time up there. And I was in his office a number of times, when Franklin Roosevelt would call up from the White House. Franklin Roosevalt would say, 10 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: "Hello, Giffl" And he would say, "Hello, Frank 1" and that kind of stuff, you know. So they were quite active at that time. Then everything went along fairly well. You see, then after Roosevelt got in they got the CCC, and that took up the slack for foresters everywhere. This is sort of incoherent, I know, but I don't know just exactly what you would like to have. I talked with Ed Kotok and Bevier Show, and they have been able to comment on CCC. They also recorded some on the grass roots effect of foresters in this controversy over the transfer of Forestry to Interior; and so I would like to get a little more on that, if you know anything about it. Well, now what about CCC, do you want more on that? Yes, if you know anything on the federal level. Well, we got the first batch of CCC camps in Penn sylvania that they had sent out. I was in Pinchot's office when Franklin Roosevelt called up and said, "Can you use thirty-two camps?" Well, we had a good organization of foresters at that time, and he looked over at me and said, "Sure we can use them." And we got the first bunch of them up there; there were one or two other CCC camps, single ones, but this was the first batch of them. We had 115, I believe it was, CCC camps. Most of them were forest camps, but we had as I remember about nine park camps . Did you have any difficulty with politics and the appointments to the administration of CCC? Yes, we had a man down there in Washington that everything had to clear. You knew about that? No, I didn't. Well, Franklin Roosevelt had a fellow — I can't recall his name anymore — but everything had to clear him. The state senator would okay it, and then this fellow would okay it. At first, when they opened this thing up, they just let us go ahead and use our own judgment. We had good camps. But after it was in operation a couple of 11 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: years, and this fellow got working, gee, they started putting in druggists that didn't have jobs for CCC camp superintendents, and fellows that had never been out in the woods before. Then it didn't work so good. Washington tried to overcome that by regula tions. Well, they got so many regulations that nobody could follow the regulations anymore. As a whole, I'd say the first three years of the CCC they did just as much work up there as they did all the rest of the time they were in existence. Be cause after politics got in there, why they couldn't do anything unless it was okayed politically. Did Pinchot think this was a good thing, to have a federal program going in the state? Oh, yes, yes sir. He wanted it there. There was never any question about that as long as Pinchot was there. After Pinchot left, why the fellows sort of drifted back into their shells, thought they could get along without the federal govern ment; and that was about the time that the federal government was trying to force a lot of this [inaudible] private forest regulation onto the people. The people in the field didn't like that, so it tended to break it up a little. Kotok could give you the whole story on that; he was one of the fellows who had to go along with the federal government in passing these regulations. Yes. Well, I hope to talk to Earle Clapp in Washington, too. Would you say that he was about the central figure in that? Well, he knew it sort of second-handed. Now wait 'till I think of the fellow who was the head of that. I can't recall his name anymore. The chief? No, Silcox was chief, you remember. No, we didn't do much work with Silcox. It was a fellow, he was a western man, that came in there and sort of headed the thing up. It wasn't Marsh was it? 12 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller; Fry: Keller: Who? Marsh, Ray Marsh? No, not Marsh. Or Chris Granger? Chris Granger always took a very active part in it. All of those fellows did. Any one of those fellows I think could give you a pretty good story on the federal side [of regulation?]. You know there isn't any comprehensive history written about that. How far did their attempts at federal regulation go? Well, they fought it through for a good many years, but the people in the field just wouldn't go along with it. And they fought it out at the Society meetings. Apparently the only people who were for it were these people who were tied up with the federal Forest Service. They were sort of out on a limb because the local fellows wouldn't go along with it. And there were quite a lot of bitter fights about it, that side of it. It was never passed as legislation, was it, in any form? No, no they never could get the thing through. Did they have any support from the federally employed foresters in the states, in the field? Well, the federally employed foresters in the states were told to keep their mouths shut and not to get into politics. That was the thing that we had learned way back in Pennsylvania with Senator Penrose in the early days. He said, "Now these foresters are technical men, leave them alone. Don't wrap them up into politics in any way." And we were never bothered with politics until after Pinchot came. When Pinchot was elected governor the first time, he kept a lot of the people, the old organization men, on. And then when Pinchot left — the governor dare not [succeed?] itself — when he left, the old • 13 Keller: organization men came in and threw every Pinchot man out. Well, then the next term of four years, Pinchot was elected again. And he did the same thing to the organization men that the organization men had done to him; and that really started the political ball moving as far as the foresters were concerned. From then on Pennsylvania could hardly get a good man