University of California Berkeley
SAMUEL TRASK DANA
The Development of Forestry
A Composite of Selections from Separate Interviews
Conducted by
Amelia R. Fry of the Regional Oral History Office,
The Bancroft Library, University of California
Berkeley
and
Elwood R. Maunder
The Forest Society, Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
In Preparation for
The Edited Version Published as
"The Dana Years"
in
American Forests, Volume 72, Numbers 11 and 12,
November and December, 1966
Berkeley
1965
All uses of this manuscript are covered by
an agreement between the Regents of the
University of California and Samuel Trask
Dana, dated 15 May 1966. The manuscript
is thereby made available for research
purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish,
are reserved to the Bancroft Library of the
University of California at Berkeley. No
part of the manuscript may be quoted for
publication without the written permission
of the Director of The Bancroft Library of
the University of California at Berkeley
-
DANA/MAUNDERfFRY f\ , L , 7L Page 1
^
MAUNDER: We usually conduct these oral history interviews in very informal
way, sitting around and just chatting. I like to begin all these, Dean,
by getting a bit of personal historythat is, your place of birth, some
thing of your early life, your schooling, your family.
DANA: I was born in Portland, Maine back in 1883. All of my schooling until
I wnet to college was in Portland. I went to Bowdoin College in Brunswick,
where two older brothers had been, and graduated from there in 1904.
MAUNDER: What was your course of study at Bowdoin?
DANA: My study at Bowdoin was what I suppose you d call just a plain liberal
arts program. I was there at the time the elective system that President
Eliot of Harvard was so enthusiastic about was in vogue. So I think there
were practically no requirements outside of English and possibly Latin.
I actually emphasized the physical sciences more than any other one thing.
I think I took more chemistry than any other subject. I was also feery
mucy interested in economics, in which I won a prise. Curiously enough
I didn t take a single course in history, a subject in which I ve been
greatly interested ever since.
MAUNDER: What was your father s business or occupation?
DANA: My father got into the Civil War as a young man, just about the time
he was finishing high school, so that he never had any college education.
The great bulk of his work was x* first as a clerk in the Mifcux Maine
Central Railroad, and then as the treasurer of the Portland and Ogdens-
burg Railroad. My mother was a Portland woman who died relatively early.
She came from a family of lawyers.
\ i. * . .
There was nothing in my background to indicate I ought to be a
forester. My father was very anxious I should be a lawyer, but for some
reason I didn t like the in idea at all. X (Since then I ve decided I
would have liked law, and I think I might not have been to bad at it.)
airf Ino6
a -:-<<>
i J:MO sn (
i
.
I>W,> r , aH. W .
.qs,;. I jc
. . . t.: : :.
.
HJUU d^nu: Jit
io Ii.
.
.
:* .*>: i ;....: OJ
3d : >il,\ 0(
.
3i.. .-
<*ii LfbfiT>
. . .
.
.... . . .;..
,.,
.
. . "j j >( . c >; . .
: , .
rvfi
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 2
I wanted to be a doctor. In those days I was a puny young man, and my
father said I just didn t have the stamina to be a doctor; It was too
hard a life. So then he suggested, "How about engineering? Electrical
engineering is coming along." So after graduating from Bowdoin I wnet
to Massachusetts Tech for about three days and decided I didn t like
engineering.
MAUNDER: What interested you in forestry?
DANA: It was primarily that I liked the outdoors. I was interested in mature
and was a bird watcher even in those early days. But it was actually
a matter of elimination. I couldn t find anything else I did like.
The final decision was influenced by *kK a classmate of one of my
borthers at Bowdoin, an older man hwom I knew fairly well. He had studied
forestry at Yale and was on the faculty there at the time/ I was trying
to make up my mind. I wrote to him and asked him what he thought of his
profession. The reply was, "A wonderful profession if you like it; if
you don t you won t last very long."
Then I wnet into the backwoods of Maine for a winter to think things
over. In sptte of nearly feeezing to death, getting up two or three hours
before sunrise, and sitting around doing nothing I decided I liked forestry.
MAUNDER: You were with a lumbering operation?
DANA: Yes. A lumbering operation of the Great Northern Paper Company.
i
MAUNDER: How did you happen to get the job?
-
DANA: We had some connection with an officer in the company who made the ar- ;
rangements. It wasn t a job, actually; I just want up as an observer.
I was free to come and go as I wanted.
MAUNDER: Did you do anything in the way of work while you were ftky there?
DANA: No. I just watched.
MAUNDER: Can you tell us something of conditions in the camp?
- - E -t ;
.7-, P
r
-. #.
.
rtllo-
I
:>
;.- <K2 :
.
.
:
. ACi
.; "
I ;Yrw jf-f- AV
DAiNA/MAUNDSR/FRY Page 3
DANA: It was just one long room with a series of bunks on each side and no division
of the bunks into beds at all. Everybody just lay down in the bunks,
one right next to the other, frequently so close together that if you
wanted to turn over, your neighbor had to turn too. Somebody would
wake up in the middle of the night and want to turn over, and he d yell,
"Spool." and everybody would turn over. A few hours later somebody else
would yell, "Spool!" and you d turn over in the other direction. In frosit
of ftMTMy T xH"f*w***w**"^*"*"" TF* fa * the bunks was a long seat
known as the "Deacon s Bench" which was the only place for people to sit
other than the beds themselves. There were no chairs of any kind in an
or dinar Iy house of thins kind.
There was no ventilation whatever, but plenty of tobacco smoking
and chewing with the result that the atmosphere got pretty smoky and
the floor got pretty dirty with tobacco juise because the p**ts spitters
couldn t always hit the spit don if there happened to be one. If you
wanted a drink of water you used a dipper to take it out of * a tin bowl
in the middle of the table. The folks that had k dipped it out pre
viously had been chewing tobacco and had dipped that into the water so
that there was a skim of tobacco juice over the top of the water.
The temperature was below zero most of the time and the shack wasn t
heated, so I slept with* about two feet of blankets over me. But I
managed to keep pretty comfortable. It s amazing how comfortalbe you
keep it you have clothes enough.
MAUNDER: How long did this type of camp live on?
DANA: Well; I don t know, but I would say until pretty well into the thirties.
It would be within the last thirty years tha any radical changes were
made.
MAUNDER: Do you recall any organized efforts being made to bring about changes
in these conditions while you were Forest Commissioner of Maine?
DANA: Not as far as the public agencies are concerned, but private operators
worked slowly, very slowly I would say, improving conditions. They
o
fcr
>8 VMM Mi/od W95 A
nJ . -lb <fJ di ni
** gool e Aaud Mil ^
-Ibliw wid
ba "l
nl
br/H
oc
us
.
, tovgjarfw oo aw aiM/I
w jjo.*wt,ib buft
Jog laoIS
<.-.<4<K %> nnA^ixM &&lt;4 r_ 4 akfanMk
< io 3tx> JJ o^ft 1 02 isqqib be , .n^.tt. a
aqrib M
f<JoJ 3ri3 be. lid baft 0*8<Jc r
(JO 3 Mfj 7V I 0-1 .. . 3
,,"t bo Mi) d3 3o iaoB.Qi OJtd k
. nlmoo ^
.CO wort
io a*
-
:.D
W :AEAO
*d W
; . I fi4lr
"IW
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 4
had to improve condition* to get labor.
MINDER: This was particularly ttKxxtn true after World War I?
DANA: Yes, but there MXKX wasn t ycttxtte quite the same pressure for com
petition for labor in that area as was felt in other regions where the
war really doubled up moat xta of the labor force and forced upon opera
tors a recognition of the need for improved conditions in the camp.
I think that xkwt the whole union movement had its influence too.
Some phases of the union movement I m not particularly sympathetic with,
but the unions have done a fine job in procuring better living conditions
for the average lumberjack. Now you can go to a lumber camp out west or
even in Maine, which is a little bit backward, and get a better meal
than you will in an ordinarly town restaurant.
MAUNDER: Did the operators of the camps in Maine feel the pressures from radical
groups like I.W.W. as they did out West?
DANA: That influence didn t make itself felt in Maine until some years after
the First World War. The I.W.W. influence was confinec primarily to the
West Coast with some repercussion in the Lake States but very little in
or
either the Northeast BZ the South.
MIUNDER: Tell us now about your years at Yale.
DANA: I was at Yale School of Forestry from 1905 to 1907 when I graduated with
a Masters s degree in Forestry.
of
MAUNDER: Can you give us a description of the general organization t> the
course work at Yale at that time?
DANA: The scope of forestry at that time was very much narrower than it is today.
There are lots of things that we regard now as part of forestry that we
never heard mentioned--ecnomics, for instance. W lilife and range manage
ment never entered the picture at all.
The whole prSgram was mapped out; ghere was no choice of electives
at all; you took what the faculty decided you needed to be a forester
and that was all. There were realtively few courses but a good many
outdide lectures. We d have somebody come in and hive use 1 a few lectures
Kl
Hi - - ,jl*-*n-r- .
.
iJf>i Bfc n 7
*-f.-B eoioi ror.sJ si ;j lo xifat aaujt c^ i
. <fr:r. & !j
i^. r ln Jnw^svrc! rto^nu oi >::w bf>3 MJJL ;;;;!< Jrfiri
.
V 1 "/* J O j JjC. !*i" Of "Bf! fi
fJ
B*V
.
.
*
r-,
...
-
.
"
I
t;
. . :
1 . / ; ?
/ 9i1T
i
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 5
on entomology, pathology, road building. The only *M thing I can
remember about road building is you should lay out the road uxxk so that
as you approach the top of a hill you have a parabola so the horse can t
see over the tope of the hill. If he does he will think he s there and
will stop.
I don t remember that Pinchot gave us any lectures. Old William
Henry Brewer did. He was an extraordinarly individual, one of the old-
time naturalists who knew everything and an extremely interesting talker.
MAUNDER: How much practical training was included in wkat your course at Yale?
DANA: Oh, we had a fair amount of field work around New Haven which was da-
voted primarily to tree tout identifaction and tree planting with a little
silviculture mixed in. Then we had a summer camp on the Pinchot estate
at Milford, Pennsylvania, and in the senior year we spent three months
in the Missouri Ozarks. In general I would say that the field work was
less than the boys get now.
MAUNDER: Which of your teachers had the most profund influence on you?
DANA: Henry Graves did, I m quite sure. He had not only a driving personality
but a sparkling one. -H hH t-ha nam najniin^ in <m pam J*T J " " **~-
dominated
He **** M the school.
I think x* Touney probably was next. The rest of the crowd were all young
fellows, who, if they had been ten years olders, would have made a lot
more impresssion. Chapman, for example, was a relatively young teacher
who was just beginning to learn how to teach his subject, and we were the
victims.
MAUNDER: What were the characteristics of Henry graves that stand out most
vividly in you mind?
DANA: I would say that the outstanding thing about him was his pepe". He was
just on the qui vive all the time. You felt he was a bundle of energy.
; . rfl .p. "-
: . : ti.l :
JUri r> Ho t
Mi il .11 *ri ri^ i -> .--q
H j I ! .
SWt,i.l.i
.
[
-....
.
-
, -
I
.
.
.
:
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 6
going full tilt. That impression was incresdd by his eyes, which always
snapped at you. He s kX about the only man whose eyes I remember in
that way.
MIUNDBR: Did the boys have any nicknames for him?
DANA: No. Occasionally he was know as "Thick Graves," but not very oftefa.
There was a botanist on the faculty who was very tall and thin whom we K
sometimes called "Thin Graves." But we always addressed the Director as
Professor Graves, and Tourney was always professor Tourney. Tourney was very
dignified, more so than Graves, although Graves could put on plenty when
he needed it.
MAUNDER: Would you say that Pinchot had any very strong, cubtle influence on
the school?
DANA: On the school but Hftjtp not on the students. The students didn t know
him at all.
MAUNDER: What influence did he have on the school?
DANA: He was a very close personal friend of Graves and kept in close touch with
him, so that she school developed its program taking account of his pfcux
point of view, particularly with respect to training men to go into the
Fores t Service.
MAUNDER: What were the students of your calss like, their general background?
DANA: They came mostly from the middle income **: class. I don;t remember
any rich boys or any particularly poor ones. You had to have some raoeey
to go to Yale. They came partly from professional parents and partly
from businessmen. I d say in general they were just a typical group of
middle-class American folks.
MAUNDER: What motivated most of them, in your estimation, to go into forestry?
DANA: I think most of them went in for about the same reason that I did, They
were interested in the outdoors, and of tern they were attracted by the op
portunity for public service, which was emphasized very strongly in con
nection with forestry at the time. The importance of forestry from the
oublic ooint of view WAS emohasized in nearlv everything we did.
-
iiDiiiw ,*i :o e;/f x<* >fa*"* ; itt-
f -,- r. : ;lfK, ,<. r, : : . iv ,
.:fcr,i:jtejf;
!
1
uC-
tlV F.BW \3*WO . - .
.
I
: . . :
|
:
4 :3St
:
.
M
.
. .
.
fit t;3.;3!*-i&.. O
.
B -dn
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 7
MAUNDER: This was, then something that all the professors on the staff expounded?
DANA:-If they didn t expound it, they took it for granted in such a way that
you realized that it was titxkx presupposed.
MAUNDER: Now when you completed your work at Yale what was your first actual
Job?
DANA: I was assigned to the Office of Silvics in the Forest Service, which was
the only part of the Service that was devoted entirely to research. I d
much acre
always felt that I was /interested in research and perhaps later in teaching
to the Forest Service
than I was in administration. When that was made known/through the fac
ulty, I was assigned just where I wanted to be/... I thought. Raphael
Zon was in charge of the Office of Silvics at the tine. He was about to
laave for a field rip when I arrived, and I think within a week of that
time he took off fora: the rest of the summer leaving me in charge of the
office, so that I was saddled with an administrative job i almost im
mediately and never succeeded in getting out completely.
FRY: Was Zon your immediate superior?
DANA: Yes. He was not only my inax immediate superior; k we shared the same
desk from 1907 to 1921. t*raxxytrtgyMKkYmxxkKX*Mrtaixift. It was
a big desk, and he sat at one side and I sat at the other. So he had
me completely under xkx his thumb. 1
MAUNDER: MJTT*"**""***]"" ***"**-"******* What* was Zon s predilection in
the field of research? I take it he liked to be out in the field rather
than behind a desk.
DANA: Oh no. He liked both of them. His interest was very catholic. He was
interested in silviculture and also in policy, with x less emphasis on
economics. He was one of Pinchot really close A advisors; Pinchot placed
a good deal of K* weight on his judgment with respect to policy.
Ion was definitely interested in publicity. He loved to talk, and he
was one of the most fcux prolific writers of the time. He was constantly
no *3ae*x9Yq *tiJ lie ;m>; ! a cad* ,asw :WaUAM
B iOOJ \3rfl
:: xrfXXX r.f/ Jj y^
J- .BW 3;: -? !& / J6 fliot; lUO^c r.^3: tsw. 3 e^ fldv W--/K tiUMBAM
}. HMMtM"4 l
.9 b30V3t< Ml-: . O 9dj
r, L qt
aoln
b*n afiv ,
Iscnqa^ . . iis&v .*:>* *c ;/
Nft asv a. : . s::.-n: . ,w ooi
M9W
^:ewE
jo .rile
Ml V *
UM)i ^1K Utf HI
-i. ... drl ftfcar *<- sli .asi :A,
- *r>y^jjii..3ua iKK;-..,x; i-: J*>)i-^kx; : .;j. ;;..^-,;-..: . . J sxrrt rlaeJ.
Mf boa ,;iesb r;.
,t MK ?sbno vis-i*|nDO
B *l*^*" t * y "Jt j f*^*tlii n> ilB>lMaMiMi< :^;. c
tar- , cfiaaai .i aria
sw aK .
> 3i?,Br [r . J *;
;. . ;:: .
*S8t-;_ a. ;l*w tv jo Jafc 6003 B
SiJl !>* ,^ . . ;-..;/ MA
I - *>? S . .
DANA/MAUNDER/PRY Page 8
writing articles based aaxiy partly on has own ideas and partly on lit
erature he read. He was lucky in knowing lots of foreign languages and
made full use of that knowledge.
---. :..-.-
MAUNDER: Was he scrupulous in giving credit to his sources?
DANA: No, I don t think always. He seldom used anyone else s material verbatim,
so perhaps it wasn t necessary to call attention to the source. It has been
said that if you copy from one person, you re a plagiarist, gats but if
you copy from a dozen people you re an investigator. He was that kind
of investigator.
SUU9NDR: Zon was u a very colorful person. Can you give us a it thumbnail
sketch of him?
DANA: Zon expressed himself quite vividly. He had quite a command of the Eng-
is*k lish language, and he also k always had different ideas. He was
particularly influential with a bunch of young folks just coning out of
college and getting into the world. Most of us, I think, has been in
brought up in relatively conservative, orthodox, middle-class circles, and
to get in touch with somebody who saw things in a different light, very
largely a i socialistic fcfckt light, was quite an eye openers. It intrigued
Every tmresnt week or two he
us very much. He/used to invite us young fellows to come out to the
house in the evening. We d sit around the table and drink tea from a
Russian samovar with Mrs. Zon participating in the talk. They would
bring up all sorts of things that had n never occurred to us before,
not only in forestry but in general. Zon was really very brilliant aa
a conversationalist. He could talk very interestingly on almost any
subject. He commonly got into philosophical discussions, and he always
^vSP* "
emphasized the public interest. He was a real reformer.
Did you ever hear of Austin Gary s comment on one of these occasions?
He turned up a Zon a house one night. He listened to the conversation
along the usual liberal lines as long as he could stand it. Finally he
r>tica B ./qitna -r i*W : ..
: .
:uo8 9 .
. :, i it:
A fX
Jt*5
.
.
-
.
.
.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 9
got up, grabbed hi* hat and put it on hie head, saying, "Zon, I like you,
-.:* V- - if* *iC
but I can t stand your damn philosophy," and walked ax*. out.
Well, the rest of us liked this philosophy; we thought it was KM
wonderful. Zon always had hopes of turning me into a real liberal, but
$<*t. w .
he never quite succeeded. A Said the best he could do was to make me a
liberal conservative or a conservative liberal, he didn t know which.
MAUNDER: Were you and Zon practically the whole Office of Silvlcs?
DANA: Oh no, there NX* were half a dozen or more of us. I don t know as I
remember them all. W.W. As he was one of the main ones. He was an ex
tremely good dendrologist and sitviculturalist/ and much older than the
rest of us. Anton Boisen was another one, and B.H. Frothingham. W.D.
Sterrett was a really enthusiastic investigator. He fot to studing the
Virginia scrub pine,** which was then regarded as a weed. But he got
very enthusiastic about it. One day he was telling one of the older men
in the Forest Service about all the interesting things he was discovering
about the species. The fellow waid, "Have you found a way to exterminate
.
it?" That was the attitude towards research plans.
Two other members of the Office of Silvics who come to mind are
G.A. Pearson and Carlos G. Bates, both of whom ene tered the Service about
the same time I did.
MAUNDER: Would you comment more on the attitude toward research within the
Forest Service when you first arrived?
DANA: It was tolerant. Research was regarded as harmelss, but the real job
was to protect the forest from fire, stop trespass, mark timber for cutting,
supervisee logging, make BXB sure that all the stumpage that got cut was
paid for. taxxkB Only the nuts got involved in xv establishing sample
plots. And there weren t many nuts.
~\\\e.f(.
MAUNDER: -Threi* weren t many dollars to hire many nuts, I suppose. Most of the
money was spent on the work out in the woods itself.
mta saw - ,IJW
J,fj. nti
j .I-* 1
RV-"-
i r - .4 f ;rS I
.
- ; "
ai
.
.
.
.b.;fc I salJ Kis.-
UAM
.4ft
a
.
.
on
MNA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 10
DANA: That s very true. The administrative office was a relatively small
group, simply overwhelmed with problems of fire protection, gracing
-raw $,-*.
control, timber sales; they just didn t have either the time of the money
for research. I think the general attitude was that research was a good
field in E which to put somebody who couldn t do anything else. Sort of
* ? . ?
a negative qualiiication.
- f rt,
MAUNDSR: Was Zon pretty unhappy about this?
DANA" Oh, moderately. Not nearly so unhappy as Clapp was. It wasn t until
..
Earle Clapp came in 1915 as the head of the Branch of Research that there
was any really vigorous campaign made to get the same kind of recognition
that the administrative branch got. The Regional Foresters insisted that
they should have control of all research in their region on the grounds
that the research was supposed to contribute to better managment on their
part. Mr. Clapp and the rest of the researchers felt that control had to
rest under the sole direction of the Chief of the Forest Service, inde
pendent of the administration, on the grounds that the Regional Foresters
would be certain to divert research into solving problems of immediate
interest instead of into basic research. And Mr. Clapp succeeded in
getting that point of view adopted y the Chief of the Forest Service.
RY: Did the sdhools of forestry or outstanding men from schools of forestry
help in any way in this effort?
DANA: No. It was wholly an internal affair.
FRY: Did you have any experience at all in trying to incoprate research findings
.
into policy?
**
DANA: No. That was handled entirely by an administrative group.
FRY: Well, can you tell us some of the things you did do?
DANA: One of my jobs mas an independent study whose basic objective was to
find out what the handling of timberlands was doing to the dependent
i*
**
Bia^t E :{ .t Q vllniJfci3 wfT .u ^1
9iJ_. ?l;r,Ji8 - : ... s bi 1
MM SBW &t- :!;.. !*
t it,- . ,. n _
tf. eioS
i
.
i
..\-j I .
! 8U
u
i
. :
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 11
-..,
communities. My job, in large part, was to look up ghost towns and find
out why they d become ghost towns.
FRY: The technique you used was personally to visit these various towns?
DANA: That s right. I visited them, talked with ak old timers, and took
lots of picture. One of the most inters ting ghost towns I found was Cross
Fork in Potter Couny, northern Pennsylvania. This had once been a very
thriving and prosperous town, though when I visited it it had been bought
by the state and incorporated into a state forest. I reconstructed its
history primarily from the daily news papers that was published while the
town was thriving. I maxtk went through every issue of that paper for
several years. As a result I felt that I d almost lived in the town. I
knew a lot of the people by name and what they did on Saturday evenings,
how often they got drunk and went to Jail and all sorts of things of that
kind.
MAUNDER: Were you able to get any other records other than those secondary
records?
DANA: I fot a fcomxttac few tkk through the state. The state has very little,
unfortunately.
MAUNDER: Were there any company records?
There
DANA: Xkmot were companies, but I never have been able to get their records.
The companies gassed out of existence and the records just disappeared.
I was making the most of what little there was available. Newspapers
are not too accurate as far as details go*, but as far as the raw picture
: , ;
of what life was like they re pretty accurate.
My study was finally publiched in a bulletin called Forestry and
Community Development. The moral, of course, was that the way to
avoid these ghost towns was to practice sustained yield forestry.
though accuaate
It was a piece of propaganda, &koxg based on what I think is ammanum
information.
......
*m?. -
w>^ esv
.
l
feWMl -
V SMOtf
.
.
.
i
:-<r-
-
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 12
FRY: Was this study your own idea?
DANA: I m not really sure, by my guess is that it was Zoo s.
I wrote up the story of Cross Forks in the form of p a popular article,
which I submitted to Munsey * s Magazine. I called it "Rise and Fall of
a Town." They accepted it, but they didn t like my title, so they changed
it to "A Forest Tragddy." It was the same kind of jouc progaganda as the
bulletin.
I ve often thought I would like to do more of that kind of work. I
enjoy attempting to popularize scientific material. That s my trouble:
I enjoy most everything. It makes me tend to scatter.
