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North American Forests
and Forestry

Their Relations to the National Life
of the American People

BY

Ernest Bruncken

Secretary of the late Wisconsin State Forestry
Commission

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
Ube 1knicl?erbocher press

Copyright, 1899

BY

ERNEST BRUNCKEN

"Cbe ftnicherbocfier press, "new ]|?otft

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGB

Introductiox I

Civilization Founded on Natural Conditions — Interest Attaching
to this Relation — Not a Subject for Sentimentalists — Purpose
of this Volume — Not Intended for Professional Foresters —
Treatment of Forests a Test of Democratic Government.

CHAPTER II

The North American Forest 5

Northern Temperate Forest Regions — Subdivisions of the North
American Forest — Distribution of Forests not Accidental — The
Forest an Organism Subject to Definite Laws — The Eastern
Forest — The Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast Forests —
Causes of Distribution — The Warfare of the Forest — How
Phases of the Struggle Become of Importance in Silviculture-
Weapons of Offense and Defense — Windfalls — Succession of
Species — The Forest under the Control of Man.

CHAPTER III

The Forest and Man 34

Great Britain and the American Woods — Naval Stores — The
Surveyor-General of the Woods — One of the Causes of the Revo-
lution— The Fur Trade — The Backwoodsman — His Characteris-
tics the Product of Forest Influences — How He Affected American
History — Settlement in the Western Forests — The Indian Trail
—Lost in the Woods — Transportation Facilities — Advent of the
Railway — Man the Conqueror — Rise of the Lumber Industry —
The Inexhaustible Supply.

iv Contents

CHAPTER IV

PAGB

The Forest Industries 60

Economic Importance of Forest Industries — Some of the Minor
Branches — Wood Pulp — Fuel — The Lumber Business — Hard and
Soft Woods, So-called — Little to Learn from Europe — How Long
will the Original Supply Last? — Substitutes for Wood — How
Lumbering is Carried on — Recent Changes in Method — Rafting
— Booms and Dams — At the Mill — Grades of Lumber — Logging
Railways — The Cruiser — The Lumber Camp — The River Drive
— Lumbering in the South and on the Pacific Coast — Scaling
Logs — Lumber Business Indispensable to the Nation.

CHAPTER V
Destruction and Deterioration . . . .89

Erroneous Notions — Great Area of Woodland still in Existence
— Disappearance of Merchantable Timber — Legitimate Removal
of Forest — Causes of Forest Destruction — Woodland Wastes —
The Principal Guilt with the American People — The Forest Fires
— Origin of Fires — How Small Fires Become Large — Damage
Done by Fire — Villages Destroyed — Lives Lost — Some Great Con-
flagrations— Attitude of the Settlers — Comparative Immunity of
Broad-leaved Forests — Reforestation of Burnt-over Areas — In-
jury by Pasturing Cattle.

CHAPTER VI

Forests and Forestry 121

^Vhat Forestry Is Not, and What It Is — Not a New Thing in
the United States — Reform Needed — The Art of Utilizing
Forests — Divers Uses of Forests — Annual Revenues from Perma-
nent Forests — Incidental Uses of Forests — Private and Public
Interest in Forests — Different Forms of Forest Policy — Protective*
Forests — Misunderstandings — Silviculture — Financial Considera-
tions.

CHAPTER VII

Forest Finance and Management .... 140

Forestry and Agriculture — When the Crop Is Ripe — Biological
Factors — Yield Tables — Financial Factors — Market Price —

Transportation — Forest Management — Working Plans — Rota-

Contents

PAGS

tion Periods — Applicability of European Methods to United
States — WTiy Are Better Methods not Adopted by Lumbermen?
— Some Imaginary Obstacles — Economic Conditions in Europe
and America — Intensive Management — The Real Obstacles.

CHAPTER VIII

Forestry and Government ..... i6i

Double Relation of Government to Forests — Public Lands —
Private and Public Forest Management — Protective Forests-
Effects of Deforestation on Climate, Water Flow, and Erosion
— Irrigation in the West — Forests as Recreation Grounds — Sum-
mer Resorts and Forests — Investigation into Forest Conditions-
Legislative Action.