to work for the forestry department because it was political and they knew it was only going to be for four years or until the next change of administration. Fry: That was state? Keller: Yes. Fry: Would you say that there was any political activity, such as making grass roots campaigns, on the part of the federal rangers and foresters in Pennsylvania, on regulation? Keller: None that I ever knew. They all were told to stay away from that. We had one national forest in Pennsylvania — I knew all those boys well — and they never opened their mouths aoout anything politically, no they didn't. Fry: Well, another area that I'm wondering about is the relationship of state foresters to Forest Service foresters. For instance, in the area of research I noticed that you said your state of Pennsylvania had a subdivision of research, in information. How did this function with the research done on the federal level? Keller: When we started up the research in Pennsylvania — that was back in 1920 — we were pretty much on our own. There wasn't too much forest research going on at that time, except for the federal government; and while they exchanged their papers and that kind of data, they never would go out and visit each other to see what they were doing in the early days. Then after they got a little bit broader in the thing, why we went out to the experiment stations there and they would come around and visit us. But at first, there wasn't very much of that visiting done. In those early days, they never had any co operative projects, whereby the Forest Service and 14 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller; the state service worked together on any research. They didn't have that; now they've got lots of that. But then they didn't. Was there much duplication, do you think? Well, no, I guess there wasn't too much of that. They never discussed it too much. You wouldn't know. But in those early days, research was sort of a lone child. People didn't think that it was necessary to have research, the way they do now. And the fellow that was doing research work, people would laugh at him because there was nothing to that. But now, of course, when we all realize the value of research, why we realize how much good it does to get research men no matter whether they are private, or federal or state or what: they get them together. What about fire protection? Was there much coopera tion in the early days between federal and state on that? When they got the Weeks Law in — I guess that was about 1912, along there — they had Section Four, which was fire protection. And by Section Four, the states would each get so much money for fire protection. From then on, the federal government would send an inspector out to see what we were doing in fire protection to see if we were spending the money right. There was another section in that provided for so much money for growing trees, and we would always get a little bit — I don't remember how much it was — it wasn't so very much as far as Pennsylvania was concerned because we were so far advanced in the production of trees. But we would always take it. I remember a fellow by the name of Bacus [?] in the Forest Service in Washington, who used to always come out. I had charge of the state nurseries in the early days, and Bac would always come out. I'd take him around to the different nurseries and show him what we were doing, give him the figures of how many we grew and how many we expected to produce the next year; and on that was based the amount of money we would get from the federal government. So that was really the start of the good relations 15 Keller: between federal and state. Fry: Was Pinchot in any position to help in the passage of the Weeks bill? Keller: Oh, yes, Pinchot was well-thought-of all over the United States, and when that Weeks bill went up, why, Pinchot was mixed in with it all over the United States. At that time, he was still in Washington, I think. Smith Lieberite [?], I guess, was the next one that was appointed, next after Kent [?]. But at that time Pinchot was very much interested. I remember he sent me down to Washington a couple of times to talk to Dr. Smith about it, and about how it would affect Pennsylvania. Oh, Pinchot was a cooperator; he would co operate with anyone he thought could help him get his points across. 16 PINCHOT CHARACTERIZATION Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: My next question is whether you have any anecdotal material on the Pinchot-Ballinger controversy. Do you know any stories about Pinchot's part in that, that might not be in written records any where? No. Pinchot never talked very much about that, except about the results of it; he would talk about that. But he never talked about those early fights, Although, when that thing went on, down there at Mont Alto, the students would get together, you know, get things printed about it. They were all very much interested in it. Was there ever any doubt that these claims in Alaska might have been illegitimate? Who might have been? The claims that Pinchot was complaining about in Alaska. Was there ever any doubt that these were illegitimate claims? Oh. I mean, did anyone ever think — Yes, I believe I did hear that discussed a little bit in Pinchot's presence. He didn't lead the discussion, but I remember that quite a lot of them were discussed at various times. As this is put together now by historians, it is hard to determine really what went on after that; it seems there were so many other areas in the political life in Washington that were influential in this too. I wondered if you had heard anything about that? 17 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: No, I never heard too much about that. I'll tell you, in those early days our contacts with Washing ton were very few and far between. What I meant was if you had heard Pinchot refer to this, or refer