MAUNDER: How did the plan for the creation of the experiment stations develop?
DANA: That originiated with Zon. At least he wrote the memoranda to Pinchot in
regard to it. Of course there had been experiment stations for a great many
years in KHXHBJI Europe, and he was very familiar with that situation. He
felt that it could be adapted to this country. His proposal that we should
establish stations of that kind met with a very enthusiastic reception from
Pinchot, who was then CB Chief of the Forest Service. Ha authorized him
to go ahead with the work as far as available funds allowed.
My first western job was to try to find a site for an expetmment sta
tion in the Southwest. I spent quite a little time exploring northern
Arizona and New Mexicoa and finally decided that For* Valley on the Coco-
nino National Forest was the best place to start. Then Zon and G.A. Pearson
came out and check up on me. They looked at * two or three other places
I thought might be considered but agreed that Fort Valley was the vest.
A little later Pearson established the station.
I also made the preliminary survey that resulted in the choice of
Asheville, North Carolina for the location of the firet eastern station.
FRY: Do you remember what other at locations were under consideration for the
Southwestern Forest and Range Experiment Station?
:
. . ; a. f aauos \T- d
.
.
.
.
:
.
.
I) .13BSJ
.
:. ,
-
.
,.:
,
.
. t -! ; "> ."
;^i 3-Jt
.
f<J c.:i:> sfeW r
.
!
DANA/MAUNDER/PRY Page 13
DANA: Not specifically, but one in the White Mountinas southeast of there
and one in che mountings near Santa Fe.
MAUNDER: This mush have been a xxfc rather * rugged trip that you made in the
exploring excursion.
DANA: (Ai, moderately so. I haven t yet forgotten my first tantu horseback ride.
I left Santa Fe with a local Forest Service nan to look over some of the
%
country. We went about twenty-five miles the first afternoon, which
meant that we trotted quite a bit. I can remember earing off the mantle
for several days. How anybody could enjoy horseback riding was beyond
me for some time. Also the exploring was a bit strenuous sometimes during
the rainy season. Almost every afternoon I d coma back on horseback in
a heavy thunder shower, frequently with sleet in it. Sometimes the horses
would refuse to go into the storm; they d turn around and insist on going
the other way. Still, it was a lot of fun and it didn t discourage me
from being a forester.
I ll tell you one adventure in which I got mixed up in some fire
fighting. I want down onto the Prescott Forest in Arizona to look it
over as a possible experiment station site, and blamed if I didn t get
hauled in by the supervisor, a very hard-boiled individual named Hldenrau,
to fight a fire. I was on the fire line for something like thirty-six
hours without any break * whatever. I can remember how I slept
afterwards. But after the fire Hidenrau wrote back to the Washington
Office that he didn t know whether I knew anything about silvics or not,
.
but I was a damn good fire fighter.
MAUNDBR: In the Journal of Forestry. I think it s in 1908, you have a paper
that you read at the annual meeting of the Society introducing the idea
of a series of experiment stations. This was presented evidently even before
you had made the trip to Fortx i Valley.
DANA: No, it must have been afeerwards, because I went out there in April, 1908.
I
(
-
.
| M **** . : ..
: v ij . j: j 6<-
.. bi & :. r 9H .
..iawsrr . ICftlMR
,
rb 3s: ; ?9i,. .- new J|fc|||iqx-~
.
30J ft ,
I
: eooa . <M^ WK>
I
i
,15! ,!&? I&
i
TfOTHTMtell jUe~->
.
, ftj. , 3 -Tratr c .
ut,
a*. . o .,..v...--i.
..:~ .. . . I-. . 4 > ..
.
. . ... jsi.,v4 .fp>.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 14
You could get something published pretty rapidly in those days. You didn t
have to wait several months.
MAUNDER: I wondered whetherd this had been projected as part of a plan on the
part of the Forest Service to promote the idea?
DANA: No, I don t think so. I think it came from the desire of a young forester
to get his name into ptint. It wasn t an official statement of any kind.
I veno doubt, however, that the papers was scrutinised and criticized by
ion before it was delivered. Zon used to review all of my material and
always criticized it constructively. I don t think I every submitted a
statement to him that he didn t bring back xi with the comment, "Sam, I
tell you it is rotten " Then we would discuss what was wrong with it, I
would fix it up, and eventually it would get his blessing.
1 ^ttA V
* WMT ,
He was usually right. There is no questions whatever that he im
proved my output.
MAUNDER: With research cast in the role of a Cinderella department of the
C Awft IWft f"$ * . " -
Forest Service, did you anticipate any opposition to your proposal for
the establishment of research stations?
real
DANA: Thtfere were only two/questions that arose in connection with it. The
, 1 f" -- 4 < *"
first question was: "Wfry should the Forest SErvice establish experiment
station instead of making this work part of the agricultural experiment stae
tions which were all over the country?" The answer to that was two-fold.
One was the the agricultural experiment stations had their hands full al
ready witn agricultural problems; they were neither interested nor com-
petenet to handle forest research in the way it should be handled. How
" TV
ever, I think that if XKXBX there had been any A indication of the ex
tent to which forest research* would grown, the agricultural experiment
stations would have been more interested in taking it over than they were
at the time. The second aaswer to the questions was that if the work were
organized under the agricultural experiment stations every state would
have to have experimental work in fores tr --and that wasn t necessary.
M *
. .vat *.
fci - ^OS! . -
I3BU ati ;
j
0*3 Sfefta 3i c --fc 1 ,:
) i C J
::... T". : L. ,7
I
:
o t* ;
I
,
-V rfOl*
.
.
I
-
... ,
-
DANA/MAUNDER/PRY Page 15
Forestry st Ivies could be handled both more economically and acre effi
ciently on a regional basis than on a stateta basis.
The second problem with the pax plan I have mentioned already: "Why
should the experiment stations report directly to the Washington office,
instead of reporting through tha District Foresters?" I ve already told
you bow that worked out.
MAUNDER: This question of whether there ought to be forest expenoent stations
independent of the agricultural experiment stations raises the questions
of relations within the Department of Agriculture. How did i* the Forest
Service 8 stand with other agencies in the Department and with the De
partment itself?
DANA: Well, it didn t have very much relationship, at that tine, with any of
the other groups except the Bureau of Entomology and the Bureau of Plant
Industry, with nktax whom it cooperated in ineect and disease control.
Both of those agencies were a little Jealous of the Forest Service
.
attempts to work in their fields. Sometimes we conflicted with the
Bureau of P ne Industry. For instance, the vixx very first job I had
in the field was a study of the white pine blight. My study indicated
the tbouble was pfcx physiological, which means there was no specific
disease or insect connected with the difficulty. Apparently, the diffi
culty was due primiarily to climatic conditions a temporary affair* 7 . In
a few yeara the white pine was arpynnr apparently back to normal without
anything being done about it at all.
MAUNDER: To what extent were the Bureaus of Entomology and Plant Industry . at
work on this same problem?
DANA: Oh, they were devoting all of their attention to various forest insect*
and forest diseases. The only question with respect to this particular)!
study was whether * there was something that should km have been conducted
ftgs
-, no ;
. c < -i . . .; ftm :.. -jrtt
KTfK- Off : "...
"
-T 9"
S^JJSS
.
...-
. I
> ana? * ..
-
-
^B P
flAG
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 16
by the Bureau of Pine Industry. The Forest Service felt that there were
so many economic Implications Involved that It should get active In find
ing out what might be done about the situation.
MAUNDER: How did these feelings of rivalry express themselves between the
developing research program of the Forest Service and these other Bureau*
within the Department of Agriculture?
DANA: I don t recall any specific txrt Incidents. The main question was where
research stopped and action started. The Bureau of Entomology and the
Bureau of Plant Industry were responsible for research/ and ik the Forest
Service for seeing that action was taken on the basis of the results of
that research. Any difficulties were minor, however, and for the most
patt our relations were reasonably close and friendly.
Later on, the Service had very close connections with the Bureau of
Agticultural Economics, but that wasn t in existence in the early days.
As far as the Department of Agriculture in general was concerned, I
think it didn t pay much attention to the Forest Service anyway. The
Service has always been an autonomous unit. There s probably been some
envy of It for that reason. Until recent years It s been allowed pretty
ant much to go its own way. Then after it began to get very large ap
propriations, it wasn t too popular with some of the other agencies.
They liked to see a little more control exercised over it.
MAUNDER: What was the reaction to the transfer of forest entomology and path
ology research to the Forest Service?
DANA: I don t think that the Office of Forest Pathology taut in the Bureau of
Plant Industry was at all enthusiastic about it. But my guess would ee
that they think they re pretty well off now that lt happened.
MAUNDER: Do you think Zon conceived the ejq>eriment stations 4 to do experimen
tation which would aid the federal government?
DANA: Well, primarily that, but he always felt that they would also be useful
*qnJ
1 -i-tv
n
-
.
II
-
.
.
I
DANA/MAUNDER/PRY Pag* 17
to private industry whenever it was ready to use the results. The pri
mary purpose was to provide materials; for better handling of the national
forests, but that idea gradually changed, particularly as the eastern
stations became established/ in areas where there was relatively little
public land. It wvs quite obvious that their chief contribution would
be to private industry.
Furthermore, I think that there was really move interest in research
outside the Forest Service than xxxxx in it. Private owners and state
organizations were both very much interested in research. It s only
within the last twenty years, I would say, that the results of research
have been very generally applied throughout the Forest Service and with
real enthusiasm and respect for the whole research organization.
MAUNDER: Did the establishment of the experiment stations affect in any way the
relations hips between foresters and lumbermen or papermen?
DANA: I don t think it had much effect until the eastern stations became es
tablished. These started a much closer relationship in the East between
Indus tyr and the Forest Serrtce than had existed fatgaxax before. Out
West I don t think there was very much influence in the early days.
any
MAUNDER: Can you think of axxuxy specific illustrations of this?
DANA: Yes, I can think of one in my own experience. One of the first things
xx I did in 1923 as Director of the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station
was to organizae an Advisory Council, the chairman of which was a member
of industry. Several other representatives of industry were on that
Coucnil, and I m sure they became far more intersted in what we were
doing through this connection. They made a lot of helpful suggestions.
There s no question in my ming that the relationship between industry and
the Service was greatly strengthened through the eastern stations.
MAUNDER: The gap between the interest in good forest management which was
. -. liwi - ;:r\ ; i)J ?f : r yr. ;:
. rVS-J&i . .:fiW :..>.>v|5i
,D V J fF.(. f:i,- , j.fifei <tfc) iW! ,B.
M - .-. . -..
.
i#i
, ..
.
.
.
: ?OAtt
:
.
.
.!
.
.
i
I bar,
.
AM* !
DANi/MAUNDER/FRY Page 18
beginning to be expressed within the forest industries and the actual
practice of these ideas, was it principally caused, you feel, by condi
tions which were still unfavorable to the practice of industrial forestry?
DANA: Conditions that the owners felt were unfavorable, but I m not so sure
they actually were. I don t think they ever really studied the situation.
a
MAUNDER: This was at a tine when xkK great percentage of these companies were
still in the hands of what you might call the old Nineteenth Century
I
rugged individualist type of manager. This generation of industry s
leadership was perhaps unable really to grasp the run of a new concept
like this?
DANA: I don t think they were flexible in their thinking on the subject. The
pattern was nut set, and they found it hard to change.
MAUNDER: There were a few men in it who were beginning to show a new attitude.
ANA: Henry Hardtner and Robert Goodman are the two that I happen to know
personally.
MAUNDER: Can you tell us a little something about these men as you know them?
DANA: Hardtner for some reason had develpped a tremendous interest in woods
management. In ixix 1915 I put in some sample plots on his property down
in Louisiana. They were the first cnucxhu southern experimental plot*
at
established. They were aimed primarily ax finding out three things: first,
what is the effect of fire on the reproduction of long-leaf and loblolly
pine; second, what is the effect of hog damage on the reproduction of both
of those species; and thirdly, what is the effect of thinning on the yield
that you can expect to get within specified periods from both long- leaf and
loblolly pine. I think that those objectives have been pretty well achieved.
It has been pretty clear that fire did not kill off the long-leaf pine to
the extent that many people had thought it did, though it greatly reduced
i ja*J-.-*--**.fcNW3Ni
?v :>-tq *KJ .- .i-/ am
iiJdtTOvatav in-**
wij
98Jaot9q - r.iia
.
..... ... !:*!
I
-> 3/j|J{<
..8r :.;.
.
t ,
:
MJBH 9
. xaMdmc.
; ;,
-
;
.;.
a
-. - ....
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 19
growth, while hogs completely wiped out iong-leaf reproduction when they
were allowed a free range. With respect to thinning it proved that my
ideas were entirely too conservative. I thought I d outM made some radical
thinnings, and in two or three years you couldn t see that xaqc anything
had happened at all. The loblolly pine in particular grew so fast that
very much heavier thinnings than I tried out or that I d contemplated for
the future proved to be highly desirable.
MAUNDER: How did you happen to coo* in contact with Henry Hardtner and estab-
-
Isih these plots down there?
DANA: Well, I don t remember whether Hardtner started the thing be asking the
Forest Service for help or whether I dropped around to see him because
we knew in the Service that he was interested. I rather think it was
the latter. It was more or less of an acciddnt. I happened to be roaming
the South at the time looking primarily at first for headquarters for ex
periment stations, and in talking the subject over with him I found he was so
much interested that we mac went ahead and put in these sample plots.
MAUNDER: Tell me a little bit about Henry Hardtner as you remember him. What
sort of man was he? How do you suspect he became interested in *kn the
practice of forestry on his land?
DANA: Well, he was a veyy wide awake individual with a lively curiousity. He
was interested in everything, and he saw real possibilities of making more
aoney out of forestry by more intensive practice of forestry. I d say
primarily he differed from most of his colleagues in * imagination,
because he saw things that most of em didn t at all.
MAUNDER: MR He nad never had any formal training in forestry?
DANA: No. But he spent a great deal of time out in the woods, and that evi
dently gave him some ideas that he proceeded to put into practice.
MAUNDER: You enjoyed a very friendly relationship with this man for a period
of years?
i .*..;,!
f^SljWl.JpK j if:J ? . : , .:i.i.
.T) ja
:> I qa 1
.!
I
, .
iO* Mf 01 b
"
- -
.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 20
DANA: No, I had never know him until I net him on hie estate in connection with
t
this trip.
MAUNDER: Did you MtHttm maintain this friendship over a length of time?
DANA: Not iatimateily at all. We Just knew each other casually thereafter.
H < ? f?
MAUNDER: Did you make any repeated trips back to see the results?
DANA: No, I ve never been to those plots since.
MAUNDER: Well, I can go you one better, because I have. I was shown through
them by the young forester who s related in some way to the Hardtner family,
and I think his father bedore him had some part in the management of that
company.
.
DANA: Goodman got interested a little later and.i I think, from the engineering
aaoxjrita* point of view. He approached the problem as an Kk engineer who
felt there must be some economic solution. He decided that selective cutting of
hardwoods was the answer/ and then proceeded to practice that method of
forest management.
MAUNDER: What reaction did these men get from among their own contemporaries?
Were they looked upon as a little ***yfr nutty?
DANA: No, I wouldn t call it quite so strong as nutty, just a little bit queer
OEM maybe. There was curiosity about them more than anything else, I would
say. People wondered, "What s in back of all this, anyway? Why are they
bothering? MBX We re making plenty of money by the methods wuw we re using.
Why try to start something ne?"
MAUNDER: I wonder whether you knew Austin Gary at all?
DANA: Oh, I knew him, but not intimately. I only saw him occasionally and then
.
somehow or other I never felt very close to him. Seems to me he was a hard
man to get thoroughly acquainted wibh. He was quite Ingrownr-a perfect
opposite type to Zon. Gary was introspective, reserved, and not a very
jit*i
fleunt talker. He didn t have anything to say unless there was something
fc :.-
;
.
t u
.
!
j-
: .
.
I
idttDD*
i : . if J ^
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 21
very specific he wanted to get off his chest, almost taciturn at times,
and very serious. I can t remember when I ever saw him even smile orrf
laugh in my entire , acquaintance with him. He used to gat so absorbed
in what he was itotx thinking or talking about that nothing else made any
difference to him. I can remember riding with him when w he was driving
an automobile up in Maine. He got excited, waved his arms at me, paid
no attentionto the steering of the automobile, and I occasionally had to
grab the wheel and bring us back onto the road.
He used to like to get back to Maine every summer. He had quite a
little property there. He was a good Yankee.
MAUNDER: I ve been told that he was the first forester ever employed by pri
vate industry to do a professional Job.
DANA: Fernow was employed by a minig company to handle their forest properties
in Pennsylvania in the late seventies.
MAUNDER: That predlates anything I ve heard of.
DANA: Yes. I m very sure you {11 find that referred *x to in Denny s biography
of him. I should say that Gary was the next one. He was employed by the
Brown Company in Maine in the very early days.
MAUNDER: But the impact of these early consultant forestry jobs on the rest of
the wood-using industries was rather short-lived, I take it.
DANA: Yes, even on those particular companies it didn t leave any lasting im
press. But when Gary got down South, economic conditions had changed
to such an extent that tha South was ready to go ahead, and they responded
to practical leadership on his part so that he was very affective.
He was a tremendously hard worker and an escellena t field man. He
was a wonderfully good observer who always looked at things from the prac
tical point of view. It was his ability to combine silviculture and eco
nomics that made him such a powerful force with private Industry. Industry
*r .*,-;*.,
- :
**fc *< iR-v
; j*cL .. ,.-!
, ,
4
. lror!v a*f
.
.
rrtT
I : .
.
i bei^ .1
.
.
nr.jr.i tii
.
-
,f^, . u&d* 3
|
: :.l<r,l>l
4 a w -* 1
j ..to hoc-
.
I . f
:
.
DKNA/HAUNDER/FRY Page 22
had great confidence in him, particularly in the South. He was by far
the most effective forestry missionary the South has x ever had. It s
rather interesting that i typical New Englander should have had so much
influence
more tititituutc there than he did in New England, where his early work was
centered.
MAUNDER: Do you have any ideas as to why that may have been?
DANA: I think the South was reaching a point economically where forestry was
goin to pay off in terms of dollars and cents, whil that situation was
not arriving very much in the Northeast. The difference came very largely
in the rates of growth of the two regions. Southern pine grows much faster
the
so that opportunity for profit is much greater than it is with i relatively
slow growing spruce-fir in the Northeast where he had been working.
MAUNDER: The chnage in the Northest didn t really come until the development
of the pulp and paper industry, did it?
DANA: Well, the pulp and paper industry, of course, has always been prominent
up there, and also cuttings have always been conservative in the North
east. There s never been anything like the clear cuttings in the South
in the early days, so that from another peint of view there wasn t the
need for the newer approahces to forestry that there was in the South.
The Northeast was doind fatrly well without too much professional atten
tion.
MAUNDER: There was, in other worlds some tradition of Eurppean forestry hanging
over from early colonial times in the Northeast?
DANA: I doubt how much tradition there was. I think there it was primarily
economics. It paMt paid to take out the bigger trees, and the spruce and
fir are both toleralnt trees vk that will keep right on gsniiag growing
under the older stands, so that clear cutting was not at all necessary
to get p reproduction, as it was in the South.
FRY: When you were working for Zon, you mush have had some contact with Gifford
Pinchot.
. -Olr.H : : ii
;;; ,< ?i. : .;-; j
~ W> BU b.b
: aA nil-; / . we-, ofl rifiiCI
f Mtf - .u tif i -: :
- I i
I 3t
a*
w n*c
:
I
. JO .
|
.
3DO i.;5J (.I
./. .,.
.
.. : .
.
. :ijutt IT . :
. -i
,
US OJ
i: -/ .
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 23
DANA: Pinchot and Zon, as you probably know, were very great fridnds. I think
Pinchot was considerably influenced by Zon;s ideas.
Pinchot was my idol, of course, in those days. Now maybe I think
he had feet of clay, thought I didn t see it at the time. I think that
he was a very arbitrary individual, and I think he held gxrfx grudges against
people. For example, I fell* out of favor when I stopped being a iederal
regulator.
He was the most magnetic man I ever knew. He just carried you away
with him with his charm; a perfectly delightful person, almost irresistible.
While you were talking with him he could convince you of almost anything,
but them you d get away and revert to normal. I ve seen him address a
crownd of timber land owners who were violently opposed to his basic pol
icies. They would give him a warm reception when he came in and an ovation
when he finished his speech, and then go out and oppose everyghing that he d
advocated. His personality just carried the day while he was there.
MAUNDER: Did he understand this phenomenon himself, do you suppose?
DANA: I m sure he must have.
FRY: Did Pinchot have such a thing as a Public Information Office?
DANA: We didn t have any education and information branch in those days. Pin-
chot did it personally.
Of course, k you have to understand that in the Forest Service
Price really did most of the administration while Pinchot was Chief. He
did the organizing and issued all the specific orders; Pinchot determined
policies and occupied the limelight. Pinchot was the inspiration, but Price
was the backbone.
MAUNDER: In the early years t it would seem that the Forest Service under Pin
chot really seriously endeavored to do an educational and cultivational
job on industry. Yet rH^T**r suddenly this ventur seemed to break down.
Do you seem any particular point or event in the course of these years that
mark that happening?
el *
jfr .{>ftfc.V>*-***9g -( SR >S felt* :
- m-.fsfj}affw 86* rsodanil
rfr I -^MTIMW . F- nl <&*
E .tt*3 -r*flrlfc
BJ-. e --Jtg bi - u,
- a golftd brx > ; n--;n>r -iw^
*
3m wti MW aJI
i aoJ i- i
,f. ir<iov tiirfW
:.:.
:
.. . -
. Jl^feft
: I
*-d ?ijf j
(*|*B-J I i va:i : /OT
svsri 3 obiis.all
.
rf ,- -
tf
1 nftg* fJ
-
. n*di:
-|9 5bft* f>yiv^*8 S3 3e 1 **** T!T*
fefTB fsrio
. ?><M*09a -u5i76v ::UB>Mur
DANA/FRY/MAUNDER Page it 24
DANA: No, I think it was gradual. My gsx feeling is that Plnchot kept making
offers of cooperation and preparing working px plans for industry, and
the plans simply got pigion-holed. The owners would say,*kx*xk "This is
fine, but we re not in a position now to put them into effect." This
gradually got him disbouraged.
MIUNDBR: Do you have any feeling that these timberland owners could have taken
the ball and run with it at the time, or were such plans totally impractical?
DANA: I think they could have run better than they did. I don t think they
could have practiced really intensive forestry as we see it today, but they
could have paid a lot more attention to saving young growth, for instance,
to leaving more seed tress, to carrying out selection currings which would
leave a stand for anoth cut ten to twnety years hence, ft I think some
of those things might have been feasible. The foresters quarcel with thira
was not so much thatthey hadn t done anything as that they d never studied
the situation enought to find whether they could do anything.
MAUNDER: How would you feel about the situation that surrounded the controversy
with Ballinger?
DANA: Naturally I felt very strongly that Ballinger was kne hundred per cent
srong and that Pinchot was one hundred per cent right. And I still feel
the same way about that.
foresters
Like most other *- F fc O f that time, I felt that Taft was remiss in the way
he handled the whoel affair. I remember walking up 16th Street in Wash*
ington D.C. one day with a fellow forester, and we happened to pass Taft,
who was* presidnt t at the time, and we tipped our hats to him. The other
man turned to me and said, "I will respect the office but not the man."
That was the attitude I think we all had at the time. Since then, I ve
changed my xxi views a good deal abottt Taft. I think that he had the
wool pulled over his eyes by Ballinejer. Fundamentally, he was very
i
AS $***
.af teifaai*) xx* y . V! :
Jp.ubn* v ojJfl*rsKs<*6 1* *a*
i *lrJT rfxxio&irs .hIr>,< r<js R rf.i
. :>sii *an.J f
I I - <iu*it
ei svarf bluo3 ; saftdd r. *vJ tt 08 :JMWIBK
tl* 79W Ib , Di3 StJ
. : .
I .-*- -i
,?
. I
t .*r - Jt j; *v
jii- f ate<; . it.
J6 Ttr: b t^ I I -e
. - i arijj
rv 1*01
KJ bibeori %ft* BW
d I .-.riA .- djlif ; xji n> i -a <5 .jfid.! bnt 30
-
Hi J-
fsT32 .
. .
: : fo r,,so ! na <s :-.; q-,
e <b 3oc li< 1J J :qa." f:n aw 01
93f!lE . , r
. -oj ft awaiv An v
i .79tOJ !
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 25
sincere in his interest in forestry and conservation but WAS a bit
naive and uk weak, easy going and easily led by other people. He took
what looked like the easy MU way out. I think also that he was very
mcuh irzM irritated by Pinchot. Pinchot had that knack of needling Taft,
bothered him a great deal.
MAUNDER: This fact aht Pinchot showed some tendency to needle President Taft
causes me to wonder if his rather phenomenal success under Roosevelt had
not made him just a little bit heady and, as we sometimes say, V a bit
too big for his britches."
DANA: Yes, I think it had. I don t think that had any adverse reaction on the
general public, but I do think Pinchot was a little heady at the tine.
He felt that he could still ride the same way he had been riding when
Roosevelt was in. When he found he couldn t it irritated him very much,
and some of his actions probably weren t wise.
MAUNDER: He was not, evicently, a man who could easily adjust to changes.
DANA: No. He didn t brook opposition at all. You were either for or against
him. He was the same way: he was either for or against you. So he came
to be as much against Taft as he d always been for Roosevelt. He was
always strong in the position that he took.
The day after Sxk Pinchot was dismissed he called a meeting of all
the people in tmx. the Forest Service up on the top floor and said goodbye
to them. That was a very emotional occastion, at which we were all upset
and ready to fight to the death for his policies.
I, of course, never had any connection with Pinchot after he got
into pell tics. I only svw him perhaps a dozen times during that period
and then not at all intimately. But I think my own reaction, as far as
I know the situation, ckecked with McGeary s feeling that history would
have regarded Pinchot as a much bigger man if he had stuck to conservation
and continued to be the outstanding leader in that movement fax from
purely non-political motives.
99*
.; *W Ju ..... !
.v es> ad 3fci . . ... a d .4M .|.(Hl! ^ : - :
:>f 30 MMP>
tsbl*7% Jbs.v . :^niJ swo, IDIUAK
ar. ;- :vsaoo:i . fifar abnow O3 IR ae; .>*D
J: 3 M13MO .-w d , >r.Ml 3-
aj
oo oo^JoeM t ...
.Ml? itfU ;fc 8 MM q JftVIMOg
.<J wa.i *,, "iv sh-,t
v Mid .Jk w 3lv.eooJI
.
. B 3autfcjB
, .
....
M ::iv.*oo. . . d ev> s - r aum SK <i
.
...:....
v Ba bcm 700^) qo3 ft 10^. sd3 xatt .
I t7CW - -i * .. 3
, M . ;
d *.. Jiw oo -., . so ,*e
. . ;
<.a t"I so . .*o x"
9& Ji oc i6. .. as 3c - Oti *
rMSVO 3
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 26
MAUNDER: He really did himself a great deal of harm in his political activites
governor of the state of Pennsylvania, did he not?
DANA: Well, he was supposed to play politics on about the same plane as moat
of the other politicians. He was not recommended too highly in moat p
people s point of view. He had just as powerful and subservient a po
litical machine as most of the politicians do.
MAUNDER: Was there ac ever any hint of this sort of feeling of regret about
his involvement in politics among foresters?
DANA: I never heard it expressed to any extent. I think everybody in the
Forest Service during his two terms a governor of Pennsylvania felt that
it was a fine thing for forestry to have a forester governor of a big
state like that. They were very proud of his record.
MAUNDER: In their eyes it added prestige to their profession.
DANA: That s right.
MAUNDER: Plnchotx s departmee initiated a long period during which the Forest
to
Service seerae d KB be in disgrace within its own department. It had a
phenomenal beginning on all fronts and then suddenly it seemed to settle
a little bit. Can you give a us a picture/ of that?
DANA: I wouldn t say that it was in disgrace at all.
MAUNDER: Was there HXK perhaps some reaction against thla pressing by Pinchot
and klxx his friends?
DANA: In some corners, of course, but not generally. Of course, one would
expect the Republican members of Congress on the Investigating Committee
to whitewash Ballinger. They wot were very much opposed to Pinchot and
did anything they could to interfere with his activities, but I don t
think they represented the majority by any maans. I MM* would think that
at the time the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy reacted strongly in favor
of the Forest Service, although for a while it didn t command quite the
*i*i P
taon an : .-;,.-: .
< ><t -radio f;I.
.
;*liteiKD In
-.v*R .-
:
. -j a
^
.
*b a >.
.
J&iiT
ft
r*a 3*n
eoiq ald3 ;: .^-^ ; ; .
?jftjtTi i
r -BO ,P
. " . : -. . v^fJl <.
ill*8 i.;iW3:i
I I
AAAltlVI I ^ ft fi J
IB
: j brsae
OANA/MAUNBER/FRY Page 27
support that it had prior to the controversy. I think that the Secre-
fingers
taries of Agriculture? HUUK were a little afraid of getting their
burned if they gave too much support to the Service. Also Grave* was
not a publicity artist the way Pinchot had been. He stuck to the job
of run* ing the Service in stead of advertising it, and that probably had
some influence on the amount of support it got internally. After such
splurges under Pinchot, it was only natural that theye whould be a slowing
down, a consolidation of previous gains; I fckkak think tha s almost in
evitable. But I wouldn t say the Forest Service every got really into
the dog house.
FRY: Can you give us your evaluation of Henry S. Graves as the Chief from 1910
to 1920?
DANA: I think that Graves mum was a very effective Chief for handling the
activities that particularly needed his attention during his administration.
got
P nchot had * the Service well established, and what was needed was
better organisation and administration of the national forests. Graves
was very effective there. He s a man of very strong personality, which
was a help to him in doing this sorttf of thing. He occasionally would
be, perhaps, a little bit arbitrary, but not enough to injure his ad
ministration.
He, of course, was Forester during the very difficult period of the
First World War, when the Forest Service was virtually disbanded, and he
had to rebuild it afterwards. He felt very badly handicapped by the lack
of funds. He used his resignation as a means of stressing the importance
of more adequate appropriations.
FRY: Did he have an able assistant k to help with organisational work?
DANA: He used the whole group of assistant foresters, but *k I think that A.F.
Potter did carry the bulkg of the administrative Msockx burden. Greeley
\s
<8 an- ?jwiJ jteJti . _fc*vot.i -.-- wt> ^ 7OJ-tf L!f- ; tf ^B^
** I I "-*/ *J i-7 .:
ii. . j
O.jqoi
B *; ;;.j* I jaeiaaj 1
" a*i . /7:-. .
I
>& airf
r /Q eAW
.
.
. *-<
^fi?
,-.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 28
was also a "IT**T* mainstay of the Graves administration.
FRY: Who in the field of forestry was Graves closets to?
DANA: Pinchot was his closest friend. I think he and greeley were quite close.
And of course at the school he was very close to Tourney. Another on,
who was not a forester, was Herbert A. Smich, an editor in the Forest
Service. He was a very intimate friend, had great influence of Graves.
Graves was always on very good terms with his Associated Forester,
A.F. Potter, but I wouldn t regard him as so close a friend as these
other folks.
FRY: Was Graves capable of inspiring?
DANA: I think Graves would probably rank next to Pinchot as an inspirational
type of leader.
MAUNDER: Rogers, in his biography of Fernow, gives Henry Graves a great deal
of credit for the development of the Forest Service research program.
What do you have to say about that?
DANA: I don t remember what Rogers said, but it sounds to me an though he over
did it a bit. Gravies always gave research his moral support, but I
don t know that he paiM sank ever went out ot fight very hard for p ap
propriations or that he paid much personal attention to it. The biggest
to research,
contribution that he made/ in my judgment, was in establishing the Branch
of Research and in brining E.H. Clapp to the Washington Office to head
it up. That was a distinct forward step which gave research a recognitions
it had never had before.
Graves himseef made a greater contribution to the profession in the
field of forestry education than he did as Chief of the Forest Servicd.
There have been other good Chiefs, but nobody really compares with him
as a leader in the field of forestry education, in my opinion.
FRY: Tell us more about Graves as dean.
.!(> (> l
; t ** 1
9>!J 0-t 1C
^V.m... Ic 90*:.
:
***:"* B ...
I
I
.
. ^- -
.
.
. .
. . * fc**
3Bf
i
; . b : . .
.
.
.be
.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 29
DANA: His contributions are primarily H in the field of policy, philosophy,
things of that sort, rather than as a teacher. He was a good teacher,
but it* not as outstanding, I think,/ as some others.
FRY: Can you sum up his kind of policy and philosophy as p opposed to some
othere s ?
DANA: It was the same as educators are talking about now: general strengthening
both in terms of depth and breadth. He felt we needed to cover the
whole field more effectively. He was also very K*BKX strong on the need
for technicians as well as professional men. In a way our book, Forestry
Education in America, just repeated a lot of things that he d been saying
for a long time. There was never any question of dedicating it to anyone
else.
slump
MAUNDER: I d like to return to this question of a sdbqfji in the Forest Service/
during the teens. You have said that the Forest Service was still in
good standing with the Department of Agriculture, but we know that you
felt something was wrong with the at morale of the Service in those
years because in a talk you gave on February 21, 1919 to the Xu Yale
School of Forestry s senior wdk class on the subject, "A Look Ahead,"
you saw the war as having been a real stimulus to national thought, and
you expressed the hope that htis would reflect itslef in a new vitality
lease
in forestry. You stated that forestry had need of a new *BXXB on life,
, ;* < 4 4 . 4 I
and that much which had been gained in the early enthusiasm had died away
by nhe outbreak of the war. You felt that this decline in zeal was due
to what you called "resting on laurels of winning the fight to establish
the natonal forests."
DANA: Don;t forget, though, that I was talking to a bunch of young folks at
Yale. I felt I had to give a little pep talk.
< qi, ma* wr ft->
:uii. Jtiod;-.
.-!V36.T 9W :.i9> 9H .ffjfci," 0J
Ha i M ...... -: I Ml i >*
. "a Jar;.
-^ b i fof 8 fasjasc
t*lfc
fs
,: i
isvatM ; . . iSfc.t.a
8t
-Jo f2
v wa r.
oe mat USB a 20 bet
......
/BWB Kwib bc>l nsslavdj- -9 sria ".
al en
I W
. 3B10J le
--.I gctuo^ lo n^nuc* * o :AH&&lt;2
oY
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 30
MAUNDER: You had no feeling, then, that there was any depression among the personnel
of the Forest Service which would tend to discourage their hopes for the
future and x cause them to leave the Service for other pursuits?
DANA: Well, yes. The Service was getting so large that the yonng fellows did
not get positions of responsibility as promptly as they used to,
and that tended to lead to a little discouragement. You know in the early
days, up to around 1920, 9t was the young fellows who were running the
Forest Service almost wholly men under foryy and most of them in their
early thirties. But now other schools were turning out a lot of graduates,
and opportunities in the Forest Service were not increasing at the rate that
had
they KB when I was young.
MAUNDc,*: And there was no real indication of any seraous growing desire on
the part of the owners of private forest land do employ forestry trained
D
DANA: Mot in general. There were a few who were gettin interested, but not
too many. Remember again, I was talking at Yale, and in those days Yala
more than other schools
had been r**""f***y a feeder of the Forest Service rather than of industry.
Industry did use a few foresters , but not many of them from Yale.
There was also quite a little uneasinesss over the failure of sal
aries in fche Forest Service to rise. They stayed pretty stationary dur
ing that petiod. Graves, when he resigned, made the very positive state
ment that fee was doing it because of the difficulty in maintaining morale
under that salary situation. The greatest difficulty was in getting adq-
quate appropriations from Congress.
MAUNDER: You had some experimence in labor relations among government employees,
did you not?
DANA: Only in the professional forece. The scientific and progessional branch
of the American Federation of Labor was organized while I was in Washing-
! I I-
q tfJ3 gjpKMUR OjMsP^v- ; ; . . - ...
*di 10 1 *
-- **? C - - * fcOR
1 *%iifcii | ii b * rf * "
MM! 10 znoiJiM-.
. m.-
bovoui oJ qw ,;
*l*sij i * j pw x-i-ioiwr awiifl" <tf>iri j*t
oubui? " &! 6 .->oii3 , . ;as
J. JTW K>. . JH
.ft**!* |M - - -
no lb a alimt tM^sa vos lo ooHswbci IMCT oa uw ^fdJ i>a* :i^UAM
bf f&5 SJBV^I l; JO ti JOf, , J5SJJ &.
JOO - ^Qi
IY a\afc iit cii cl uas ,*Ui . .
^:
ox * nitxiutt^ .
&Y MP7i C--&..
jdJ <svo e*. -_ ..-f.!?au t.i3J. . . ..a ew ua.
.. bat* :aiol
tAfc ,i)3f%laj
awe
. ss-jg . jsbiii.
. . .
SOQOCS iia^pt swoe btw .aHOAK
sgo .. ,iaoJtaa3,af *. iA^ A- -
w I eilnw b*iu&i2o .
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 31
ton in the late 19tO s. I was vice-president of it at one time. It
seemed to me a very desirable way of getting the professional people
throughout the departments to know each other/ and one another s problems/
and of h*!"**5 bringing pressure on the adiniuistaation where we ielt im-
prevements were needed. This question of salaries was one of the items
in which we were very much interested.
MAUNDER: And did it in time have some inftM influence?
DANA: I think so. The organization still exists as a professional group in
the A. P. of L.
MAUNDER: But I suppose like all others who are regularly engaged in such activi
ties you were draped in the red xa flag and castigated for being a redical *
in the wordt words.
DANA: Yes. Some felt that I must be a subversive.
MAUNDER: To return again for a moment to the problem of morale, might it not
also be true that other national issues of greater importance, such as the
war **r** XXSXK itself and some of the problems that came out of the war
had grabbed the national spotlight away from forestry to a considerable extant?
DANA: I think that s true. Then of course the whole Service was disorganised
during the First World War.
France
MAUNDER: The forestry regiments were sent to ixxxu to provice our expeditionary
.-V I (
forces with woods needs. This exposure to fix French forestry and the
discipline of military life and all the rest of it had, after the war, a
very importatn influence, didn t it?
DANA: It took some time for that influence to g get translated into action, but
I think that it did have influence just the same. The experience broadeded
their horizons, and the fact that the French paid so much attention to
preserving their forests in the fxcx face of war when wood was urgently
needed made a tremendous impression on the Americans who were over there.
1
.5 "B
fl 5
*Ksi.
...^...^..
.
I &
.
. . --lit
,
wk.
:
<;
; o *BC . -Jb. Jt* xtirrt* ,KU
b-. . :f. fej&.
.
*."*..,>.; O i-i- /ufr o - . .
^
.
-rwnr* 3lg 9* .-n;t of :
r.ii.^ slfi
L*
if
ao 0*1 E,.
OJ-; 00 :
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 32
Evan during war time, when wood just had to be had, and in large quantities,
the French insisted that forests be cut according to what they regarded
as satisfactory practices. That attitude gave the American foresters who
wrtet over an t entirely new light on how an older UXXK country regards
its forests.
"
i
MAUNDER: Were these regiments made up almost entirely of mtxxkraiKXK fores tars?
DANA: Oh no. They included a great many practical men from industry. Industry
contributed heavily both in officers and eilisted personnel/ in both
regiments. There were a lot of miscellaneous fellows too, but in general
fhe Forest Service and industry contributed the leadership.
MAUNDER: How did this mixing together affect the future of forestry?
DAHA:/y/I would say it make mm impression on the leaders in industry as well
as on the Forest Service. Although the immediate results were not spec
tacular, the experience in France furnished the background for interest
when economic conditions began to improve.
MAUNDER: Did you go overseas* 1 with the regiments?
DANA: No. I was not in favor of going to war to start with, so that I didn t
join up at all promptly. For several mmtai months I stayed on with the
Forest Service trying to find walnut for gun stocks and spruce 6or air
plane construction.
t i
MAUNDER: Did you have anytltng to do with setting up the big spruce operation in
the Vest?
DANA: No, nothing at all. My spruce work as all in the Northeast. And I wasn t
setting up an operation but finding areas where there was enough spruce
to justify an operation.
MAUNDER: What relationship did this assignment have to the other endeavors
that were going on at that time in other regions to locate sources of
spruce?
r
g*V
" i
,* HMT 80
bl>?gs . - ; rfc
:>:. .5 r.-\i.!3;
a !-. ".?>-> < ttMta fchlo
xoariHaiiK >??:rfa : y :^MMAM
*<i
IlYswi fe. >o
>05 U
,1ft -S .
:
>t ", 00 IV CijISi/. .:/UI
son.;
r-.
. " : . . I
>e rri. . .imtq ill* 36 >
-~ ,
,DOl33
.-n . r. Vftd -
,.,r;-7wV: Ada nl lit t
MV *Tt . "iKjo nr.
.
B7OVSfea9 Yd:
..-fDlro-: ScUflQ ^ 3
-
DANA/MAUNDER/HRY Page 33
i
DAIA: It was an Integral part of an extra effort on the part of the Forest Ser
vice to locate adequate supplies of key materiel.
MAUNDER: When did the Away enter into the picture and establish what we know
as spruce harvesting and manufacturing operations?
DANA: I think it had already don that in the far West at this time.
MAUNDER: Was that operation in the far West duplicated then in the Northeast?
DANA: No. The government simply bought the materials from pirvate operators
who went ahead on their own.
MAUNDER: Do fcou have any opinions as to the comparison between the way things
were torn* done in theft East and the way they were done in the West during
that time?
DANA: No. I m not familiar enotjgh with the situation.
Anyway, after the war had gone on for a few months, I felt that we
had to see it through and that everyone should contribute what he could.
fee* So I enlisted in the array.
The army didn t think any more of my physical qualifications thajfo
my father had years before. They said I wasn t husky enough^ to be a
soldier. But they allowed me to do office work, so I became a captain in
the General Staff. I was secretary of tee Committee oa Lumber in charge
of collecting commodity statistics on lumber. I did very little except
-
collect figures from units in the army who had some idea of what they wanted
and then attempt to find out through agencies like the Forest Service
where the material might be available. It was not a job that involved
nqocy very much initiative or originality.
MAUND2R: The data that you gathered was pretty largely drawn from within the
files of the Service itself or the Department of Agriculture?
DANA: From the Army and the Department of Agriculture.
ec M*-
if? 3o . -.-vliij rvnxa . -. : ir. :4U6
, ,- V . H : E -lUpitR
^A d Mi :
.9C/ tttfl
I
a#*9ifa
1mA .
.
i&
>
ilftlt: B
j
: "
an
.
:
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 34
MAUNDBR: What kind of staff were you given to carry out this assignment?
DANA: Oh, I think only one or two asslstatns. It was a very small job. The
material vas pretty much available; It was a matter of compilation.
MAUNDER: Was any amount of this material drawn from outside of government source*?
DANA: I suppose other units in the amu army and the Forest Service drew the
materkal from other agencies but I did not have to go outside of the
government itself.
MAUNDBR: Did this experience provice you with any valuable insights into the
relationships betueeng government agencies and the suppliers of these
materials?
1ANA: No, I wouldn t say sol. It was a short and rather unimportant ap part of
my career.
After the armistice I found it was even harder to get out of the army
than it had been to get into it. In order to keep my busy theyput me to
worn writing a history of the General Staff from the Civil War on. It
was one of my first ventures into hisobry. I thought I did a good job.
FRY: What sources did you use?
DANA: I spent nearly all my time at the War College down on the Potomac going
over original orders a reports and so forth. It was the first time all
that material had all been brought together.
FRY: Why kind of staff did you have for this job?
DANA: Only a stenographer to write out the material. The rest I did myself.
FRY: How long A did it take you?
DANA: I think I was on it from the early part of November until sometime late
in March.
you got out of the army
MAUNDER: After ikKcnxxMuxmatxr* you went back into the Forest Service?
DANA: I went back as a so-called forest economics and was assistant Chief of
te-^gi
>o bn-** *a<ftf :X
rif .*( n*--
!
*"
a*
.
; .. : .
f e .
.
-
: i^n*
n bed ,
.
.
J
.
.
i !
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 35
Che Branch of Research under Clapp.
Had Clapp
MAUNDER: HttxKtajqi been in the tax army during the war or had be stayed in
Washington?
DANA: He stayed on the job. Both he and Graves were irritated with me because
reappointing me
I didn t. They weee not at all sure about XKxpfntKtajdboi to the Forest
Service after the war.
FRY
XXX: Did Graves and Clapp feel this way about all the foresters who went into
ilitary service?
DANA: No. I think they felt less that way about the men who enlisted early,
particularly those who got into the Tenth Engineers, since the Forest
Service organized that. But their feeling over roe was that I was taking
a really non-essential job which anybody could do. I was just following
a selfish inpulse in WUCB wanting to be active in some kind of a mili
tary capacity.
MAUNDER: But they relented and reappointed you.
DANA: Yea, very forxtunately from my standpoint. Prior to that time Clapp
had not had any designated assistant. He just worked through the heads
of the offices under him. But he decided at this time that he really needed
an administrative helper.
FRY: What were your chief duties as Dr. Clapp s assistant?
DANA: My duties were very largely carrying out the policies that he decided
upon, contacting interested groups, and doing field work. I visited the
experiment stations and reviewed the programs. The Forest Products Lab
oratory was also on my beat. I worked with Clapp in the preparation of
reports and memoranda. The outstanding report was the Capper Report,
submitted in 1921. I did quite a little bit of work, toward* the end,
compiling all the reports from the field into the final form. Congress
had set a date by which the report must be submitted, and Clapp insisted
**<
.qtj&I : aria
at h -an ad . - :n.: er* nes-f vpHtadhM dlS
tr*9*d B -. Afl
**u ^*r
-T *V .
*rM J^B
|
- . . IN blnv
B
>- U ft
ai
!
13^3F
,
ff 3Bf3
ties ,noqo
.aa-
.
4- . .
ac ,
:
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 36
on getting it in on time. We had to work late in the evening for two
or thcee nights befiore it was due. Finally on the last day we finished It,
and Clapp carried it up to Congress in person.
FRY: How did the Congressional resolution which cleed for this report get
passed in the first place?
DANA: Well, it came about at the time of the first row over forestry on pri
vate lands, and P.nchot thought that a good want to center attention on
it was to get a study of this kind requested by Congress. He was hoping
that the results would support his view that the situation was so serious
that fedeeal intervention was necessary. Being a stron friend of Senator
Kf Capper of Kanses, he got Capper to introduce the resolution.
There KX usually isn t too ouch difficulty in getting a resolution passed.
FRY: I d like you to evaluate the *fc methods used in the forest inventory. How
effective and accuaate do you think it was?
DANA: The Capper Report was based in large part on the inventory made by the
1914
Department of Commerce published between 1912 and tfrtt. That report was
supplemented by such not new Information as the Forest Service had collected
since in the way of additions, amendments, and so forth. There were no
new field studies on which it was based; it was simply a bringing together
of existing information, a very good Job of analysis and presentation.