to the legal decisions that came out of the U.S. Attorney General's office. No, I don't believe I have. You said he only talked about what the effects of this were; do you mean the effect on his career or the effect on forestry in general? The effect on forestry in general; Pinchot projected himself way ahead. He was always way ahead of the rest of us foresters in his thinking; and when he would see something going on now, the first thing that he would think about was not the effects of it now, but what's going to happen with that in the future . What did he think about this? What did he think the effects would be, or were, of the Pinchot- Ballinger fight? Oh, always he would, of course, give credit to the results of these fights. He would never back away from a fight, but he would lock in it and he would always keep the principles of it right before him. He'd never let it get away, [when] somebody would come in and talk about something irrelevant that didn't apply to it. I'd say that he always had those views of the future of forestry right before him, and if anything would cross over — you remember when they were talking about putting Forest Service in the — well the Soil Conservation Service was over in the Interior, and they talked about Forest Service going over [to the Department of Interior] in Roosevelt's administration. Right away he got up and told what that was going to mean. Tell me more specifically what he felt this would mean. To turn it over? 18 Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: Yes. Well, he was afraid of the influence more than any thing else. The influence of foresters was going to be governed by people who were not foresters and not operating forestry and the outsider coming in and getting it. That's what he was afraid of. He always wanted to keep forestry by itself, not to mix it up with land and Interior and that kind of stuff. There was too much land disposal involved? He was afraid of that; he was always afraid of the Interior selling their land, and getting rid of it that way. That was contrary to his idea of what ought to happen. It seems he took a pretty active part in opposing that. Oh, he took a very active part in that, and he wasn't content to talk to just a few fellows around Washington. I remember him calling up people in different states; I didn't know who they were, but from the conversation you could see what he was talking about. He was trying to get these things pinned down to the influential people who were locally affected by it. Oh, I see. Did you help him any in this, or were you still a forester? No, I never helped him very much in that kind of thing, because I wasn't [in] on that. Pinchot was a national figure; he knew people everywhere. On the whole, did he think that F.D.R. did a pretty good job in forestry, except for this threat to move it to Interior? He didn't like the change of policy to come in, but he was 100% back of F.D.R. Did Pinchot remain behind him until the end? Well, I don't know whether he did in the political business, but I know that as far as forestry was concerned, he appreciated everything that Franklin 19 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: D. Roosevelt did for the advancement of forestry. He was a 100% backer of the CCC camps, and he was a 100% backer of the federal [inaudible] and fire protection; those things, he was back of them 100%. When I read about what Pinchot has done, I think of him as perhaps a flamboyant sort of character. Was he that way at all, or what was he like? He was a man that had a principle, a guiding prin ciple, and that was what he would fight by. And if he would be sitting in a room with two people talking about it, and they would say something that was contrary to the principle that he held before him about forestry, he would preach them a sermon right there. He never let anything go. He wasn't flamboyant at all; he wasn't ugly about it, but he could certainly stir up anybody or any group of men more than any one person I ever knew. When he came up there to Pennsylvania, we had just a little bunch of foresters, inexperienced, but who knew the local story, and that was all they did know. But he could go up there and he would point out what was going to happen; and then he'd say, "Now we need you fellows to help. I don't ever want anything else." And before those fellows left, there wasn't a man there that wouldn't have done anything in the world to carry out that prin ciple. He could just get his points across too strongly. He wasn't an oratcr or anything like that, but he could put out the points so that everybody could understand. He must have been a very interesting person to know. He was; in fact, I never worked with a man that could draw out the best in his organization more than Pinchot could. If there was something that they were stumbling over, that they weren't quite sure of, he'd call us together and explain the thing, and by the time he was through we all knew about it. We never had very many meetings together before Pinchot came up there; but after he organized us, he'd have us together all the time. Whenever a big point came up that he wanted to get across, 20 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller; he'd call all the foresters down to Harrisburg, down to Mont Alto/ or up to another part of the state some place. And he would get his points across . Did you think he did this with all his government departments, or was he a little partial to forestry and more cognizant of its needs? Well, when he got to be governor, he was just as much interested in other departments, too. We, up there, were organized as the Department of Forest and Water. But we were all interested in forestry, and we had a few water engineers over there filling [inaudible] . But after he got over there, he put in two bureaus there, a Bureau of Forests and a Bureau of Water. And he