It was very liberally (and, I think, effectively) illustrated by charts,
which we used more freely and more extensively than had been the case in
previous reports. But it was really iar from adequate.
FRY: Did you develop any new special abilities during your short career as
Clapp s assistant?
There s
DANA: No. I was a jack of all trades under Clapp. Zk*xx nothing that I can
point to with pride. That;s part, I think, of thefc reason that I left
OW3 TO* .f:lHiVl ,-,;
,il bdlojt2 ew x" 1 .1 iB4j^: r i .-
3
.11 &t r -i :..fct.
. . : . .
K> - , ,
i. I ......
.
- . , If --*0
UMM M i
new
:AKAQ
:j
bj bri a-..:vii.i )e
iv
-ua
i
.rf b3t
cli.
.
jnr
DANA/MAUNDER/ERY Page 37
In 1921 to become Forest Commissioner of Maine. I felt that I vac fet-
tin into a SB rut in the Forest Service. I felt that I wasn t develop
ing, and I didn t feel that I was cntributing very ouch.
about
MAUNDER: You must have gotten to know Earle Clapp quite well. Tell us atanx
him.
DANA: Clapp was an extremely efficient administrator who promptly put research
on the map. He took the attitude that anybody who was no good in ad
ministration was no good in research either. The better a man s repu
tation in administaation, the more interested Clapp was in getting him
into research work. He also went after money very aggressively and in
creased salaries. He got experiment station directors put on the same
salary level as District foresters, which had been unheard of before.
And that, I think, caused a little resentment on the part of the District
Foresters. They had much bigger organizations, of course.
MAUNDER: How long did it take Clapp to accomplish this? He came in 1915
DANA: I don t remember. Maybe five, six, or seven years. It wasn t very
eong.
MAUNDER: He was a dynamic force.
DANA: He ceraainly was dynamlcr-far more so than you d realize* to talk with
quiet,
him a few minutes. He was very BVXKXXSH almost ingrown, somewhat intro
spective, but he saw sure was aggressive in putting across a program he
thought was right. It was perfectly amazing what he accomplished with that
outfit in a relatively few year*. He is the fellow primarily responsi
ble for getting the eastern experiment stations developed. Zon was all
for them, of course; but Clapp was the fellow who organised the campaign
that XK put them across. For instance, when I was Forest Commissioner
of Maine, he enlisted my help in lining up support in Congress for the
Northeastern Forest Experiment Station. He used other pxapxa people in
the same way. He was extremely expert at getting help in putting across
-^wj . . ia*^" :c
i :UT MI o50i ajU
tf-tilno sr.w 7
** i $MBAM
.
_. r,= : xr rr, ttv r :AHAC
4O03 f.ft .trjf>.r r.rti
booj off * noUn
r* oJt
.
sH .r.;-.-file bscr
< 6* J 5"
,3tr1: .
. ^9<iT ,M7ot
t woH :f ;*
. :mH
b all :*FIQ
TiBfc-; j3 s
a<< o sri . -
^ env J4gt
.
, . >rii JBW39
.iins^-
^ " T. H
!*TJOC MM) ill Wt .SRlftH
Hly^ ; ~
:BW H .?sw wv8 srfj
DANA/MAUNDER7FRY rage JO
the programs he wanted pushed.
I m a great admirer of Clapp s. I think he did an outstanding job
in the Forest Service; the federal research organization is really his
creation. He deserves tremendous credit for it. But he s a Messiah.
He |ets an idea, and he just has to put it across.
For example
Clapp was invlved in every major event of his time, /He was influential
in getting the Copeland resolution interpreted broadly so as to involve
a stddy of the whole forestry situation. There s a question as to whether
Copeland really intended that.
FRY: Something that the Forest Service was up against during the twenties and
thirties was the threat of being transferred to the Department of the
Interior. Was Clapp involved in this fight?
DANA: Yes, us to his ears. As Acting Chief Forester he was involved to the
point where it was touch and go whether Roosevelt would fire him for being
so active in the matter. He was working behind the scenes providing the
brains for the campaign to keep the Forest Service in the Department of
Agriculture, using all the influence he had. There was a special com
mittee on the matter set up in Los Angeles by Charles Dunvoodie; but
Clapp was really pulling the strings on that "grass roots" movement. I
was entirely sympathetic* with Clapp on that; I hoped he d get away with
it, which he did. But I think that campaign is probably the main reason
that he did not become permanently Chief of the Forest Service. He an-
tagonizdd Roosevelt, who must have known something about it at xxxx the
time, so that he simply said, No, he wouldn t accept Clapp as Chief.
FRY: Do you foresee any increase in cooperation between the Department of the
Interior and the Department of Agriculture?
DANA: Oil yes. I think things will improve depending very largely on the sec
retaries.
I wouldn t be surprised if someday the Forest Service would get into
*
.
,. . .. , ft I .
..!<.-- . -vl qfajfll
. -
. ; ,6Si
a* qs
. v :alqo0 ad3 91.
.
. .
.
>JgnA to
-
.
i
.
XSX*
BB q
I
.
.
-
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 39
a Department of Conservation o or a Department of National ! Re
sources and that Interior might be abolished and something else take its
place. That was the recommendation of the Hoover Commission that I was
on, the Task Force on Natural Resources.
FRY: On that Task Force, didn t the committee that was looking over the De
partment of the Interior suggest that forestry be a part of that? And
the committee on the Department of Agriculture suggested that forestry
shoulc stay in agriculture 2
DANA: Not only suggested, but both act argued it very vigorously.
FRY: Where was your position in this?
DANA: I was a member of the Department of the Interior committee. I recom
mended that they combine agriculture and nataral resources and call it
the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. I talked to the com
mittee on the Department of Agriculture! about it, and they said they d
be willfing to go along, but my committee wouldn t. They thought that
all natural resources activity should be in an indpendent department,
including forestry. They didn t want to be bothered with agricultural
activities.
MAUNDER: Since you were in the Forest Service during the early twenties, may
be you can shed some light on the agitation for federal regulation of
private timberlands about that time?
DANA: In a way Graves started the whole row over regulation of private timber-
lands. I think he was ahead of his time in this matter. Before Pinchot
got into the picture he was insisting that there must be better manage
ment of privately wxnurt owned lands and that this would probably in
volve regulation. He made two or three speeches and published several
articles on the subject before Pinchot came in on it.
Pinchot s
FRY: Did he try oo enlist 2*nska*$x help at first?
-*8 XXKnl .; )nr)TMl*G R 1O : ..
c 3 .
" - - .IwnfWMOS:. .;.; SV JarfT .3
.*0to.. .--.; 70S .
I
.BAG
. ,HAO
.
.
.
.
I
I
.
1 . n.tL- - .
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 40
BANA: Mo.
MAUNDER: To what extent do you think chat this attitude expressed by Graves *
was engendered by the fact that forestry may have slipped as a burning
public issue during the war years and that Graves and Pinchot and the
others in their camp felt the need to lind some way of reinstating it
as a burning issue?
DANA: Veil, my reaction would be that they were not so interested in getting
:-,
an issue that would attract attention as they were in actually getting
otn better practices on private land, which constituted, of
course, the greater bulk of the forest area. They were interested in
action rather than propaganda. Public support had to be mobilized, of
course, but public support was a means ra therm than the end.
MAUNDER: How was the Society s position determined in this issue?
DANA: By referendum votes. As I remember the votes on this matter of publtt
regulation in the early 1920 s mustered only two to four hundred votes out
of the whole Society.
MAUNDER: Was there a vast number of abstainers nk ?
DANA: Oh yes. Probably a quarter to a third of the membership.
MAUNDER: What was Plnchot;s influence on the Society s action at this time?
DANA: Mr. Pinchot s influence was very strongxx. He was still an outstanding
leader in the profession. There was no question that a forestry commit*
tee headed by him had very great influence on the membership! in general.
MAUNDER: And Pinchot was taking a leading part in committee work in the Society?
DANA. Oh, yes. He was personally very active in the committee of which he was
chairman.
MAUNDER?: To what extent do you feel President Wilson lent his support to this
suggestion?
DANA: I think Wilson was too much absorbed in many other problems that seemed
ar av. b9ga>. ov I, .-. ixr. ;i;-- oT :
6 SS t->_. i YTltE-|0~i J>
RiO :
; ?a3
-
,bnsl d Kfcxy**j<*aiME2
>) . r,
I
idm*".
-
87
!
I
a
DANAfMAUNDER/FRY Page 41
to him far more important and didn t pay much attention to forestry or
any other phase of conservation.
MAUNDER: The recommendations which Graves and inchot were pressing for were
not taken up Vy the Congress. Was the President s lack of support for K
their ideas a factor of great importance in the matter or not?
DANA: Oh yes, I suppose so. I would think that if the Presidnet had gone to
bat for the proposal for public regulation either by the federal government
or by the states it would have received much more attention in Congress
than it did. But x you remember that this campaign was started immediately
vqpi after the was when Wilson was virtually Incapacitated, so there was
hen
no hope that he would do anything about it. And /Harding came in a couple
of years later, he walso was embroiled in other matters, aside from the
fact that Harding was not too strong a character anyway.
MAUNDER: Do you fin there is quite a little residue of resentment left by his
issue on both sides?
DANA: Not generally. Oh, there might still be a little emotional reaction
against Clapp for his missionary attitude toward federal regulation. Ha
tried to be a leader in the wilderness when it was too late. The op
portunity, 1 think, had gone by by the time that he became the Acting
Chief. He was g fighting for a lost cause from the beglnlng, and he was
very emotional about it.
And if you find industry men who are still touchy about it, don t
forget that the 1920 were a period of depression 6or both farmers and
the timber land owners. In the early 1930 s President Hoover appointed
a Timber Conservation Board at the request of the National Lumber Manu
facturers Association which went into considerable deaail as to what the
situation was and what might be done about it. I was chairman of the
IP S.;B /
-s-ioH 03 no r * ** rfstw W 1 nkib fcftft ft*ft*9oqKi MO* 7** ttftt ft3
ea*rfq 7 fio
;
x -rfi \j V rf3 soe
"1 ft S**iJt VJMb
.-j sa^mcr,-?. I ,nt * i
8t .ji eri-j vd o
1 rff.-E.-W3 W
-
yW rf Jd3 ^
.t
^5
i X e :
TE
.tH*~: :
J* ld 10! q mit
a sd oJ b
v ^ I *
OM f
i woy :
serwo bnJ^$i
.
P.A zTt^
DANA/MAUNDER/PRY Page 42
Committee on Private buaxxxkl Ownership, so that I made quite a
study of the history of the wood-using Indus tires during the 1920 s,
particularly from 25 on, based largely on income tax reports. The num-
.
her of failures and the small earnings on capital investments were really
appalling. They certainly made one pretty sympathetic with the reluctance of
timber land owners to spend any more money than they had to just to keep
>;
above water. There was no doubt they d been in very difficult straits.
That study was en eye opener for me.
MAUNDER: Do you have a copy of the final report of the Timber Conservation
Board?
DANA: I m not sure that I have the complete report. I have, of course , a copy
of the report of the Committee on Private Ownership, Whether I can lay
my hands on it, I m not sure. I have a vague impression that I turned
them over to Lyle Crane, in order to get some room in my own files. May
be ve ought tl make sure that Lyle doesn t theow them away. Those re
ports are really avluable, because most of them were not published in
printed form, and the duplicated copies are getting scarcer and scarcer
all the time.
MAUNDER: KBXZH Now in compiling the information that M you sought for this
group you as must have ranged broadly through both ogyernment agencies,
the Bureau of Internal Revenue, trade associations, and all that.
DANA: No. We didn t go much to trade associations. We confined ourselves z
largely to Bureau of Internal Revenue reports. We got a great deal of
original confidentila Information out of that Bureau. That really fur
nished the bulk of the statistical data.
MAUNDER: You came to this by appointment from the President?
DANA: The President appointed the Board, then the Board Itself appointed the
i i
1*1
JOpCi : j ...-... . XiOUf >...* JJa .HI BO 6-JJ V^t
. t StXjW
nT . v *
I
,M
[<
I MM
i
l
I
:;. : . > \
DANA/MAUNDER /FRY Page 43
chairmen of the various committees. I m quite sure ray appointment was
engineered by R.Y. Stuart, who vas Chief of the Forest Service at that
time. For some reason he vented me for this particular job, which I
finally accepted with great reluctance.
MAUNDER: Did you know President Hoover personally?
DANA: No. I met him years later in connection with the Hoover Commission on
Govermental Organizations , but until this time I had never met him.
MAUNDER: What would you say about President Hoover s interest in forestry af
fairs?
DANA: Well, I d say his interest in the economic aspect of forestry the re
lation of timber producgion and utilization to the economic and social
welfare of the country was very keen; but his knowledge of and Interest
in the technical aspects of forest management less so. He had a busi
nessman s Inters t. He was very much Impressed with the importance of
forest Industries in the national economy and felt the importance of doing
something to strengthen their position even before the depression hit
the country as a whole. Also vk he was a personal friend of Wilson Compton.
MAUNDER: Would you be inclined to say that he showed same greater inters t In
the field than his predecessors since T.R. ?
DANA: I d say he showed less interest* than Theodore Roosevelt but more interest
than any other presidnet up to his own term of office. I think that
Franklin Roosevelt again showed more Interest. The two Roosvelts have
been the two presidents who ve beensac* outstanding in their interest in
forestry and other conservation affairs.
FRY: Why did you say that finft Clapp s campaign for federal regulation was a
lost cause from the hs*Htn&ifo beginning?
DANA: ixxktitk People in the coutnry in general, Including foresters, no longer
favordd federal regulation. I think many of them followed the same course
I did: I believed in it once but came to doubt its wisdom. I know Xlapp
felt quite strongly about me because I wasn t supporting his campaign.
tte hurl KAAM
=*ao !. *-r
3 r i i.}q
:
jsnoo- IMS I .
av iaJW :KMUA
to
i c. fc 1
I
. . >CRB :
fl
oqniJ; &
-
,
. .
- MM
"
.
.
:ii&Ki tiJ e -of
- . . .
.
DANAjfMAUNDER/FRY Page 44
We had beean quite close, too, same as I was to Zon.
FRY: What shifted you?
DANA: I didn t see
HxMxXxflXKHKB* any hope of getting the federal legislation, for one thing.
And I thnk I ve tost my faith in federal government as a good regulator.
I think that the local governments are much more closely in touch with
the situation and can do a better job.
I favordd federal legislation in earlier days because I didn t sea any
hope fore getting the states to do anything. Now the states are doing
something, and private* owners are voluntarily doing ever so much bet
ter than they did back in those days too.
FRY: Do you think that individual states are less subject to pressures than
the federal government?
DANA: I think the states are more subject to local pressures than the fed
eral government is. On the other kxrf hand, in our field of forestry
I think that owners generally now have reached the point where they want
to cooperate with thex state. What pressure they put HUBH* on would
be very largely in favof of getting something done to encourage what
they think are sound practices.
FRY: I d like to get your opinion of what a model set-up would be if you
to
were given the power ax legislate forestry for private industry.
DANA: I think that I would adopt the ftx Swedish system. Sweden comes nearer
to having federal legislation, of course; it s such a small country it s
hardly more than a state. In effect control is exercised by a group
that represented the state, local agencies, and the private timberland
owne s, and they agree on what gmmrtiart standards should be adopted.
Then the state enforces the standards. This is quite a change from
back in the 1920 s when I was all for federal regulation.
MAUNDER: The pest-war period is where Bill Greeley really begins to emerge.
. .: {?
:
T
.gar ft? < If.
.
10 _
-^10 1--Jin
.
I
:-.!
I
;
.
-
JO
.
.
.
DANA/MAUBDER/FRY Page 45
la it not, as a very powerful figure in the whole picture of forestry?
DANA: No. He began to emerge before that. He d been emerging as a cooing man
vay back around 1907 or 08 when he was a forest supervisor in Califor
nia. You noticed him even then as a comer, a man who was undoubtedly
Regional Forester at Missoula
goin way up the ladder. He was B if if | BH** n^ ry ^"*TTy py*TriHraint gg very
young man. In 1910 I was detailed out there to work under him. I remem
ber going out having heard of his reputation as a tyrant with very high
standards and no mercy on anybody. I was a young fellow just out of
school, scared to death of him. But the first Sunday I was there he in
vited me over to haves supper with the family, and let helped wash the
dishes and hleped his daughter learn to walk. From then on I never was
afraid of Bill Breeley. I found he was a human belong. But he had that
reputation within four or five years after he d graduated from Yale.
He was a HKKXHH strong man and everybody knew it right off.
MAUNDER: Did this impression of his domineering personality and hard two-
fistedness continee right along through the years?
DANA: Yes .
MAUNDER: Did this show up in later years when * he was Chief of the Forest
Service ?
DANA: Yes. Greeley was unlike Pinchot in lacking personal magnetism
MAUNDER: This might account for the accusations of his being cold.
DANA: That s right. He and Pinchot were alike in that either of them mcfci
would sacrifice anybody, no matter how close a personal friend he was,
if he felt it to be necessary in the line of dury. Pinchot felt that he
had a tnissiop; Greeley felt that he had a duty. He was ruthless when he
thought it was essential--but he was always ruthless regretfilly. In
other words, he x had what used to be known as the old "Puritan conscience. 11
MAUNDER: That s, of course, a military man s attitude too, isn t it?
^j:>. .
s) . . ; n i . J
. ;<r.v/ :
,0 8S
;
.
:ii)VtOB
18
.
.
a
:
.
.
-
.
-
-
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 46
DANA: Perhaps that was why he was one of the few people engaged In the war who
continued to be called by his military title. He was always Colonel
Greeley. The title tied in with his general character; he seemed like
a colonel, a high-class military type.
I m sure you get the impression that I m a great admirer of his.
There was no question about his being the boss of the Forest Service.
On one occasion early in 1926 the New England section of the Society of
American Foresters decided that Greeley was too much of an autocrat and
that he was over-standardizing the Forest Service. So they passed a
resolution asking the Council of the Society of American Foresters to
investigate the situation. At that time I was both President of the
Society and Director of the Northeastern Forest experiment Station, a
Forest Service organization. Before any formal communication reached me
on this resolution, I tauiix heard of it, and as I was going to Washing
ton I thought I d talk to Greeley about it and see how he felt. While
on ny way to his office I met a colleague, C.R. Tillotson/ and remarked
that I was going up to discuss this matter with Greeley. Tillotson
sxjtc siad, "You are. Well, you ve got more courage than I have!"
I told Greeley of the action taken by the sec Li on and xxxx said
that if the matter XXK reached we in a formal way I didn t see how I could
avoid a*frtg appointing a committee to carry out the request of the
section. He wasn t very happy about it, but he agreed that he didn t
see what else I could do. Then he got to inquiring what was in aack of
all this anyway? Why do these folks fell that way? Among other things
I told him it was part of his personality that was K responsible for itr-
that he was regarded as cold-blooded, hard-boiled, heartless, and so on.
Perhaps I put it on a bit too strongly. Finally he turned away from me,
looked out of the window for half a minute or more, then turned back and
.
rsAMifeMMittl
" *i -ei/j Jo sfv. vdw t. :
"-. . ft. . -;>l3 X7fi.i t Jiro ij.
rfH fM&
-
<A
.
-
.
:.;. .
.
. .
.
. - : .
.
.jcortA
. >
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 47
said, "Sam, is that what people really think of me?" I said I was afraid
it was. It was obvious that he d been cut to the quick and that he did
n t feel himself that he was that kind of a person. After a little fur
ther discussion he said that if people felt the Service ought to be in
vestigated, he d be delighted to ask for their frank criticism. "If
you will give me the names of the people you think Might have criticisms
to make, I ll write them a persoaal letter urging them in g friendly terms
to tell me everything that s on their chests."
As far as I know, he go* only one reply from that letter, from Ralph
Haw ley at New Haven. I also wrote Greeley at some length telling him what
I thought the criticisms were and why they d been made. I think we were
the only two who wrote to him. This poor response K led the sponsors
of the resolution to feel that they did t have a very good case, I guess,
because I never did recieve any formal notice n of it.
Greeley eventually answered my letter to him at great leagth ex
plaining why the actions criticized had been taken. Among other things,
I remember his comment that loosemeas had crept into the organization,
falling
that it was more or less iattytiig apart at the seams, and the he found that
it just had to be jacked up and put on a more business-like, efficient
basis. In doing * so, hv was accused of over-standardizing things, and
maybe he did. But he wrote a very convincing letter, which, indidentally,
has not been thrown away.
MAUNDER: Good.
DANA: I think I may have my eetter to him, too, which is unusual.
MAUNDER: Good. We would be very happy to have that or to see that it gets placed
in the proper repository library or some library of your choa>sing.
!
DANA: Two things about this event interested me particularly. First was
Greeley s obvious hurt at the opinoin the people had of his personaltiy,
V
4fidJ tfl - -. a r 1 ,n8" ,b. l e
4 --sr*.-) bo* tafeft .
r?3
ilu oiV3*fe -ji ejqo& ii *a.f 9ib ..
eV
it; jiniiJ.i i.ov elqo#q 4riJ Jo ftaorfto ads ovl^ ;;>>;
si fas ^r II T
(ia m TV* $
q*-r MH> vfr/Q T
J Alfn- i *noa j y: ! 3* \
. >tom niHuf b ;Mb xdw b.< .
; loqt; siO bt ; > f voo<i t>rfT . -rr- srf;
MHS - bM; isvsrr I *tuc3ftd
.
fq
r. . ? nt c :ic tfNMBO
gr
. gP^>:
;; O5 bar^ ^.aw^
; a<- ..-.iaeff
.bib 6i! 4^03
..m nwbirft c*d ?
.laucoau si dolriv ,.o; ,r
av Mf bluow * JMUAJ
, r; J <)|, : : ;
>.
bslf *lqc>- ^SJ
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 48
and second was his readiness to invite a grank expression of their criti
cisms. He held no hard feelings against me for talking with him so freely,
for a few weeks later he appointed me as the Forest Service representative
to the World Forestry Congress in Rome. To as this is typccal of Greeley
that he never held anything against a person.
MAUNDER: What were some of the steps that you recall Greeley took to reorganise
and tightne up the Forest Service organization?
DANA: I remember that he rquired more reports than had previously been called
for, so that administrative office both in the field and in Washington
would have a full knowledge of what was going on. He required that things
be done according to his standardised forms ft rather than leaving it up
to each individual to handle g* things whatever way he thought best. It
was a combination of little things of that sort rather than any one out
standing change that he made.
MAUNDER: How do you suspect these changes in the Forest Service setup were
looked upon by Pinchot and Graves? Were they in any way critical of
Greeley s tec ties in that they constituted a sort i of criticism in a
sense of their previous administration?
DANA: I have no first-hand Information on that at all. I can only guess, and
that would be that Pinchot was probably somewhat critical and Graves pro
bably not. I don t think that Graves would take it as a reflection on his
own administration. He would feel the times were changing and that Greeley
was catching up with them.
MAUNDER: Were there evidences of this looseness of organisation in fk the For
est Service that stuck out in your estimation when you were thete?
DANA: No. You see, I was not in the administrative end of the work. I had
nothing to do with administration of nati nal forests, whech was what
Greeley was trying to rectify. My work had been KX* entirely in the
, r<.tavq * Miynii 03 *:,. *!;fiwi e. t
n :B%B ag.
..-, *B LaaaHyi* * >.Jtrvt-.
-SKK4B t
. S) jj>v -.ira u
1G OJ A> ^W
iO^ d3 q *:
ns-^r u CMiJ i..-^oq:
M
>e w
q .v fe |
!> K>
I Mg0f.
..
.
I
: viov ft
i
; e ec -i
.
->I ri id ni i.TuauxJttui
*Y. <**<<.
br,. o be
i xx*s str ^ J
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 49
Bra ch of Research, and within that unit we felt ourselves pretty free
and easy to do things as we thought x best. Wen weren t very much in
terfered with by any of the standardisations that Greeley put in.
But I think that on the whole it was a good thing for the Forest
Service. I think that he improved the organization and got things move* ing
along much more smoothly and efficiently. He introduced a lot of new
personnel whose influence was pretty good.
MAUNDER: To what extent to dyo feel Greeley was influenced by business methods
and businessmen of xk his time? Or weak this just merely an expression of
his own Yankee character coming out?
DANA: Well, my guess is that it was an expression of his own personal character
istics. I don t believe he was under any pressure from the outside at
all. Greeley was essentially an organizaer. He was excellednt for get
ting machinert to work well. I remember Ovid Butler telling a story,
for instance, about the ver serious fire season of 1910 in Region One
when Greeley was Regional Forester. Butler was in the Regional Office
at that time. He waid that the office was in an uproar. Nobody knew
exactly what was going vnftx on ii . Then Greeley went out in the field.
He came back one day, and wihhin 24 hours everything was on an even keel
and everyone knew exactly what he was supposed to be doing.
I think ax of one other incident that I think is worth recording.
legislation
It arose about 1925 from the attempt of the stockmen to get xcxxixxxn
which would give them greater privileges on the national forests than \
they d previously enjoyed. At that tine, as at present, there was no
i,\
legal provision for the creation and administration of national forests,
for the purpose of range management. They insisted there should be, and
Greeley was willing to go along with them on xte legislation that met
xxfcx with his approval. But there was a good deal of opposition both
<. e/ivitaauo ait* w -iJ/u .stasS io ri? B;rti
aF T. Ml
, n .c 10 jw t
i.
OB *. . -i 3 bftvo-Kinri . -.olwat
09 s^ro riau.-i: 5
" tlOl OfH,
3ciitrtf ^/. a.i9D .f . -i o.,.-
.aav Pi8MDJlltf km
d
a<rrq; a.i am
.
.
riMPM
soT-
I
-
. . W ?6ii .
-)l fJSVS fl).
.
O 10 K I
RtDOrfltKf "^/ 03 r.t*,3i00)2 &
. - dw
Oe *Mf 7d4= ,3TS
.i3*W>"
:..J JOffft? 10 t
a* .
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 50
within and without the Forest Service to any legislation on the ground
that that was just gett ng the camel s nose M into the tent; that stockmen
: - \Jt
would take over the timberland and timbergrowing would lose out in compe
tition with grazing. At the annual meeting of the Society of Ameican
Foresters I was asked as president to appoint a committee to study and
9 ** ** V W* (JJ. -f - *-
report on the proposals made, including Greeley s. The committee of
three men submitted a majority report which opposed legislation and which
was unanimously approved by the Council of the Society. Since most of
the Council members were Forest Service people, that put the Society in the
position of opposing a proposal by the Chief of the Forest Service
through members of his on organisation.
MAUNDER: Do you recall some of the members of the Committee?
DANA: Yes, The chiarman of the committee was H.H. fkpsi Chapman of Yale; the
other two members were Henry Schmidt of the University of Minnesota and
A.W. Sampson of the University of California.
.
MAUNDER: There was both a majority report and a minority report of that com
mittee. How did the three men line up in those *& reports?
DANA: The majority consisted of Chapman and Schmidt. The minority was Sampson,
who submitted a report favoring the Greeley proposals for legislation.
MAUNDER: Do you recall what your own position was?
DANA: Oh, yes. I strongly supported the majority point of view.
I told Greeley of this situation and said that if his bill came be
fore Congress the flsuMti Council would feel obligated to oppose it in
behalf of the Society. What would he do about it? He said he wouldn t
do anything. We had the right as citizens to express our views through
the Society of American Foresters. He was sorry that we didn t agree
,
with him, but if we wanted to oppose him it was ours: right/ and he would nt
hold it against us. Fortunately the rtwke stockmen lost interest in
tr. .Mutt-
Kxi-r.. t<i oi .. , ,&* Mb 40<uttiv boa
-- fair.! j! <W 3g :
-qr*-c. al -- ol Wuiv; j|uJ:wO^
3lMA i - .> i sre *:, , atfc /i.
S .nioqq.n
;fvr-. a, t jbf. ejsM^ortq s.i.U oo ^
: Moqqo ii^ld -! V .. ito L t,w !>oJJiodoe at
I :-TchMir
rf3 9jM ^0 I
.>t9Mlr I ;r,H u*
to o-ratiretMji s,< < )o 9oe :1SOKOAI^
lo BawiJM? SMJXi . .
&daeNB ova 7t
. .
Jioq. .
.: . .
""
.
aloq mfO :
>q . :Q :AMAO
8lli 1. -v-ici
4gil4o
< ow d<i
bsd sM .
bib OH Jtrfj \ .otaA lo
>d bas .
nl. S*i3tii .!aa jus.yyjta.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 51
i
Greeley s bill, which didn t go far enough to suit then, so it never
I
received a hearing. It was just dropped. But the Society actually did
sent H.H. Chapman to oppose before Congress the legislation that was
being advocated by the stockmen. To the best of my recollection that
was the first time that the Society of American Foresters had ever gone
on record in that way on a matter of public policy. Theye had been a
good deal of opposition by many members of the Society to having our group
take any action on matters involving policy. They felt that we should be
only a technical society and not concern ourselves with matters of policy,
especially if they wee were controversial. But the Council decided that
here was a case where we Ktmrtx should express ourselves, and we paid Chap
man s expenses to make the presentation.
MAUNDER: How did this precedent affect the Society s policy in this regard in
later years?
DANA: Well, I d say that the Society has vacillated. There have been times
at which it has been entirely ready to express itself greely on matters
of policy at Congress or/ anywhere else. Other times it s been rather
kxi hesitant to do so. In general, there has been an increasing gn ten
dency to particpate in policy matters, and I think that tendecny is still
growing.
FRY: How would you evaluate Greeley as Forester?
DANA: Very high. He was an excellent administrator. He organised and di
rected things wll. He was always clear-cut: when he had a policy, you
knew what it was.
FRY: How good was he at development of policy?
DANA: Very good, I think. I regard him as a man of outstanding intellectual
capacity.
FRY: I take it them that Greeley is one of your choices for nomination as
i
one xkx of the best administrators of the Forest Service.
1 1
... ., i
. !>tjq .
f *
saw Je- i!
jj**i
OOf <9A V . {-". 1
^dT
I *fta
.
NT 1
-in 01 MNMIl
btgY ?1
T
:1 n*d }.: * .! *!?
: ..-art
lot M T^9--
a ar.w H ./felrf ?!,
:> X^
;>l*vefc
. T MJ
:
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 52
class
DANA: There s noboyd I d put in Greeley s nin:. I don t think Pinchot was
class
in his u*xz, even.
MAUNDER: To what extent to you feel Bill Greeley had the ear of Presidents dur-
int the time he was head of the Forest Service?
DANA: Honestly, I don t know the anser to that. That s ones: phase of Greeley s
with
career/which I never had any* contact. But my guess would be that there
weren t many in the government service with ouch relationship to Calvin
Coolidge.
MAUNDER: How close was your friendship with Bill Greeley in the years that
you were in the Forest Service?
DANA: Well, I thought it was pretty cloee. I don t know what Greeley s feeling
about it might have been. I felt very much at home with the entire family.
We were frequently at their house, and they frequently would come to our
house also. I would think I a way that I was closer to him personally
than I was officially.
MAUNDER: How often did you see him in the course of a working week?
DANA: Well, when we were both in town I would see him at laaat every other
day, but not necessarily on official business. We d say hello in the cor
ridor or have lunch together or something like that. You see, I never
reported directly to him. After he became Forester I was Assistant Chief
of the Branch of Research under Clapptf, and my official contacts with Greeley
happened
were always through Clapp except when Clapp hppaawd to be out of town and
I became acting chief of our branch.
MAUNDER: What would you have to say about the social life that Greeley led in
Washington as compared, let s say, with the social life that Pinchot had
with members of the Service?
DANA: I m not at all familiar with Pinchot s social life, but my guess would be
that it involved many more people in circles outdide his official activi
ties than Greeley s. While Colonel Greeley had many outside connections,
he still aaw a great deal more of his family and men in the Forest Service.
.<? . "-
.
**** y :
~l **v Mt Ri* arfa 3;u
. o3 ir- "
. Hi .-D-
jwt -/: f
4 fHtolz w *S*.
-*
H
Jiltl*
i .uori
SS f f
.SJA
.: :Attfe(i
...
sA sw
.
. W 3r: :
; v : K .
.
: I .il !*-
a fevlWi
*
wets I. f
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 53
MAUNDER: He did go out of his way to cultivate their frienship and get next
to them ina social way outside of the office, then?
DANA: Yes. I can t say with how many that was the case. But whenever he was
on social terms with people they we e extremely good. I think everybody
who was a guest in Greeley s house at all frequently felt that ha had a
rather ideal family life and that guests were always most welcome and
treated most hispitably. He simply put the office in the background
whenever he was home with his family. Now I don t mean that when he
had guests like Wilson Compton or other distinguished notables interested
in forestry they wouldn t talk shop, but as a family, shop* was just about
out of it. I once asked him how he stood the strain of being Forester.
He said when he left the office he turned the key in the lockx and never
thought of it again until he returned the next day.
MAUNDER: How did you and others in the Service Sm, feel about his departure to
the West Coast Lumbermen s Association?
DANA: I was personally very sorry, and I think a good many others were too.
MAUNDER: Did his resignation come as a great surprise to you?
* .
DANA: Yes, it did. I had no idea that anything of the sort was in xt the wind.
On the other hand his appointment in 1920 to succeed* Graves had been no
surprise to anybody. I think that all of us took it for granted that he
was the only udk real candidate for the job.
MAUNDER: Have you ever suspected at all thatGreeley s decision to leave the
Forest Service may have been influenced just a little bit by a feeling that
perhaps his own group wasn t with him all the way?
DANA:XXX I never supposed so, but I m not sure. My own feeling would be that
it wouldn t bother him too much to be opposed if he thought that he was
doing the right thing. I think he just felt that he had accomplished
the things he was particularly qualified to do. The only reason he ever
. M d3 MV. . 8 3* i- . :
vt- rKtx * iw awi*i oo
vri Mf pf 1 a aaw
I
jBfltfT, bJ
w ^4 uw Mt vv*aiJk
tait
( HIMT .-, . . .
B OC O
. . ; Jil ]
XBi : : .
iaW s
r.iioavMi "- * ^
>? ft aagl**? ij igaOH. ".
v uij net ,-at, SA. :
aits oO
! 3iw.
i Jbui > Ji o sib raw
.d iA&HfU&
f.e5 e
.
.
c .
,
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 54
V
gaye me didn t seem very convincing, but there may be something to it.
/
I expressed some surprise as well as regret about his leaving, and he said,
11, Sam, I Just got tired of doing nothing but sugn letters that some
body else wrote. I felt that I ought to getdownx to brass tacks and really
do something myself."
My own guess mdabdK that there were two primary motives in his mov
ing. One would be that he had gotten fed up with red tape of government
receiving and wanted to get into an opening where there was more chance
for initiative; and secondly, that he was tremendously interested in
seeing more forestry practiced on privage land, and hex felt that this
was an opportunity to advance forestry a from an inside position, perhaps
even more influential than he could be in the forest Service.
HAUNDER: Greeley never seems to have had the aame kind of asddi ambitions that
you associated with Pinchot.
DANA. He had no* political ambitions, not the slightest. I think, however,
he was very ambitious not only to be but to be regarded as one of the out
go
standing leaders in the forestry profession. He wanted to An down in his-
tory as one of the men who succeeded in getting forestry more generally
and more effectively practiced, particularly on pirvate lands.
MAUNDER: He was a great believer in getting frass roots activity in any scheme
that he was supporting. I suppose this attitude was felt perhaps in some
of his work in the Forest Service.
\
DANA: Well, I m sure xk* that s true to an extent, but I wouldn t think it a
hundred per cent true because he certainly was in favor of a very strong
central organization in the Forest Service. Even after tee s. went into
private work he still felt the need for powerful organisation at the very
top iavxs level. On the other hand, he did not go as far as Pinchot rtxft
in feeling that generally you get more progress from the top down than you
^ ott jm
bnu ,j.-!tvr,ejt )ve
ofc Jo . -. . ;Jsi*
ll^
-
a ^
-
:
. ,
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 55
do from the bottom up. Plnchot believed much more In passing the word down
from above than letting it grow up from the bottom.
MAUNDER: Greeley was always receptive to ideas coming up the line.
DANA: That s right. Very much so.
FRY: As long as we re evaluating Foresters, I d like to ask you if Silcox
appeared to have any great administrative avility.
DANA: Not to me. I think things were pretty loose under him.
He was a Clapp type in that he was a missionary and ku had great zeal.
He had a very fine personality, much more magnetic than Greeley. He was
an exteemely warm person.
FRY: Was Watts a warm person?
DANA: Moderately. Only moderatly.
FRY: How do you feel about Watts as an administrator?
DANA: Not too strong. I think things more or less alii along in the usualy
grooves, ix I d just nx classify him as a good man but not an out
standing one.
MAUNDER: You wn were Forest Commissioner of Maine from 1921 to 1923.
DANA: Are you ineeresting in knowing about how the appointment came about?
MAUNDER: Yes, I am.
DANA: Well, it ahppened about a year or two before that. I had been talking with
Percy Baxter while he was 2xc President of the Senate, before he became
governor. He was a man that I kad known from boyhood. We nxc were brought
up together in the same town. Percival Proctor Baxter. Anyway, we talked
about forestry in various ways, and he said something to the effect that
he wasn t too satisfied with the way the department vas hxgg being run
and he wished that I could take it over. A few months later, he became
.
governor through the death of the Incumbent, and shortly after I wrote
to him and reminded him of this conversation. I said if he really was
.;
I 3 i>ri ,iEs-r3 :^3G : Hj.,:
.
j] A
R-J38 1 -
.
* *UW
f r
.
.
fcr
JDt
.
I
.
j *a* til -*bv-
i
l(j >O 3! Jfirf .! (>
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY p age 56
in earnest and wanted a forester who would be interested only from a
professiona, not at all a pi political, point of view, that I d be very
gstt glad to be considered for the job. But when he nominated me to be
Governor s
Forest Commissioner the/Council refused to confirm my nomination. One
of the grounds vas a rumor that I was a Socialist.
MAUNDER: On what was this rumor based?
DANA: Partly on my stand on federal regulation of timber cutting and partly
on that p fact that I was a member of a radical organization anyway the
"* - T*- W
Forest Service. I would think that my close association with Zon, who
was recognized very generally as having socialistic tendencies, was psx
probably the major reason that I got that reputation. My geing vice
president 6f a union might have played some part too.
In Maine the Executive Countil has authority to approve Maine s major
appointments and to participate in other ways in policy making. It has
realy power; it can check the governog in a good many different ways.
So before they would confirm my appointment I had to get letters of en-
dorsement from Gifford Pinched: and Henry Graves. They even called up
my brother and wanted to know from him if I was a Socialist. He assured
stable, level-headed
them I was a KftaHtipttintnt individual.
The funny part of it was that after I got up there and they got ac-
quainted wit me, we became very close friends. These folks who had had
no use for me to start with decided I was a pretty good fellow after all;
but the governor who d appointed me wasn t quite so ayxaxirii sure about it.
FRY: What were the politics of the Governor s Council?
tM : *
DANA: I think they varid. They were Republicans, but there were some Taft Re
publicans and SB some Roosevelt Republicans. The governor* was, I m very
sure, a Bull Moose Republican and a very strong advocate of Roosevelt.
And a rather a worshipper of Pinchot. He had the same views as Pinchot
I erf Woow or*, oj feftJo*v i;J. .
3V d b l IkJ , ^a
tf O1 tr .
oO .aoiJftr.rnMi x f ; - - b* ^ . noj eiwro:/ -,,
.4 B *
... .. .
iM[ tr; ir . * c .. :4HAa
.
i* M .iva 3t
mf SAW < oJ9abci
.
SM b^l
.
.
.r,
,ftlde
--.-/.
.
.
-
",
.
eff ?el sco0 ST-
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 57
in regard to the water power interests and the timber interests. He hated
the water power people more tm than anybody else and the timber people
next. To him they were all "monopolists" and "predators."
MAUNDER: What was your own personal relationship with the governor of the
state whilw you were in Maine?
DANA: Well, xhac we were frienlly as far as personalities go, but officially the
governor did not think I was sufficiently hard-boiled with eespeet to
the bimberland owners. He thought that I wasn t making a fierce enought
effort to bring them to heel. To the contrary, I found the timberland owners
most cooperative in all matters relating to forest fire protection and in
general anxious to do a better job in the way of forest management, so
that I got along better with them tkmx than I did with the governor, of
ficially.
MAUNDER: Was his attitude based on a real antagonism toward the industry, or was
it part of the popular notion of the day that beating the forest industry
people over the heads was a sound thing to do to get votes?
DANA: Oh, I think it was a little of both.
MAUNDER: Had the position of Forest Commissioner been a part of the so-called
"spoils system" up to that * time?
DANA: It had up to that time, but I think that the position that I took got it
out of politics, and it s been pretty well kept that way ever since.
MAUNDER: X Was your predecessor, then, a non-professional?
DANA: Yes. He was man with very wide practical experience, but he had no
juuu professional trailing in forestry. Incidentally, he was a very com
petent individual in not playing politics. A very good man.
MAUNDER: Did he xa remain on in any capactiy under you?
DANA: No. I ll give you an illustrative of the way politics, I think, had figured
previously. Neil L. Violette, the man who was the rfapmre deputy when I
took the KB% job, had also been a deputy some years previously. When I came
>3t
-N T^-"
*
*C - I
! ffl
-
-
I
*iq fle
oaBo
--
f HU3
ama-j i>
:
^lauoi
DANA/MAUNDBR/FRY Page 58
down from being sworn in to speak to him I noticed that he seemed a little
embarrassed and nervious, and I commented on the fact that I hoped that he
would stay on, at least for the time being, until we could bet T **y
really acquainted with each other. He said he d be gax glad to do that.
This was somewhat different from his previous experience whan a Democrat
had been appointed to the job. The first thing he said to him after he
was been sworn in was, "You re fired!"
MAUNDER: Can you remember any instances when politics intruded into your work?
DANA: Oh, I might mention possibly a couple. Shortly after I took office I
got a request from the State Republican Commit tee to circularise the
rield force for contributions to the Republican Party. Nobpdy evan asked
my politics, curiously enough)!. They just assumed I was a Republican.
FRY: What were you really?
DANA: I was a Roosevelt Republican, A Bull Mooser.
I replied by sending a pe sonal contribution, which, tsat incidentally,
I was happy to sat make, and waying that I would not circularize the field
xsaot force, that they snoncax were not in politics and were not go ng to
* get into politics as far as I had anything to do with it. My deputy,
Neil Violet te, knew the ins and outs of politics very thoroughly add was
extremely helpful to me whenever any political questions cane up. So
he said he would explain to the Republicn Committee how I felt about such
things. He was sure he could straightn it out. Apparently he did, because
I never heard from them again.
I remember another incident a little fctt later when the governor s
brother called on me one day and said he didn t think I was giving his
brother adequate political support. I told him it was definitely under
stood when I came to this state that my job was a professional one and
that I was not going to delve into xx politics in any way whatever, and
C bM&a-Ml 3t, -.;o $ ttM *3
bMOd 1 <
-> . -.
a ( -.ihrM
d tea a
iMW!f
it .
I
v qa :
at Y
.
A ,^ i
-
M ,
"
-
.
-.
DANA/MAUNDBR/FRY Page 59
I was sorry the governor didn t like the way things were going.
Still another little incident might possibly be of some interest.
Every year we apointed men known as Chief Forest Fire Wardens who were in
charge of fire protection work in different parts of the state. One
of
year I decided not to * reappoint one is the men, who had apparently done
no actual work of any value for the last two or three years. Unfortunately
he was a a very prominent Republican politician. He was very much irked
at being relieved of this job ans started to stir things up. So my deputy
and I developed the idea of establishing the new of Honorary Chief
Forest Fire Warden, and we made kirn an Honorary Chief Forest Fire Warden
with a very elaborate certificate certifying that fact. From therm on
he was one mi of our best friends. Incidentally, that job is still in
effect; I get an appointment every year as 2a Honorary Chief Forest Fire
Warden.
FRY: What were your duties as Forest Commissioner?
DANA: The biggest job was forest fire protection. The State of Maine has a
law which taxes timber land ownrs in the wildland region of the state to
provide a fund for fire protection, and the Forest Commissioner hex han
dles that fund. That s tax? by far his biggest job.
About the time I went there, the white pine blister rust was be
coming a serious danger, and we took over the job of tat tempting to con
trol that. That was another protective acticity which took quite a lot
. m
of time.
One other thing that was patt of my job was the management of lands
owned by the State of Maine. In fact, the origiaal title of my office had
been Land Agent; the term Forest Commissioner was added later on. The
state x lands consisted of about 70 or 30 thousand acres scattered all over
the state. But about the only job in handling these lands was to make
occasional timber sales from them. They weren t carefully supervised silvi-
culturally; it wasn t possible to do any intensive management because the
ee
. ?..:? wo i-.. .
* WSHui OMI
. :v^: . I
;-* MM 3-
JU* !
IP . W *V
. b0V9!
.-;ioB S
.
Jbui aero MT
.
6f .- - 3T-.
:AKA<
i
i T..li-
; tw
,
l0MUaiUMI
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 60
tracts were small and scattered. So the purchaser who went in cout cut
about what he pleased.
FRY: What about land acquisition?
.> . : .. :, . I- - On CM iWrtatiftatiC
DANA: Not a bit of it. State forests were taboo when I was there. Timbetland
* *a
owners just wouldn t hear of ;it. I talked a little about it, but not
very much.
ar oj
n I did quite a bit of general publicity and education work. I tried
ft ** r fc
to interest the legislature in providing control of cutting on important
watershed fauhl lands, vhere poor cutting might result in x*rei erosion,
UO tJl
floods, and so on. That never got anywhere, rather predictably. Then I
organized a Maine Forestry Association, one of these public organizations
that just built up interst in forestry.
FRY: With membership made up of whoa?
MMJ
DANA: Anybody you could get dues from. Timberland owners joined very freely as
a means of getting on the inside.
. tt up mi. 9*m work
FRY: Did you have any encouraging reactions in your efforts to encourage the pri
vate owners to adopt sustained yield practices?
DANA: Yes, very much so. The forests of Maine lend themselves very well to
* *
- -w W W
seletctive cutting, so the private owners were fcodbcxrt already doing a
fairly good job from the silvlcultural point of view. There is ucax rela
tively little forest devastation in Maine, only small patches in the southern
part of the state and in the pine country. In the northern part of the
state where my work centered, there were places where they d been cutting
for three hundred k years and there was still a lot of forest left.
.* *i. V" , . V 1 --
FRY: Did you have anything A to do with water power in your job?
DANA: No. Notkftng to do with water power or with fish and gaae, which pleased
me. I had no desire to get into any of those fields.
FRY: You had some research activities going on, didn t you?