built the water up along with the forestry. And he did the same thing in the other organizations that he knew. There wasn't any one of the departments up there that he didn't keep his fingers on. He had a Commissioner of Highways, a Corruussioner of Health, a Commissioner of Insurance and the different de partments. But he knew what was going on in every one of those departments and he could talk about it; but he would never talk to an outsider unless he brought in the man who was responsible for it; he was always like that. He never talked to some outsider about my work, without telling me about it. He would make it a point to have me around when he talked about it. And he did that with all the other departments up there, so that it wasn't just a single man running it; it was the organization. He was a good organization man. How was he on communications from lower echelons up to his office; was it easy to get in touch with him? Oh, anybody could talk to Pinchot, anybody could. And he didn't like it when the hired field men would come in there and not make it a point to see him. He wanted to see everybody and shake their hand. He was a politician when it came down to that, and he did make a good politician. He was elected twice in Pennsylvania as governor, against the machine; and Pennsylvania had a big political machine. He went in there lone-handed, 21 Keller: Fry: Keller: Fry: Keller: and he beat the machine two times. So he was an organization man, and he knew how to put an organi zation together that would work. Did you campaign any with him? No, never. You couldn ' t do that could you? No sir, not at all. When he was running for governor the second time, I attended a political rally one time; and he stood at the door shaking hands. When at last we shook hands, he said, "Now, I want to see you." [Power fails; tape fades out. Mr. Keller continues, telling how Pinchot was a natural as a public relations man, and how, soon after he became head of the Pennsylvania State Department of Water and Forests, he brought in a Mr. Vorse, a veteran newspaperman, to teach his foresters how to write newspaper stories. [He mentions that Governor William Sproul (governor of Pennsylvania 1918-1920) went against Senator Penrose's advice in appointing Pinchot as head of Water and Forests, [He sketches his own entry into the field of forestry when he was going to Susquehanna College and, against his father's wishes,, entered Mont Alto in 1906, having made the second-highest grade in the entrance examinations. He served in the Pennsylvania Department of Water and Forests, then in 1936 went into the Soil Conservation Service as a forester. He tells how the Resettlement Ad ministration became the Farm Home Administration, and under the Soil Conservation Service in 1938. He was in Philadelphia in the Regional Office of that agency until 1940 when he went to the Washing ton office and remained an assistant chief forester in Soil Conservation Service until 1947, when the position was cut out. [He points out that when SCS was transferred to Secretary Ickes1 Interior Department, the same men were kept and returned to che Department of 22 Agriculture when the SCS did. "It was in Interior a very short time," he said. "All the foresters went after it." He also credits its transfer back to the Department of Agriculture to Pinchot's in fluence on both President Franklin Roosevelt and on Secretary of Interior Harold lakes. The main constituents of its placement in the Department of Interior, he says, were the livestock interests and agronomists, who wanted to see the grasslands put into Interior. — From notes taken at time of interview] Final Typist: Mary Millman 23 INDEX — John W. Keller American Forestry Association, 8 American Rose Society, 9 Civilian Conservation Corps, Pennsylvania, 10 political appointments, 10 Clapp, Earle, 11 education; professional schools, Pennsylvania, Mont Alto, 1-2 fire protection, 14 Hoffman, Dr. Walter, 2 dean, Pennsylvania State Forestry Schools dean, North Carolina State College School of Forestry insurance companies, purchase of forest lands, 3-4 McFarland, J. Horace, 8 Mont Alto, Pennsylvania; School of Forestry, 1-2 North Carolina State College School of Forestry, 2 Pennsylvania, Department of Forestry and Water, 4-6, 19-20 Pennsylvania: political influence on foresters, 12 Pennsylvania, Project 70, 5-6 Pinchot-Ballinger controversy, 16-19 administration, 19 24 Pinchot, Gifford 1, 5-12, 15-22 as friend of Roosevelt, R.D. , 9-10 part in attempts to transfer USFS to Dept. of Interior, 17-18,22 Pinchot-Ballinger controversy, 16-19 regulation (in forestry) , public, 12-13 research, federal and state, Pennsylvania, 13 Roosevelt, Franklin D. , 16-18 as friend of Gifford Pinchot, 9-10 Society of American Foresters, 8 Swing ler, Mr. (forester) 9 transfer of United States Forestry Service to Dept. of Interior, attempts, 17-18 Gifford Pinchot1 s part, 17-18, 22 Amelia R. Fry Graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1947 with a B.A. in psychology, wrote for campus magazine; Master of Arts in educational psychology from the University of Illinois in 1952, with heavy minors in English for both degrees. Taught freshman English at the University of Illinois 1947-48, and Hiram College (Ohio) 1954-55. Also taught English as a foreign language in Chicago 1950-53. Writes feature articles for various newspapers, was reporter for a suburban daily 1966-67. Writes pro fessional articles for journals and historical magazines, Joined the staff of Regional Oral History Office in February, 1959. Conducted interview series on University history, woman suffrage, the history of conservation and forestry, and public administration and politics. Director, Earl Warren Oral History Project Secretary, Oral History Association; oral history editor, Journal of Library History. Philosophy, and Comparative Librarianship. •1 3 \/