. . u.-- ..... . i.-s tuBDAKf 0mMV rm us
3 HMO HJt >mw Cfirf -!*sri3l:X| fc-fs Ac
F
arfw oodJ 7W *3*t 1 5o JJ<?
rode i bsjMiki T . io IB^
v ** T-
,,M C
-
...fi/Mvo-T-i ai *ji.tt^t>,fl ri 01
- .
*Tsd .c , abrjB r Idnsi
-
, ,
B bXlO
,<fmae! rfilV
. - ..-..
.
-)}*9 -J
. ?. s^oba 03 laowo iv
hKjU^Hl S . -w Bio 08 ,31
irtia e: . , oOT^ i
?nol *
f{3 io 11BC
adv f sow ^ :
i es eic*y x
> in S<i
.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 61
DANA: Nothing that I d call research. Oh, you might call our entomology re
search. Through a grant from xxx an outside anonymous donor we were able
to hire a forest entomolgist who spent his whole time on the investigation
of forest insects and methods of control. I think we were the first de
partment x that had a specialist in that field. My getting work started
in the field was probably my biggest accomplishment as Commissioner of
Maine. But at that point it was very superficial, more or less just a
survey of where are the insects, what kind of insects, x what kind of
damage are they doing? On the basis of thatinfomration, xxx control caearf-
sures were recommended. This resulted later in the organization of def
inite and continuous surveys of insect damage under which all of the
field force of the Maine Forest Service had as a part of their duties
looking for insect damage? sending in specimens to the main office, and
having taht followed up by field visits from entomologists whenever there
seemed to be anything of importance to check up on. This kind* of work
timber land
met with great approval x on the part of gukajduxx owners.
FRY: Did you have any serious firep problems?
DANA: I ll say we did. I think I vx went up there aboat the SXICK* first of
June, 1921. The latter part of April and early May they had had the worst
fire outbreaks they d had for years. The whole northern part of the state
was ablaze when I got there, and there wasn t much I co Id do about it
except let nature finally produce some rain. In the meantime we had auuc
not only spent all the money accumulated by this tax of timber land, but
timberland owners had contributed out of their own funds about $100,000
for fire protecgion, which the state was supposed to repay them. But
when I requested the governor for the money, which the executive Council
had authority to provide without any special appropriation, he declined
to pay yry***F**" it. He said, "These timbers owners will rob us
.
. .. susi.a o.;v
-; io (>;, ..;.; uaaaJt :f*i3iJ
<i bad
a .MiaM
.
4M r> : -
!>,,^ -
I
-
t]
.
.
I
.
.
-
JOU . .
.
ifw
r - ab fi .ji aJbcxatxxxjo:
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 62
anyway. Why should we help then out?* So then I went to the legislature
and got legislation intorudced for reimbursing the timber land owners.
That passed the legislature but was pocket-vetoes by the governor. So
the timber land owners never did get reimbursed while I was there. For
tunately after I left there were a lot og of good fire seasons during
which the basic fund accumulated until it was possible to pay off the
debt.
FRY: Were ther other issues that involved your ag going to the legislature for
help?
DANA: Yes. About the time that we were having x&xx arguments with the governor
about reimbursing the timber-land owners, he got the idea that some of the
department s activities vkfuoi should be curtailed. He wanted to transfer
the blister rust control to the Department of Agriculture and make other
changes that I thought would weaken my department. After a special Ktgty
study he had legislation introduced to accomplish these things. But I
went to the cksxtafc chairman of the committee handling the bill in the
H se, who was a very good friend of my department, and suggested some
amendments to the governor s bill. We got my chagnes approved by the
Attorney General as far as the legal aspects were concerned. The major
change was to abolish the title of Land Agent and to make the head of the
department merely "The Forest Commissioner," which I felt would emphasize
the forest aspects rather than the routine x land management aspects of
the Job. The amendments also strengthened the department in one or two
minor ways. The bill went through the legislature in its revised form
and was signed by the governor. I was never sure he really understood what
was in it, because ixxxmcy it very materially strengthened the department.
FRY: Did they transfer the control of blister ix rust to Agriculture?
** .> .0- t;SH
\43al ai$r fc v
o, , r-,w
* 34fe ^3
.-id d3
ab
I
> c toMUbf
.
>,..* Js.->sce a 73iA -
.
iMauuto
.
. 83 sat-
..nfi adT
I
.
DANA/MAUNDER /HRY Page 63
DANA: No. They left it right where it wa.
One of the other thing* that we did early in my administration was
to change the name from the Department of Lands and Fore* try to the
Maine Forest Service, with the emphasis on the word Service. That was
a change the governor approved of very much.
Another of my jobs as Forest Commissioner of Maine was to try to get
enough* legislation to establish a forest experiments: station in the
Northeast. It was federal legislation, and as Forest Commissioner of
Maine I vas at liberty to lobby.
MAUNDER: What was the nature of your efforts?
DANA: They were almost entirely in the form of letters to members of Congress
with an occasional personal call when I was in Washington on a trip; and
secondly, in getting influential people in the Noctheast also to writ*
to their representatives in Congress to get their support. Probably
got
the letters that I fax other pwdta people to X*SK x write were at
least as effective, orlikely more effective, than ray own direct efforts.
I was just a minor part of the picture in getting that passed, of course.
MAUNDER: Do you recall any Congressman or Senator who seeradd most helpful to
you in accomplishing these obejctives?
DAXA: No, I don;t.
MAUNDER: As I recall you had an article in the Journal of Fores tryr-
DANA: That was part of the campaign to create a Northeastern Forest Experi
ment Station.
And
MAUNDER: Ax you did such a good job that yo received the directorship of it!
DANA: I m not sure there was any connection. I was an ex-Forest Service
man whom they knew pretty well anyway. The offer came at a time when it
vas a bit difficult to decide what A to do. I also a had a chance to enter
teaching at the same time, and I wasn t quite sure which field had the
.enu r- !(..,.,:
f *> ., r; >.;3ii : 3 jrlaibi> tjc.- . /:;.. ,. , , .
3*rfv
.ar.-y a
**
- I .
.
.
:r* f.
:.. :- : i:i
.
.T.(|B59 Si ;
.
a
.
DANA/MAUNDBR/FRY Page 64
greater appeal. I had, however, about decided that in my job as Forest
Commissioner I d learned enough of the political facts of life to last
for some time. That is a job which I wouldn t have missed for anything
in the workd, but which I wouldn t have kept indefinitely for anything
in the world * either.
FRY: When the station was established, you helped in determing the location,
didn t you?
DANA: Yes. The Washington Office made quite a search as to x where the headquarters
would be located, and I helped in making the study. We selected the poa-
silbilities, which finally boiled down to Amherst, where the Massachusetts
State College was located, and secondly Worcester, where Clark College is
located. Both institutions were willing to give us quarters to take care
inclined ga
of the work. I was a little HK*XK*XU to favor Worcester, partly, I m
afraid, for personal reasons. It seemed * little more convenient from
my point of view to be there. But the official decision lay between a
very strong department of geography at Clark with a great interest in the
whole conservation field} amd Massachusetts Agricultural College at the
State College, which put a very strong case through Processor Frank
Waugh, head of the Department of Horticulture, who had worked with the
Forest Service in connection with recreational development. He had a very
strong personality, and he was able to sell the State College.
FRY: What sort of facilities were you given?
DAXA: I think during the entire period I was there the experiment station oper
ated in one rimi/ room. I think we got something like xfcixx $30 to $35
thousand a year, probably, and two or three technical men, two or three
clerks, and that was the whole station.
FRY: What training did your technical men have?
DANA: At that time I think it they were all Masters of Fore try from Yale. I
J0 &R r:a:_ Viu ft* :.n.: I *b.h>fe .9BO<K> . 7 i?-, :,tA,, , t> . : *JMJ;
an. dyoft feMnr. iSiroJtsfc:
.-IT vaW*t?: aNK) -
i; .
-,. If -W"
SOJwt: aft at7 ol3>a *<13
./:-* 6 t.iw.1 s> inaaV.
.: . M(2
i9itaA
*ftW 3. J
. I
a
* . .
- . - . . -
.
.
3o<?
ri3 *B L3*rf
.
.
-.... 5-jBMKx acm
,iw je
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 65
don t believe there was a Ph.D. In forestry in the country.
The first Ph.D. s were from the University of Michigan, both in 1930.
Dick MxftxkK McArdle was one of them, and the other was Bob Winters.
Some time in the 1930 s Dean Mulford at the University of California
asked me to recommend someone for appoinment as a forest economist on
the faculty. One qualification was that the man must have a Ph.D. I
wrote back in that case he would have to appoint H.R. Joaephson be
cause he was the only mant in the country with a Ph.D. in forest eco-
nomicsr-and he did.
FRY: Can you describe a typical day in your experiment station?
DANA: I don t v know whether there is any such thing as a typical day.
The great bukk of rax our time was taken in trying to organize a staff,
select projects, and get people into the field to collect basic data
for them. Most of the time I was there we were engaged in the job of
getting field data rather than doing any publication. It always takes
several times as long to analyze and work up material for publication
as
xkxx it does to get the data.
I devoted some time to public relations. I was a little worried
about a possible feeling on the part of agricultural experiment sta
tions that they were being ignored. One thing that I thought h was
very helpful was that the directors of the agricultural experiment
stations from Maine to Virginia had sort of an informal organization
which used to meet once a year. They invited me to be one of the group,
so that I sat in on all gkrtxx their meetings and learned firsthand
what they were doing. At the same time I was able to give them an idea
of what our forest experiment station did. That helped to establish
much better relations between the Forest Service and the state agri
cultural experiment stations than we would otherwise have had.
Another accomplishment was the establishment of an Advisory
.rtJ MM :- . fi
<:,w a- .Cr.rfS 4WM fiT
: . i> . :
-tol & as inww .loqqo TO a ^namae i c*r, *
33*r nors srii .irtJ MHT ; UO ri;
-ad . v*d t s9 Jdi B* ^9Bd
ri3 i *ri se
.
oqx* TI aob BO
a oJ
j*:i f.8W - lo j; : 3li vs J
,IqO! i<
JtoM .m>
a*. . . . ag--
fw . -a d^: j i*io-
a . . eob 31 mnl*
bsr -. *v I . b I
. da
M ofU I - -i is*/
JBiJj BM lujqla.
a-icA.jio if, ifif w)-ji erroJlBia
. no t-d OU . BfcV ft 00 J99B 03 Bt
r T.f3(ij JQdUMfe II* oc
. . . ij 8t*W
a 3na;-.
rgr, Jj8 srij bet 6 s-r: ?d eno^jfii? ffl
a ]ani?qx9 ! ^9
ne io Jni tqiaod. n*
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Pag* 66
Council for the station including many representatives of industry.
It was a public relations action as well as one aimed at making the
research more effective.
MAUNDER: How >x often did you call this Advisory Council into session?
DANA: Twice a year. We always had one field meeting of two to three days
duration during the summer, and then we d meet for one day in tne win
ter somewhere to talk over what was going on and to discuss future plans.
MAUNDER: How were the expenses oi such meetings carried?
DANA. The members of the Council took care of their own expenses, which were
minimal, virtually nothing except travel subsistence or a call.
Those were the days when budgets for experiment statioas were nut vary
lush.
MAUNDER: Who were the men who were the most important contributors to the
Coucnil s deliberations?
DANA: I don t seem to k remember anybody except W.R. Brown of the Brown Com
pany in New Hampshire, who was the first chairman and one of the most
active in that km kind of progarm we were giving. Osborne Fornell was
also one of the active members. There were two or three men from New
York.
MAUNDER: Are the minutes of the Concil meetings a matter of public record?
DANA: Yes. I m sure a complete file of those would be at the Northeastern
Forest Experiment Center at Upper Darby/ nvw.
MAUNDER: Perhaps copies might be in the National Archives as a part of the
Forest Service.
DANA: I would doubt that. I doubt if xkcxv they got away from the experiment
station.
MAUNDER: This mas not an activity for which you were responsible to make a
full report to Washington.
DANA: Yes, that s right. It was very largely a local activity; Washington
was kept in touch with what was going on only in very general terms.
>J x* r iv fcA a x bib oslto 9* woft-jJ
&Xb 9i -r* to gal)M bisJkJ aao bd ^ ^. .fMM; 6 .
.!. *a -."o-T JSHSB b Mr
ew3Jb ^ o nlo
7a agnU
"./ .tMOftfM OWD iir11 lo 10 +. itfoO MU lo BlMlnMl MtT
7 . mlnif
>qJt Jioa o
jo?8 Mf3 lo OW018 J . -x Mbo
3OK *d3 lo MM bfiA as, JB ili Ml
v llsatot mrod0 ^ m
w*K (noil aec ; Terff
rlduq 1
B9H3io>f or!.-! 3E d bluow saori lo
iq B as ef-v .iD-iA Jrc3 jH *ri- ni *4 J-gie 8^O9 nqr IUA
.OOiV7*8
nllftqxe sf a noil VB-HA JO^ v.:!) ~ff 11 Jdot> I .ifir,- Jdiiob tJ. - ; I : M-1A
a SJ(M oJ Idlaaoqa*? ait : i3CBJA:
rfW OJ loqT I
itv ae { sY :AKAC
.BfulSJ lB7&fls,j VT: , -- > <uiv
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 67
MAUNDER: What suggestions were made by the Council?
DANA: Well, ray recollection is that they were particularly interested in
of cutting
the methods uA QKXXX that would produce the maximum reporduction of a
desirable species and then secondly, cultural methods that would in
crease growth of the new forest. In other words, they we e interested
most particularly in silvicultural activities than any other phase of
on
the work. And our experiment station spent much more time problems
dealing ttxxkxxkou with the northern spruce-fir type than we did with
the white pine types in central New England, because other institutions
were already working with thoseHarvard and Tale in particular.
FRY: Were you satisfied that you ware doing enough basic reaearch?
DANA: No. I think that we emphasized more the so-called applied research
much more than we did the basic research while I was there. I was
never too happy either with that approach or with the resources we
had.
MAUNDER: What would you single out x* as the Council s most important
achievements over the years?
DANA: I rather think that the most importatn achievement was the establish
ing of cordial relations between the Forest Service and the private
timberland owners, who were extremely interested in keeping in touch
with what s going on and in trying to apply the results as fast as
they became available. The second most impoartant item was the sup
port that we got through the Council both in the Washington Office of
the Forest Service and in Congress. There was no question but that
very \
the Council helped wxx much to ftapmnts: improve in the appropriations
situation.
.
MAUNDER: Do you recall the names of any congressmen involved?
DANA: No. For the moment I don t.
-
b*J3fft3|i|ttfe- v . - av
..v _.: s*l
.:8f<Tr u> djt*
, :. . . U .
. " >-5i i - .qa n*j, ,-rsJfc 3t:Sui.-qxi
. <rt*c\: VUHtUUtiitX I
aol^ 3j
. n *j MT
WiW- :
.. | . . :
:
W /Ml
.
. .
-rial
.jnl
.llMJJt;
OJJ fi .TB
..(. : ...
aq
.:;-XVOO.O
XJUsx bsql* -ii
.
, d3 IJ:. : saCViU. -
. .. . :
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 68
MAUNDER: How did that activity of the Council touch the schools?
DANA: The schools were interested in research activities, and the Council was
very effective in making possible a coordinated progarm of reserach
Service
under which the schools and the Forest * knew what mtuk each other
were doing and thus hatifai* avoided overlapping.
MAUNDER: Did the Council s deliberations seem to stimulate any JUCBX privately
supported research work in the collegs and universities?
DANA: Not that I remember.
MAUNDER: Has it in recent years moved in that direction or worked to estab
lish scholarships in forestry?
DANA: I don t see any specific connection between the Council and the private
.
support of reserach or scholarships.
MAUNDER: Did your experiment in establishing a Northeast Council serve as a
guide or stimulus to the establishment of similar councils in other
regions?
DANA: Yes, I m sure that it did. It set a precedent that s been very generally
foleowed.
I m a little proud of the fact that I feel we got first hand par
ticipation XEUCM from our Council more effectively than most of the
regions have. We got them to really participate instead of just sit
ting and listening to lectures.
MAUNDER: Did you detect at any time flaws in the structure of this plan or
failings that might be corrected, even now perhaps, in the setup?
DANA: No, I don t think so. I think that it operated ixa satisfactorily
for the local unit and still is doing so.
MAUNDER: The principle of cooperation which inspired your Advisory Council
also xupx found its way into legislation of that period. I m referring,
of cancer, course, to the Clarke-McNary Act.
I
>f30o0 Mil 3
A* . 3^ r-
9 i" i; > .<!iazoq K .ljir-
ln < JtaR; .; a 9^3 rf- !>ttu
. hiifa *) ww
txni , . ;*t.a a. . : TSOMUW
r, 3t La3-tOltJl. o
1 :AKAG
bwsn i
da* I
MAd
,B-
a ee
<olt
.
,bt
:-.
; f. ( >o|j07
.
!
I
.
b :l<v, tE3<,
yfijlst
mioi i^awt Ofcic
.3- .jufvin
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 69
DANA: Of course you know the Clarke-McNary Act resulted from Greeley s at
tempt to break the stalemate between him and .inchot on the subject of
public regulation. After each had killed off the other s proposals
in Congress (one favoring state regulation with federal participation,
and the other direct federal regulation), Greeley said, "It is per
fectly obvious we ve reached a stalemate. Neither BU of us can put
throught what he wants. Let s forget all about regulation and put
through a bill containing everything we can agree on." That was the
Clarke-McNary Act.
MAUNDER: This would seem to indicate that Greeley was a real peace maker
in this situation.
DANA: He was in this situation, yes. I d say Greeley was a peade maker af
ter he found that what he preferred could not be done. He would fight
for what he thought was the proper answer to a jutmk problem as long as
he thought there was any hope of getting it approved. When he found
there wasn t, then he would compromise.
He was in favor of state central with some federal participation.
He later changed his mind, however, and opposed any federal partici
pation. He wanted to leave it wholly to the states.
MAUNDER: Was this after he left federal employ?
DANA: Yes, quite a while after. Way back in the 1940 s when the first
American Fore try Association National by Program of Forestry was un
der consideration, he and I were members of a committee putting it in
final shape. With respect to public regulation, I tried to gat the
Clarke-McNary principle sp* that * the states would handle it with
financial participation fromthe federal government approved. Bg Greeley
opposed that approach. Finally he said, "Sam, jpnudka: you re abso
lutely right logically, but practically you re wrong. We don t want
d:
s
i^ a t > ->
-ova-r MO) MNQMfe :< -
. rta v-
:r ;
,Jr!lY-r .IlcJ * dtfuc
.
: 4IQHUA^
.
.T o
.... . .
jli
(Wl3
:
,
.iq
.fntSWAH
., \KAfl
.
.
.
-. 9^ ^^
: . . . . .J?sri
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 70
the federal government In this program, and we re not going to have
It, however logical it is." That was that.
MAUNDER: You could never come to a meeting of minds *k*K with him on that
score?
D NA: Not on that, no. One of the committee members thought that we were
getting a little heated in the arguments and tried to cool us off.
fighting
Freeley laughed and aaid, "Oh, don t worry. We ve been ftgkxix for
forty years."
MAUNDER: The Clarke-McNary Act being a compromise between the positions of
Pinchot and tk his followers and that of Greeley and his, was its writing
a product of the hands of both Pinchot and Greeley?
DANA: I don t k*x think Pinchot had much to do with it. I think it was
handled primarily by Greeley and Kellogg with the cooperation of other
members of Kellogg s Committee for a National Forestry Program. (It
was an i entirely independent committee, organized largely by the tim-
berland owners and wood-using indusgries with some other outside repre
sentation, to try to work out a solution to the ** problem.) There
was no question but that the Clarke-McNary bill was scrutinized k very
thoroughly with suggestions from improvements by a large number of people,
but I doubt if Pinchot was one of them. My guess is that the group
felt that kkaaut they were meeting what objections Pinchot might have in
the form they finally adopted, and it wasn t necessary to go any fur-
ther than that.
As for the strategy of getting the bill passed, I think that Kellogg
did a large part of the work in lining up support from national organi
sations of various kinds, all of which put pressure on Congress; while
Greeley s activities were primarily directed at the congressional com
mittee, with which he undoubtedly had great influence. He was on very
-
.
.
MNI
.IMBl.^
,ra&; I I
~.a -
:^.{oo B
I .
: . --
-la
tex}
9*^ & i
-
. . - ; *aoK ;.
8 i ygi &A
allow sri* Xo
-..
.
DANA/MAUNDER/RRY Page 71
close terms with that committee. My guess would be that Greeley wrote
Senate Commit tee
the bulk of the refcort Mu /! I > submitted when it brought the
bill before Congress.
Greeley traveld all over the country with that Senate Committee.
* J
At in informal gathering of the committee which I attended while I
was Forest Commissioner of Maine, one of the Senators got to lamenting
the fact that Maine was a prohibition state. He said, "My God, I d
like to see somebody drunk around this place." Greeley replied, "You d
like to see him in a mirror, wouldn t you?" So you can tell he was
on pretty good terms with them. He was the master-mind and Kellogg
was the fellow that jutUdfc pulled the strings and put it through.
MAUNDER: Kellogg was a great tactician in handling that sort of thing, wasn t
he?
DANA: Yes.
MAUNDER: How big a part did Kellogg play in the total picture in this period?
DANA: Outside of the newsprint industry, I don t think he played a very
active part in forestry affairs with* the one exception of his being
the chiarman of this particular very influential committee. He was
never very active in the Society.
>
MAUNDER: What about another one of the veterans. Will Hall?
DANA: I k never knew Will Hall very intimately, but my impression of him is
-
that he was an excellent administrator with a fine personality, an un
usually good contact man in connection with public relations. It was
in that connection that he played a very major part in getting the
program under
Weeks Act through. Ha later started the acquisitions jucagcnxioacu
the act.
MAUNDER: Ware xkuu there any real antagonists to this legislation of the
twenties?
DANA: I don t think so.
SlO
x:
"Ifi ^.fove. , -;.ii<
". 5
:
-
-SA C, i; i, t bfl - vdaSIOfc
1 ^ uow . A *j " nlii ssi o bsi
tf M V 3BJT.V1
.
.
. -.
I
!
I9V90
I
-; oole-
:
I
immxan&xm*^ sc.oi :
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY
Page 72
FRY: When I talked to S.B. Show and read some of hi* old manuscripts, he
occasionally metnioed that there had been problems along the line of
cooperative fire protection where federal cooperation with a state was
made difficult by a rather reticent state department of forestry. Is
this common in your experience?
DANA: No. In the early days some of the states, particularly in the South,
were a little hesitant to install measures that the government thought
were necessary to justify financial contributions. But that s passed
long ago. In recent years I think the relations in that field are ex
cellent.
DANA: In the eariler days there was considerable friction. States didn t
want anyinter fere nee with what there were doing. The federal government
insisted on higher standards than the states were silling to adopt and
kfi kept putting the pressure on until the states moved up, as they did
right along.
FRY: Could you comment on what finally resolved the difficulties between the
stated and federal governments?
DANA: No one thing. They must worked until they got together.
u__th*ng the otate togoolry_jJcparfents -pceia lu Vf pre tCy rtrong
umniF-Miiu.nl H _Tg-la t j OHS *<>
DANA: By the way, Clapp was responsible for keeping research out of the Clarke-
McNary Act. The oringal draft of that act had included research, but
tfcltJfc-. &** 9t*; . -i sill ovjtr atttpw-j
?:
.
Mr
; -
.
tso
.
" . *n
.
>. .
.
JUM -
.
:
fcM
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 73
he said research eould Just get lost in an omnibus act that had so many
more controversial provisions. So he insisted that there be a separ
ate act on research, developed finally into the McSweeney-McNary Act.
Clapp was the author, of course, of the McSweeney-McNary Act. He
put it through almost single-handedly. He worked with almost every
bureau in the Department of Agriculture, just talking with people until
he got them either to agree with his po nt of view or to cone to some
compromise as to how things were going to be handled. He commented after
i t was all over that he never would put through another till involving
other agencies of the Department. He Had an awful time getting the ap
proval of people like Entomology, Pathology, and Economics, the Weather
Bureau and so on.
FRY: Why?
DANA: Well, other agencies had different ideas. They all wanted to go off
on tangents, or at least what he thought were tangents. He wanted to
tie the &am Forest Service into almost everything that was going on.
Then he worked with the National Forestry Program Committee to
get aii their support for it. They had given eg strongs support to
the Clarke-HcNary Act four years before, and he got their support for
this program too, which was a great help. But there was not quite
the same pressure behind that act that there was behind the Clarke-
McNary Act. I think it was felt that research was not a particularly
controversial item and that if the Clarke -Me Nary got through witout
too much difficulty the research act would follow along more or less
automatically. That Judgment proved to be pretty well founded.
FRY: Did you have anything to do with the McSweeeey-McNary Act?
DANA: Yes. Zon talked to me a good deal about it, and I helped him in de
ciding what to include in the act and then what phraseology to use.
."lift ft bwf B . ; fi
t 33 . I t : *{. . vr tq
-^- a
fttaar) HMi " ;f.
.
.
.
.
.
*1
I
&
a3fc-ar-
SJ . 3 * E:
H
? j.;*-- .vMgfwf
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 74
Then shortly after I had been appointed Dean of the School of Forestry
at the University of Michigan, in the winter of 1928, I presented a
c
case in behalf of the bill to a House ftommitee on the subject. Being
no longer a member of the Forest Service, I was perfectly free to do
it. It came about by accident, actually. At the last mincte the fellow
who was going to present the case dropped out, and Roy Kellogg asked
me to take his place. Just before I went on the floor Greeley saw me
and said, "Sam, for God s sake, remember you re not talking to a bunch
of students, but to some hard-boiled congressmen."
FRY: And did you talk to theim like hard-boiled congressmen?
DANA: Ou, yes. I talked up Jdw to them, but I talked to long. I came down
with charts, and I guess I had too many of them. I m always afraid
I won t be adequately prepared and as a reeilt I m almost always over-
prepared in anything of this ttagx kind. So Kellogg had to cut ee ott.
But I think I talked with adequate vehemence. At any rate it got by.
MAUNDER: In reading over some of your addressed to the Society in 1126 and
1927 I was struch by your statements regarding the lack of program and
effectiveness of the Society at that time. Just how do you explain
that dawax condition that existed in the mid- twenties?
DANA: M The Society labored under two handicaps in my judgment. One was that
it had no organization whatever. Even the President and the Secretary
had to sponge on the organizations with which they were connected for
stenographic -typist help.
time had
MAUNDER: All this *kc the Journal )UK been edited and published entirely on
a voluntary basis.
DANA: That s right. That was functioning on the organization with which the
editor was connected. Au Zon used the Forest Service staff right along
in all the correspondence and editorial activities. He got no help
out of the Socety. I followed him, and I did the same thing. You see,
these public ak agencies are usually very good natured in g being
i i<- . > ^IKfl f a UddT
<! e.." a
r ""A
1 MW
30!
.M fcaa
:
:
.
, . -.
oaiq.-
.
. i
.; I .
""
a ?>:;
. :
i4S I3^
> 93MT J goC
:
. .
...
.
a ,
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 75
willing to help out with xta situations of that kind, especially with
scholarly kasxaxixx journals.
The second handicap of the Society was that it had not established
the poliyy of expressing its veiws on matters that were controversial
in any way. Those two things, to me, greatly weakened our effectiveness.
I felt we just had to have a centralized organization with a top class
CT*gtioi executive rf secretary in charge of such clerical xkip help as
he needed and that we must adopt the policy of letting our views be
known of matters of importance to the profession, no matter how *w*"i
controversial they might be.
MAUNDER: Had either of these two issues been discussed to any great extent
in years prior to this?
DANA: The matter of the EKuxttaxyxKktii secretaryship had received very ******
little attention. The natter of expressing our views on controversial
issues had cropped up us occasionally but not formally. No attempts
had x ever been made to reach a decision as to whether we should do 1C
or not. It had virtually been up to the president to decide how far he
wanted to go, and most of the presidents, what with the lack of any
organization through which to work, list let things ride.
MAUNDER: XKXB Where did H. U. Chapman stand in this regard? Was he a stron
advocate for taking issue?
DANA: Yes.
MAUNDER: Some men that I have interviewed on the history of forestry have ex
pressed to me the personal opinion that H. H. Chapman has a certain pug
nacious streak in his character which wnwant sometimes propels him to
participate in controversy just for the love of the battle. Do you
think there s anything to k this?
DANA: I don t think there s very ranch. I think he gets mixed up in scraps
: -,. - ..
. <. ,; i-,loi:>r
.. Slit 3COM ff
fqx to rv-t-i
*c ; . ntgtittM
ji" l >
MUtB> WO
: !Z-.jvyrjffutv
-.
: .KAU
.: .
baqqo
I
.
03 |-.-,
nolJM:
JBWX :
!3>OVb
:
90 POc .
. . ^ . . - 04 b:
KMLtXMO* SMUXS S
yt
ds
: ; . :
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 76
ordinarily only where he clinks there 1 * a matter of real principle
involved. He doesn t get into the scrap merely for the sake of
gz fighting.
MAUNDER: He s the kind of forceful personality who would make itz friends
or make enemies very easily and very quickly.
DANA: That s coreect. There are people who don t like him as well as
people wbo do, but in general x he commands the respect and support
of the profession as a whole. There s no doubt he commands a very large
following * in the tmrnimj Society which consistently supports the *
variou activities that he has recommended. One of his K moat con
spicuous contributions has been the forcing of the policy of accredit
ing schools of forestry. He made the first uut study of accreditation,
which set a BXBJUQI* precedent that has been followed very consistently
ever since.
MAUNDSR: Who were some of the other leading people in the Society who took
a strong stand on the question of the Society s speaking out on con
troversial issues?
DANA: Theonly one that I remember very specifically was Walter Mulford of
the University of California who preceded me as president of the So
ciety and who mas very anxious to keep the Society out of controversial
questions.
MAUNDER: How did Greeley feel about this matter?
DANA: I think Greeley felt that the Society should be active in policy Bat
ters even if it disagreed with him.
BAUNDER: How would you apprais the Society s role in the total picture of
American forestry since the development of a fully staffed organiza
tion?
DANA: I think it s become much more influential as a result of setting up
a strong central staff .and- of organicaing the Society both geographi
cally aiid 4*ju*uUjBul-rnalteB -groups
s*3 .". : . . *j rvHiriir ffj e >.
r, :;&ok a8- " .be .-
5 *8
:.
re* bi.
: trror- I . 399*0*
I Illl !!>:. :
.jtarft
ri3 J: X gfi-
iftlv
J 70) 1
itmaiMq A ^s.
.
. *8
.
.W ntr
; ;a;>.:
; .-
.
.
^. :
in I
1^007.1 i-.
.a :-s*
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 77
cally and by subject matter gxxp groups, or keeping a considerable num
ber of special committees active all the tine, and of establishing semi
annual meetings of the entire Council. All of those things have helped
to focus its activities on important natters and have made it a much
more influential force than was previously the case. I think the semi
annual ""**B* meetings of the Council are especially important in gat-
ting a clear-cut and fairly stable direction.
MAUNDER: To what extent * do you think the Society has become the real
major forum for discussion in formalation of policy?
DANA: Both the Society of American Foresters and the American Forestry As
sociation particpate in efforts to direct policy, but I would distin
guish a little between their fields of influence. The American Forestry
Association has much wider distribution of its journal and the much
larger number of members. The ftsntantg Society of American Foresters
probably has no influence with the general public. On the other hand,
I think the Society of American Foresters commands a greater respect amend
local legislatures, departments of conseraation, and ftnrtmrEg Congress
than the American Forestry Association probably does.
MIUNDER: This is u of course part due to the fact that the Society has the
local chapters and the regional sections in active work. Can you think
of KBB some of the ways in which the section here in Michigan makes
itself felt?
DANA: I can think of a couple of thins that our local section has done. One
of them was to formulate and lobb$ through legislation providing for
the registration of foresters. Another one* was to identify and de
fine all of the forest types in the region and formulate tko* rules
of forest practice that were recommended for the management of these
different types. Those were very specific things and, I think, quite
helpful.
?<-; 3 $r ; . " .-.
*hlr>-
b<*
>MH gi-jmiM .?
:
-
iXJl-^.i
*" SJIgXiMt f
;3 x-:
D AHA/MAUNDER/FRY Pag* x78
MAUNDSR: Did this section s action in those two areas signal the national
movement along this an same line in other regions?
DANA: To a very considerable extent.
MAUNDE&: Who among your section people have been most active in this work?
DANA: I m not sufficiently in touch with the section recently to be able to
tell you that. My general impression is that you ll find quite a con
siderable group actifre usually ten x to fifteen people rather than
just one or two.
private
MAUNDER: The Society does tend to bring public and xtxxxtx forestry more
and more into friendly contract with one anohher, doesn t it?
DANA: I think so.
MAUNDER: You mentioned to me in Ax discussion earlier that you felt that the
foresters as a group have not yet impressed upon the public xkx their
professional status.
DANA: That s true. I don t think that gx forestry xx is generally recognised
by the public or by other xxxx professional men as being a high-grade
profession in the sense that medicine, law, and KX engineerings are,
for
x instance. That s ax in large part because the general public and
even many landowners don t know what a forester actually does. We re
still regarded in many quarters as either fire fighters* lumberjacks,
or tree xx planters. Those arex about the only things the average par
son associated with a forester, and they don e require any real in
tellectual capacity or any intensive professional training. So the
average person doesn t see at all why you need a four or five year
college course.
MAUNDER: Of course forestry, in this xaxxx country, is only fifty or sixty
years old as a professionxt. With such a short life it hasn;t really
matured to the point where it really has a feeling of long establishxi-
ment; it s not too x well grounded in its own historical past. Don t
-t; :iJ . -JF.
. :
4DOA
** ituoY (MMHi aiflf ifJBHBAM
lll .. : . .-: IAQ
..- -. . i3
g *iOCTl
:
. - K Jjoc <U :X109IIAM
3101 i
.o Jaitf* I .
yf OJ bnolJc, ^KMBAH
.a aiJao-:
.. * . .
o x<f M<*
Mia wJ: nl noia .
. KB
eooi jobaal vnoa r
,lfDBt8<Je 2.l4f.il
q JM| 97^
LaJs>ao^a not
.
10 . KJCXSX . :
, ... , E an i. > eifi^
. .a
osfcautv -.- a o3 JOR i.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 79
you feel that this is a fact?
DANA: Ch yes, I think that s true. And I also think that foresters teera-
selves have weakened their position with the general public by taking
the attitude, in general, that the major activity in which they re in
terested is production of wood. They ve ignored other products and
services from forest land so that the public does not recognize foresters
as being land managers but rather timber growers. I think we ve got
to get a braader concept across within our own ranks as well as tkc to
the general public before we have the acceptance that we need.
do
MAUNDER: To what extent * A you think the forest products industries are
responsible for creating that impression?
DANA: I don t believe they re as responsible as the foresters themselves are.
I think if the foresters themsleves had taken a broader attitude years
ago and had pushed it strongly, then the general public iwaUk would have
bought it in spite of any reaction on the part of the timberland owners.
And, of course, the timber land owners themselves are now becoming much
more interested in the other aspects of forestry than they have been pre
viously, particularly in recreation and watershed protection.
MAUNDER: Where do you find this most in evidence?
DANA. In the N o rthwest primarily.
MAUNDER: Any companies in particularl
DANA: Weyerhaeuser, Crown-Zellerbach, S mson Logging Company are all out
standing in that direction. These interests are developing everywhere, but
in companies
not quite so prominently as/these three/in the Northwest.
MAUNDER: Are there any particular men in those companies that you ve mentioned
that seem to have the vision of this thing more than others?
DANA: Oh, I think fellows like Fred Weyerhaeuser, Lionell Webel in Weyerhaeuser;
Ed Stampp of Crown-Zellerbach; George Drake of Simson; Paul Dunn of St.
Regis. Down South people like Frank Heyward and Lew Porter have the same
" **: .
B>dP B:*&:r .: !1 ,33V
gfttrfA jg Sif! :<-"/ ODj^Jfcf ;<MwJasf 3-
MI >>n -> oi ,b i , arfJ
.
Mlosob7 jon *ob ortl :*6h Ok baI 3^oi *! CoJhrtfi8
d n|SOMI I as
JOlk ut iiw no MJBBJ nv/:> -i/o aswV:.; -isbaftv.; - s.
q; fl3 ovtrf cw ioHf oliduq 1 679*88 i
nr q Jawl ttfc Ji Wt 93X : .flQWOAM
I3o %o5 e .ai
,r- : *vil*d .KM
. bM( *V-
VI. . B
.rtMvo t-r ;-.; i>-. iqa
b ftA
9<} svr b38v lOff
.; tarts*
^acmuAH
;>1 al
7o3 golg
/a .inlqo :
aaftd.
jrj evViov JU . j &9*nft^BD9 9eod3 ai a 3ieib tfx/.
"***< ** TyeiteyW - -HAG
.
8 *> > v :
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 30
interest. It s becoming pretty general.
MAUNDER: Weren t you, in fact, recently working on the problem u of forest
land and recreation with the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Board?
DANA: Yes. But this commission was not donfined to forest lands at all; it
dealt with all lands outside of municipalities--the range lands, for
instance,
tiucmauty and the awaters of the United States, and desert land.
It was established by Congress. There were four members each from
the Senate and the House appointed fry the Senate and the House, and
seven members appointed by the President. Most of the congressmen at
tended very few meetings and did not take an active part in delibera
tions at all. All of the presidential appointees came mqt very regu-
s bowed great interest,
larly, participated actively, and MXBK xkariUxxcxxi
MAUNDER: Who were the leaders?
DANA: From Congress I would say Senator Anderson from New Mexico; Al Ohman
from flngXB Oregon; and John Salem from Pennsylvania were the real
leaders. ?m*r? Senator Newburg/ was extremely helpful from the be-
gining. Bernei Orell was a very stron member of the commission. A
very competent individual. He is a remarkable man in expressing him
self clearly and briefly. I was one of the most obstreperous mem
bers, I m afraid. I managed to stir up more arguments than most
people.
FRY: Cver what issues?
DANA: The outatadding one was on whether activities in this field in the
federal government should be centered in the Department of the In-
there
cerior or whether fctey should be a separate commission that reported
only to the President and 6ongress. We had some very hot arguments
about that. I favored that latter approach, but it was voted down on
the gunqi grounds that it was txk thoerecically a fine idea but it
"i - su -- -. , ,y tflBCBIUAh
: 1V-.0S.: . ; . . .
n aev iK.lae<iew . Y ;A)UC
.
t{>i 4 u t>i! ..- BT , ^fcnnadHiA
. . -. ...
. . od$-
. i aiarfuttv
-M tre:<
.
life
JOHtSt : . .
.MU. . ;
A^ndr or
: ^BHXt .
a*tSX9 "T9V
.
30
.
.
M
iaavVOj( i
bi
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 81
couldn t be done because Coggress just wouldn t approve of it. So
we ended up recommending a bureau in the Department of the Interior,
the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation.
Another question was whether recreation activities should be fia
nanced by earmarked funds or by general appropriations from the Treasury.
I favored the latter very strongly, and that finally did get approved
by the Commission, but it didn t get by legislation. The bill that $ms
provided for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was approved
this last Congres, provides entirely for use of earmarked money.
FRY: I ve heard intimations from Interior men n that the O.R.R.R.C. was
influenced too heavily by Forest Service members. On the other hand,
I ve also heard one or two specific complaints from Forest Service people
who thought that it might have been influenoe too much by pro- Interior
members. I d be interetsed in your evaluation of this.
DANA: I don t think it was over-influenced by either group.
FRY: Do you think then that issues which did not have much relevancy to the
Interior-Agriculture rivalry were the major issues?
DANA: Yes. Ineerior versus Agriculture came up occasionally, and Senator
Anderson, in particular, would occasionally raise the question of how
what we were talking about wka would affect the Forest Service: I m
gonne make sure that they don t get injured in anything we ve proposed."
However i ts very seldom the question came up.
The Forest Service I think was a little bit hesitant about our
appointment of the Deputy Director of Research from the Interior Depart
ment, Larry Stephens. I think nobody from the Forest Service was put
on the commission staff, and there were two or three others in the In*
terior Department that were put on. So that, superf ically, the Forest
Service may have a better case for criticiam than the Interior Department
does.
Juow fe.d 3 obi) oo
:i-7 ftl WWJO* IMWMHn tMftb0.mtefc:.
. MMniftt . t.
; -r^iMMiw ..nw jjolJauup Tsjiaw^
... ,.,..
.1 3iU
. -ilJ
,
..i, i7^
. .
.
:
:
P
a sd*m Mrnog
.
,
I
J8-^ i3 t
.
DAHA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 82
FRY: I don t know what the case was for Interior s complaint.
DANA: I doa;t either, unless they thought that Mr. Orell and I were tools
of the Forest Service. We were under suspicion in the beginning by
being just plain foresters. Foresters were not supposed to be inter
ested in nyt*htngx anything but saw log porduction. They kept josh
ing us for some tine about taut how narrow were were, but I think we
finally convinced them that we were justa as broad as they were. On
one occasion they were discussing somebody as a possible addition to
the staff. I guess they asked Orelljs opinion, because he said, "I m
not saying anything about him because he s a forester." I laughed and
said, "That s why I m for him. Obviously he must be a very g bread
individual if he s a forester."
FRY: Do you think the Forest Service s recent interest in recreation repre-
setns a change in policy?
DANA: No. I think the Forest Service has been rather outstanding in fol
lowing a consistent policy all the way through.
FRY: When did multiple use policy come in?
DANA: There was legislation way back in 1915 authorizing the leasing of sum
mer homes on national forests. Even back of that there was one in 1897,
before the Forest Service was created, ahat authorized the use of for
ests for recreational purposes and other specific thiggs. Then in
the middle 1920 s, the Outlook criticized the Forest Service for go
ing too deeply into ourdoor recreation: "They re neglecting their main
job." So there s nothing new about this. It s simply that the For
est Service didn t develop fast enough^ to keep up with the time, in
my judgment. I think it was slow in recognizing in the 1950 s that
recreation ha would come to such relatively greater importance than it
had had previously. But from my point of view the Multiple Use Act
does not make any change whatever in the things that the Forest Ser-
.-!
:
10 I : ! U
.
.
-
,
fi*oa
. E 8<J S.
.
S9d ki> :
.
-W-
.
-
.
1
:
luodi
.
..
.
6
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 83
vice has long been able to do. It s just that the Service felt very
strongly that the legal recognition of additional activities would greatly
strengthen their position, particularly with reference to any compet
ing agency.
PRY: In land policy would you say there s been any change inthe question of
mining on the national forests?
DANA: The policy has k always been to permit the development of mines where
there was a valid discovery, outside of x wilderness areas, but to try
to prevent the development of fraudulent claims, particularly for rec
reational purposes, which has always been a favorite device. The dif
ficulty has been to keep up with the prospectors. The law, until it
was modified in about 1950, gave the prospector all the advantages.
There wasn t anything you could do it he could find even a trace of
mineral. He co Id hold onto the land indefinitely without trying to
patent it.
FRY5 1 What about aldn management? Would you say there s been no change in
policy on things like cooperative fire protection or the advent of more
wildlife management?
DANA: I think there have been differences in degree, that s all. I don t see
any basic change in policy.
Of course, there was a row in North Carolina at one time over
whether the Forest Service or the state should central the removal of
game from the national forests. The courts finally settled it x in
favor of the state.
FRY: And did the Forest Service proceed, then, to use this ta as a basis for
its policy in other states?
DANA: Oh yes.
change in policy,
You might think wilderness theory constituted a KkxggBxtxxaix
but I don;t think so. I think that the Forest Service just didn t get
*>a )[
.
!il 38
Ml I
-
i >*
-
. .
JBqf
:
ra*mgc:
:
. .
.
-
.
31
..
j
xlKpri; jKjxr.
,
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 84
around to doing anything about it until the early 1920 s, but then it
hadn t been a controversial issue up until that tine. After the For
est Service established the first wilderness area they kept right on
.
establishing them as soon as they found areas that they felt qualified
for the purpose. They keep modifying the boundaries, and the frequently
take out timber areas for commercial use that some people think
v *ad .
gv *ad v .
shouldn t cone out. But there s no change of policy in that. It s just
the same msx old multiple use/ idea.
FRY: Does the type of conervationis epitomised by the Sierra Club member
ship have any influence on Forest Service policy or on lumber operators
and owners?
DANA: Oh yes, I think so. They have an irritating influence, anyway; they
make us foresters mad. But I tkxxl think maybe they a have some in
fluence on actual practice of private timbermen. It s a matter of pub
lic relations, however, not a determinig influence.
MAUNDSR: Now you became Dean of the Forestry School at the University of
Michigan in 1923. I would like to get your opinion of Filibert Roth,
-\ .. < ; T
who was your predecessor.
DANA: Unfortunately I never knew hin at all well. I had only met Roth a few
taduL times before I came to the University of Michigan, and he died
a couple of years before I made the move, so my knowledge of him is
:>>:; c
essentially second hand. But from all I hear from xxx saucy everybody
that lot did know him he was an outstanding personality. I think he s
unquestionaljry the most repsected teacher of forestry that we ve ever
had. He was able to present things clearly, simply, and forcefully;
and * at the same tine he had a magnetic personality that made the boys
simply adore him. This was indicated, of course, in the epithet that
l > ; ; -.- h* .
they applied to him. He was know universally, even to his face, I think,
it al
i s.jp ni
t *ri:t
-
> .T! aiJi a r
.-o
-.esifflo:
J a* nooa
g;.
eil.
Jbdm t
^ ^\3
MO
io i
at!\u,..- ;. .; . . ,1 to a^.j,,
iivl^q . a DBO
^i all
w
-iol s. :
: Jidi .ig oj
uow I oi
:q
ti.B ,
1
a mlr. vairt 7vf/ I x-fa^s: : USAQ
8961.1: sj^ini i
^i -. 3 &
ila f07a 3u8
b fcf JmrfJ
9V i Y- 38 * ^
aaiq t eaw ai .
X-iJif A bed _, .^a i-riJ 3 z bnt
..w BifH 1 .siln R-J. 1 a i<IqfnJc
->s.i - ... , . . ifof..: CBW ah .0;
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 85
as "Daddy Roth."
;- *: f I.. .
I triad to recontruct bothk his career and personality in an articla
I K wrote a few years ago, "Filibert loth, Master Teacher," which wuc
seems to me to describe his accomplishment as effectively aa anything
could. He had done previous work as an investigator in wood technolo
gy and as the director of the activities of the Ceneral Land Office on
the national forests, but his record in those fields ta is nothing like
.
the impression he made here as a teacher.
MAUNDER: Did you use Roth s papers in researching that articla?
DANA: There are practically no papers. I used all that was MX available in
the University Archives, but he kept virtually nothing that he wrote or
that people wrote to him. What little material we ve been able to get
was by asking the alumni that received his correspondence what they had
kept. Now there must be historical materials somewhere in the Nati nal
Archives of activities in the Beneral Land Office. But it might be
very difficult to find out mfc* what Roth was personally responsible
for and what people in the organisation actually did. The Forest Ser
vice may also have something in its archives. But Roth s major contri
butions were as a teacher here at the University of Michigan, and I m
sure I ve just about exhausted everything xn relating to that period.
MAUNDER: He left his stamp rather imtttt indeliby upon the profession as it s
gone forth from this institution.
,_
DANA: Especially through the boys that he sent forth. He K always referred
to them as "his boys . 1 There was a real father relationship between him
and the students. He was the School of Forestry at the University of
,
Michigan while he was w here.
MAUNDER: Tell me a little bit about what you had in mind when you came here.
What were your ideas for developing a program of forestry education?
.<w "
*
->.! .
I
t-i .
i !r>-.
/
j .-
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 86
This
DANA: I came as a very naive educator. AKxynvpMkkfryidpTreV"" ry**fr*g was
the first time I d ever been on the faculty of an educational institu-
tion, BO that I had a lot to learn. I think that I had two really
basic ideas. One of them was to broaden the scope of the school so
that we would cover all the products and services of the forest rather
than emphaslzigg wood alone, which was the reason 6or changing the name
of the unit to the School of ordstry and Conservation and later to
the School of Natural Resources. The second ambition was to emphasise
graduate work, which had received relatively little attention up to that
time at any of the schools of forestry. I rather doubt whether any
Ph.D. in forestry had been given prior to 1927, and I was much pleased
that two of the first students that came after I arrived at Ann Arbor
came purposely to get Ph.D. degrees. Those were Dick McArdle, now
Chief of the Forest Service, and Robert K. Winters, who s in chagge of
taking care of foreigners who come to the United Statesc on behalfl of
the Forest Service.
I think my general attitude was one of experimentation. I figured
that we ought to try new things constantly, and my guess would be that
we have carried on more experiments than almost any other school in
the country. We;ve tried all kn kinds of degree and curriculum require
ments aad so on. We ve also very much surprised students who come to
us from other institutions by treating each student as an individual
rather than as one of a group to whom all rules apply. To a consider-
that
able extent we ve had the attitude txkx rules are made to be broken
when the occasion ariese, so that the evolution has been an experimen
tal one. But it has continued to emphasize the two things that ap-
pealed to me most when I came- -namely, breadth of coverage and empha
sis on high quality graduate work.
io : an
. :/ .1
. ea^l :.
a *
.
,
:
.
!
.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 87
taper tance
ftae other thing that I didn t realize the iajwxxfciwe of when I
arrived kx&xtkx* (but I did shortly thereafter) was the need of making
&
the School of Forestry and Conservation an Integral part of the Uni
versity and not simply the appendage which I found it had been up to that
, v
time. The department was vitually Independet of the rest 6f the insti
tution. I spent more tine attempting to make the School of Forestry
resources
and Conservation a part of the University which used all the mMii
of the Universlth than on any other one thing. And I think on the
we ve
whole t*n been pretty successful in doing that.
MAUNDER: What resources of the University did you particularly w. seek to
make use of when you came here?
DANA: I d say botany, zoology, geogogy, economics, political science, busin
ness administration, law. Later on we found a lot of contacts In the
School of Public Health. In general, our connections were with the
social and the physical and biological sciences. We never did get
quite as close to the humanities as I would have liked to.
MAUNDER: I notice that you left out the historians.
DANA: That s rather odd in view of the fact that that s my major interest
personally. That s an accident that I didn t mention it, because we
always have had pretty good relations with the Department of History.
History
We have graduate students in the Department of ttixxafcxji who have taken
their Ph.D. work in the iwcnt general field of fore try and ax con-
*
servation.
We developed combined curricula with the School of Business Admini
stration and the Institute of Public Adminstaation and also with the
School of Education. We ve had studaats who have taken degrees that would
cut across departments, such as biology and forestry, instead of being
essentially in either one.
.
i6
V. 1^ f> i">rr IH tTlfi
.vo^t !-
;tf6:
.
;:..--
. .
-
,
. .
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Pgge 88
MAUNDER: Lots of joint committees sitting on oral examinations.
DANA: Those always have represntatives of other KKXK units on them.
University Library?
MIUNDER: How have you worked with the "***BiiKyxitkx*h
arrived
DANA: When I amttmar there was no Forestry Library, just a few books on for
estry over in the gum general library. One of the first things that
I did was to move that over into this building as a separate library
and get an indepdent forestry librarian)** by independent I mean one
whose sole job was XKKXK running the forestry Library under the di
rection of the general Librarian. The forestry librarian reports to
the director of the University Library as far as library matters are
concerned, but Hfc she would report to us with respect to acquisitions,
indexing, and so forth. We have a iu fund for acquisitions over which
we have KHUMHKH complete Miuxaa control, so that we re somewhat an
autonomous HHXX unit in the University Library as a MfcxiB whole, which
fact gives un the advantage of expert library supervision and at the
same XXHBK time great freedom in determining what we want to get, how
we NX use it, and so forth.
MAUNDER: Is your xxkax library budget, then entirely independet of the Uni
versity Library budget?
DANA: No, it s part of the University Library budget and not of the School
of Natural Resources.
Some years ago we combined the forestry library (which by that
time had become Natural Resources) with the Natural Secten Science Li
brary. They re in the same quarters now and under the direction * of
the same ftxaart branch librarian. That combination proved very effec
tive.
MAUNDER: What about your program for Latin Americans? How did that turn out?
oo
.,! j -v riJMttol OB H adbutt
lib o "W bib I
. A.Jr.J7B-U< -i V j , ,;:. . ->fcuj d* 3S% L.OB
fol 9. JOUUb-: . SttOlitf
r, j&aat I -^s^
.
/ u* JC:
. " S! . -Ht 6V.. . .ibo I
BXI&XXU. tmt- w
:^i-.% r A juuu; uoaoauju
si
.. Mhdbt ,
V XK W
joattk
:V
. H
tao3d t>d
w fcns :?-. ai-
^i.-iwosJi ac
.
DANA/MADNDER/FRY Page 89
DANA: Well, that was a pure accident. During the Second World War I was
a member of a committee that was attempting to publicize the vn war
issues for the benefit of the students and townspeople. We got various
speakers to talk about different aspects of the whole situation, and
among other* we got a man in charge of the Division of Cultural Rela
tions in the Department of State, who discuessed our relations with
he
Latin America. Some weeks/ after t was here, I happened to meet him
on a street car in Washington. Neither of us was a praticularly talka
tive individual, and the conversation lagged. I racked my brains for
something to talk about. I finally said, "Why doesn t the Department
of State undertake a prggram to send some men from Latin America to
study forestry at the University of Michigan? It would be an excel
lent cultural relations move. They have practically no foresters down
there." He said k*K he d think it over. So I reminded him of tg it
shortly, and it wasn t very long before we came to an understanding
that they would put KB up enough money to send twenty Latin American
students for a two-year program.
We started out with this two-year program, and they continued it
for another two years with ten men, but since them we ve had to get
along on our own with what help we could get elsewhere.
I remember in our first groi-p a man from Uruguay, who graduated
with distinction. He was the only man in the class who did. I was in
terested at the Congress in Seattle recently to find that several of
the men from that first group are now the heads of their units down
in Latin American countries Bfcdtk or the chief es of the delegation at
meeting in Seattle, flu Out of 65 folks from other countries who have
planted trees in the International Frienshpp Grove, five of them are
Latine Americans who are Michigan i alumni/ dating back to this ori
ginal program.
t11* W 1xv
i3uO1M* 3fH ^oV 8<rtiat>-
:
.
i ib-.iv| I
.
.
.
a** b u
,
.
.
. ; :
:.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 90
MAUNDER: Did you have u to make any serious adjustments in the course of
study for theu?
DANA: No. We didn t adjust the studies, but we made the students spend
considerable time at the English Language Institute, laarning to*
speak and understand English a little better. But we figured forestry
is forestry in South American as well as North America; we were
teaching fundamental principles rathen than the application of those
principles.
MAUNDER: The Conference of Executives of Forestry Schools held in Ann Arbor
in 1945 resulted in setting up the Council of Forestry School Executives.
What were the factors leading up to the establishment of this Council
and what were its aims?
DANA: Simply a feeling of need among the group to get together and talk over
mutual axk problems and see how they could be helpful to each other;
along what lines they might adopt morenoc or less uniforms policies;
and in general, swap information and ideas. We simply felt there was
a need to do it.
MAUNDER: Did you take some lead in getting that together?
DANA: Oh, ues. I called the group together and made the proposal. I think
the first meeting simply decided to meet again, and at the next meeting
they organized formally- -deciddd to make it permanent and fcuc elected of
ficers. I was the chiarman of it.
MAUNDER: What do you feel have been the most important contributions to come
out of this council?
DANA: I don t think you can put your finger on anything specific. What has
happened is that each Dean has got new ideas and feone back to his own
,
school and put them into effect as far as he thought they applied.
MAUNDER: What lay behing your reorganization of the School of Forestry fin
1950?
.R . nl.jf- *i< .
:3ii B
.
:
:
.
I
:
: \HAU
!
.
:
:
I
.
.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 91
DANA: Our move to a ah School of Natural Resources was preceded In 1949 by
a study by a committee of outsiders to size up what they thought
our strengths and weaknesses were and make recoomdedations where we
g ought to be going. That committee was of x five people, headed
by Greeley; the other members were McArdle, Ovid Butler, Mulford of
California and Henry Schmidt of the University of Mianesotar-quite a
distinguished group, but they needed a chairman like Greeley to get
results. He kept bringing them* down to earth.
MAUNDER: What led to the appointment of this consultant committee?
DANA: Well, it was primarily our feeling that every organization needs an
outside check every once in a while, or it s apt to get into a rut.
We also knew that there had recently been a similar study in the School
to have produced
of Architecture, which seemed to me/a very constructive report.
When I proposed to the provost that we do the same xxm thing, he
said that was BXH fsfx O.K. if we wanted it, but he wanted to see what other
universities sat needed it more. We went right ks ahead anyway.
MAUNDER: Who selected the members of this committee, and on what basis were
they chosen?
DANA: They were selected by our faculty with the approval of the provost.
He made on change in our original suggestions. Than I wrote letters
to the members of the committee invitigg them to serve.
MAUNBER: Did you pay these men their expenses, some honorarium or what?
DANA: We paid their travel and subsistence expeases on obth trips, plus
one honorarium* of $500 apiece.
MAUNDER: How long did this study go on?
DANA: It covered a period of some two or three months. We asked each mem
ber of the committee to come xxavg alone for two or three days to ac
quaint himself with the situation, and then the whole group came back
together for another three or four days, swapped views and agreed on
:-?: n
q sv};
I i
V./.a.H
T;^ r> : fit
MMoH**r r-bc MfogcrttMa iruo
, ila*- &.
ndw , -iwr!(0
i* .;b.<(Dri3 yar;*H baft ftintoillsia
ss
.K
j
j.rfj galXwtl ,
iv
SV3-
n\a& or- bsoa j
*.*?. M& 04
xStt CM
v aM , ir>Ja J iU
I :
)Jt ,liW :
t$3 i i- .
Mtrf 0i* .,*
o3MsiA So
MV
... / : n,-
OffcJ 5:
>Tqffl - f aj
7 I rrs.*il .e
--.>; ir-nv . StrfJ
Ttr. attee t }3srtwpt tturfs iU
aft % . . .. . >&i3
JtD Sri.J 03
o vbt.-ur. eiri -ooi wuH :*S>.
w." SI3 lo fcoi /aq * b,:siv
\ *e .v fHMhl MMr O.?
.
rt awslv ?--
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 92
a final report which was *u tentatively drafted before they left, put
into final shape by Greeley, signed by all of the members, and then
submitted to the President of the University.
I think maybe I was optimistic enough to expect a rather favorable
Instead they
account of our activities. Uwx made some rather drastic suggestions
with respect to the desirability of modifying our durriculum offerings,
broadening the scope of the work and particularly strengthening the
graduate work. It was mostly critical, a very helpgul report, which
I published, incidenatlly, in History of Natural Resources Activities
here.
We immediately appointed committees to study each one of the fields
in which they had made recommendations and modified some of our pro
grams of study and some BK of our extnesion work and research on the
basis of their proposals. We changed to the School of Natural Resources
in 1950 primarily because of two events which occurred shortly there
after. One of them was the fact that the head of the Department of
f
Zoology asked me why the work in Kisheries Management that was being
given in zoology should not be given in the School of Forestry and Con
servation. I toltt him I thought it should be/ and that some fifteen
years earlier I had tried to get it iwthout any luch whatever. Well,
hix he thought it was a good idea. The other thing was that the Charles
Lathrop Pack Foundation about the same time gave * us a grant of $100,000
dbt to emphasize our work in the broader aspects of conservation, in
developing generalists as well as specialists, particularly from the
schools,
po nt of view of education in the ufcutsjt* And those two things coming
together broadened the scope of out unit so that we wanted to change
the name stautix* simulaaneausly.
3HT . : I ft
_!* 3l IH^Iti-iBU,
...
>J.
,n SH7l ? MKkft dt>Mi *pMtf -
uixi-
.
MHHI .
. ..
.
. I
I . ,
.
-.Jtf
,,
....
rt &9o.
.
-
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 93
MAUNDER: Then the establishment of the School of Natural Resources was not
a direct outgrowth of the evaluation report and the subsequent work that
was done by yourself and the faculty committee?
DANA: No. I d say It was more the result of the * other two Items the grant
from the Pack Foundation and the transfer of work In fishery management
from Zoology to Foresty and Conservation. The Influence of the committee
report, as xxf far as reorganization goes, was rather Indirect. The
thing would not have come to a head on the basis of that report
alone.
MAUNDER: ffli The concept of the school was more or less your own, was It not?
DANA: Yes, that s right.
MAUNDER: What was the aga general reaction to the department here? You say
you had good cooperation from Ecology and Botany.
DANA: Yes. The change greatly improved our standing on campus. The only ob-
jections came from the alumni, some of whom were afrlad to make
forestry appear to ve relatively less important than previously
was the case.
MAUNDER: Are you overcoming that feeling on the part of the alumni?
DANA: Some of it still exists. I think not as much as there was, but it
still exists. I don t think it BKXX exists within the rantxk faculty.
Several times I have brought up the question specifically: was it a
mistake from that point of view and wtosuM should we consider going
back? The answer is unanimously "no." Even the head of the Department
of Fore try doesn t feel that he s laboring under a disadvantage be
ing a unit in a larger organization.
There was some objection on the part of the students to abolishing
the wjsxk word "forestry" as part of a bachlor s degree. The four-year
men like to be laveled as foresters even though we claim that they were
I
F~ U
"
OY vrf tr6
asw 3* Tf
a- i rrl >b
i sstol . /go foorx
>-9 e -t as ,
:. fcM 1
MMH MM Jcn.,v. > MfT J : . GFfflfe:
.
n jj ! -tn*.-
^
. *wjr<|i. rtg s^iir
a ;
i .-,
. R
; ay .tf. :
lo orso?; :AMAO
- . ...
j ... ...
gnJ
fr, . s r>
i
il a, (ti
WHe MNT 78/fT
...
JV 4fUK, - r.
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 94
not fully trained professionally. But that s dying out too.
FRYL Do you students with the Master of Forestry degree take any different
type i of job when they get out than do the Bachelors of Science?
DANA: No. They usually get a little better salary, however two or three
hundrdd dollars more the first year. Theoretically they stau^iibcga
k should go on to better positions in later life, but there s never
been an adequate study to find out whether they do or not.
MAUNDER: Hs the School of Natural Resources influenced/ the general field
of forestry education in this country?
DANA: Well, it s a little hard to pint to any concretes: evidence, but I think
that it must have had some influcen. There s been a considerable
broadening of the curriculum at places like Uftaix Utah State Univer
sity, Colorado State University, and Montana State University, but
it s hard to tell whether those * are simply simultaneous develope
meats or nkJui whether we ve had some tirttmram influence in connection
with them.
MAUNDER: Has the School of Natural Resources continued to broaden in re
cent years?
I d say that we ve continued to develpp.
DANA: /There s been no shock in our activities like the one i in 1950, but
there s been a gradual move toward a broader field all the time. One
of the most recent evidences of that is getting a half-time man who
would devote his attention to mineral resources, not so much the
\
technology of minerals or the utilization of minlerals as to their \
fm ja. place in our economic and social life: what part does the min-
eral industry play in the nation? We ve gradually been developing a
jqt of
broader point of view sac the place that natural resources pley in*k
the regional planning picture, and the new man who is emphasizing min
eral resources will go farther in that direction than we have thus far.
o.
* 4o ***&:
ob rts/i-J 3 MO js. ;!: d- ><rti
e >d I3J1I a Ja viJL-u ^erfT^ 4.
aom^c iJajrf * no o <* it
,n 10 I ?*biv 3UO Mb as ai
w8 U UMMullfiJt MOVMCtfi iMu3r <fe8 ti , -.iff
mi
:I ,nnsbtv& tw>oo:- Jolq o* te^f^
noo a ftMd f YrfT -
.M 1 . - 1 - n ntm&t
5.2 dgSU MM0 9*JI MNMJq * Bl a 9 .vJrfc*6,
J>o* ,>(ila-vV3aU Ul-
c, s wi-ir *aDd3 ie/!3srtw U oj bi*.
jwjtix* M* kMf r ante -^-
.,..
-7 ni nabtfe^ BSDIUOM! J9ltf .lU
^
o
., jMft-ttK * s
aO .} Mb (/ klc ao-K. a bMl MM Jt*b*Y| read
arfw CM 9w;-i-lla. ! e r ,;il -.-;;.> oil" lo fta--jbivo
Mb ; ,*e**iJ(>ei JsieoJ* 03 noi^a-..-j:
j; zi: zlmi*iaim k> ool^wc ill t eive^
-wi ir d3 -OK . l *f
3nr^Jcvb oe*d \ IIay -)B-r av :oi3o erf3 cJ X -^
tooae-j iBTwaur: 3ftrfd aaolf wb we
* ***le*Hqne el odw MA wen <fc bi , l sr.innJe Jfciroi.
aurS3 va.; sw rail} imii&- -H3l og :iiw aea^casn
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 95
FRY: Have you been able to see any changes wrought in the Forest Service by
men who have graduated KXXB under the broader curricula?
DANA: Oh yes, I hintk thac I can see the change. It s particularly notice
able in connection with outdoor recreation. That s been regarded
until fairly recently as pretty much of a nuisance, something they
bother
didn t want to hutku with. Now the great majority of Forest Service
officers recognize it not only as imescapable but as a desirable acti
vity.
There s another phase of that too, and that s watershed protection.
It had been taken for granted previously that good silviculture was
good watershed protection, but then it was proven that this isn t MX
always true. These things are all being recognised without any question
within the Forest Service.
s
FRY: Does the Forest Service influence KXXX curricula in the Schools of
f
lore s try?
DANA: Through the Civil Service requirements, very definitely. That used
to be even more ture when the candidates for the Forest Service had
to pass an examination. Now they just have to certify that they have
a degree covering certain fields. But the coverage is very nicely
dictated by the Forest Service still, fxx It has more influence on
coverage than it does on quality of work, I think. They attempt to
recognize quality to some extent by giving additional credits to a man
who has a degree from an accredited school, but a man from an unac
credited school is still perfectly eligible to appointment. They also
favor men with a five-year training, but the Civil Service Commission
will not pxxzB permit them to limit appointments to men in that cate
gory.
:,-! i . .
. .
-v -.q :: j2 . <* < i
b*b ift
b , j^**;;- i-;in
VTK jea-t.. ; : . . .-RSI OJ IMV
I
.
1 Lsffeis uw ; .ra
asw
Rfc- 3 J R^Mf tot
.
.
.
,v % 9fc
I
VJI
mm I . .
:
- M/nat
. n ftttxx!
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 96
FRY: Do you think chat some schools of forestry have the attitude, ex
pressed in curriculum offerings and placement services, that graduates
who join the Forest Service have an added status as a sort of crusader
and that those who take positions in industry are perhaps ignoring the
call?
DANA: No, I don t. The Rocky MmmttM Mountain schools tend to iu tmf
favor the Forest Service very much because there are very few private
timberlands in that area, but I don t think there s any attempt to
blacklist industry.
FRY: I think in your bok you have mentioned that on the other hand
than of
schools are more orientad toward needs of private industry taaxaf
government.
DAMA: That s true in the South. I think it s also true in Oregon, probably
also in Washington. The Forest Service has oroe times accused the Uni
versity of Michigan of being oriented toward private industry, but
we think we re very impartial.
FRY: Does this involve the question of acceptance of research grants from
indsutry?
DANA: I don t think so. If you can take a grant from private industry, of
course, you work on a pin problem that s of interst to them. But ux
our attitude has always been that we would control the type of re
search and that we could make it just as basic as we wanted to. And
I think that s been the general attitude of schools. I know of no
cases where industry has controlled research methods.
MAUNDER: Do you taink the change in attitude between industry and foresters
generally could to a fairly great degree by due to the forest schools
and particularly to those like Michigan which are XBXX state supported?
DANA: I think only to a minor extent. I don t think the schools exercise
VMS , b! < .1 i - " r; . r! : <! :
:. . JBflJ , .
->-- > : i fl^lppfc n^tet oth*
- I . .;, i . orjw rsori.. bflA
..ioo/ipa o. c.i n^.; nubdourtf . act 3
Asm - -& ie*Bl/-<Mfc3
flirfj ! at(mli<taiJ
.-tibfli
i : ioJkd< .; 9**;:; ttftf 3*K ;
, ..-.
.
"AQ
.
I h . aw
i :
.
.
- . !9
.
.
: B
-.!.-. :
..
"tiiiTOfqiit nx*jt s- . .;- ; i.
DANA/maunder/FRY Page 97
that much influence/ on industry. Incidentally, our relations with
industry have always been very cordial. One of the first things we
did after I had been appointed, even before I came here, was to organ
ize a group of timberland owners in Michgain who met with us every
year to talk things over. We d keep XH them in touch with what we
were doing, and they d tell us the pk problems they were interested
a
in, in general establishing/cordial relationship between the two groups.
(You may notice some resemblance between that and the Northeastern
Forest Experiment Station Advisory Council.)
FRY: I d like to ask you what some responses have been to your book on
education?
DANA: I think one dean probably expressed it pretty well. Ha said that I m
fifty years ahead of my tines. In other words, there is no general ac
ceptance of the proposal that the first professional degree should not
be granted in less than five years. I think I m only ten years ahead
of my time.
FRY: What about responses to your idea about more two-year technical education?
DANA: I think that s even more vigorously opposed, largely because four-year
holding
men are now talctiig thex jobs such technicians would be doing.
FRY: What about the organizations who could support this report of yours,
such as the Accrediting Committee of the Society of American Foresters?
DANA: They re not interested. The Division of Education in the Society is
interested in discussin it, but they don t try to do anything. The
Council of Forestry School Executives has appointed t or is appointing
some six committees to consider what training a person needs in the
major branches of forestry, which will bear on the problem of how long
it will take to give it to them. Finally, there s a separate Commit
tee on Programs for Education in Forestry headed by Dean Vaux of the
University of Calif ronia School of Forestry. It was created by the
Council for the purpose of studying my book and deciding what, if any-
DANA/MAUNDER/FRY Page 98
tiing, could be done about its proposal*. Dean Vaux it taking It up
very p diplomatically, I think, in that ha is not emphasizing da*
tails such as whether we should have a five year program or not but
is asking fundamental a questions instead: "Are our present progri
adequate?"
5 7