CHAPTER IX
Fighting Fires and Thieves : ?3

Few Forest Fires in Other Countries — Legitimate Use of Fire ia
the Woods — European Means of Fire Protection — Different
Methods Required under Present American Conditions — Obsta-
cles to an Effective Fire Police — Excessive Division of Property
— Timber Stealing — Criminal Statutes — Enforcement Difficult —
Regulations Regarding Fires in Forests — Fire Wardens — Public
Opinion — Educational Forces — Indirect Effects of Fire on Lum-
bering Methods — Conservative Lumbering.

CHAPTER X

Forestry and Taxation ioS

Antiquated Tax Systems — Excessive Taxation of Timber Prop-
erty— Unjust Assessments — Taxation without Representation-
Practical Confiscation — Forest Valuation — Forest Mensuration
— How the Taxes are Expended — Proposed Remedies — Condi-
tional Exemptions — Taxes on Gross Income — Protective Tariffs
— People more Interested in Tax Reform than Owners Them-
selves— Public Opinion and Legislation.

CHAPTER XI
Reform in Forestry Methods 228

The Beginning of Agitation — Scientific Men the First to See the
Need — Advantages and Drawbacks of this Circumstance — For-

vi Contents

PAGS

estry as a Fad — Maintaining Tracts of Wilderness — National
Parks — Forest Reserves — Their Management — A Well-meant
Mistake in New York — Geological Surveys and Experiment Sta-
tions— Forestry Division of the United States Department of
Agriculture — Biltmore — Silvicultural Forestry Elsewhere — The
American Forestry Association — Forestry Publications — Attitude
of the Lumber Interest.

CHAPTER XII
Forestry as a Profession 245

WTiat Is a Forester — Fundamental Training of Foresters — The
Artisan and the Professional Man — Non-Professional Students —
The New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University —
Forestry School at Biltmore — The United States Forestry Division
and Education — Forestry at Agricultural Colleges — Forestry in
the Universities — Chances of Employment for Trained Foresters
— Attractiveness of the Profession of Forestry — The Kind of Men
Needed — Forestry and the Nation — Recapitulation — Conclusion.

Index 263

I

i

NORTH AMERICAN FORESTS AND
FORESTRY

NORTH AMERICAN FORESTS
AND FORESTRY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

MODERN civilization attains its height and
produces its blossoms and fruits, such as
they are, for good and evil, in the artificial life of
the great cities ; but its roots are sunk deeply into
the soil prepared by nature herself. Millions of
years before the first spark of intellectual life in a
humanlike beingr made the beo-inning- of a rude
culture possible, that mysterious earth-life which
throbs in the multitudinous surges of the ocean,
the stormy atmosphere enveloping the crags of the
Sierra, the torrid sunshine of the desert, the splashy
brook of the meadow, and the soughing pines of
the forest, had laid deeply and lovingly the founda-
tions without which there could have been none of
the rich, full, invigorating activity of city life. Cut
the threads which connect the humanity of New
York and Chicago with the remotest solitude, and
civilized life must wither and die.

2 North American Forests and Forestry

To him who tries to understand with head and
heart the subtle cords joining his own individuahty
to the natural conditions about him, as well as to
him who takes his place as one of the fighters in
the struggle that lifts mankind to ever greater
heights, to the thinker as well as the doer, the
connection between civilization and nature cannot
fail to be of never-ceasino- interest. To show in
a comprehensive glance how this connection is
formed in the case of one of the most important
of the great forms of earth-life, the forest, is the
object of this little volume.

It is a subject worthy the attention of the phi-
losopher, the statesman, the economist, the man of
science, the business man, the lover of mankind
and of nature. But let no one imagine that it is a
subject for the idler, the dreamer, the selfish dilet-
tante who is a mere looker-on in life's battle. To-
that false theory of life which cannot find in the
common activities of man anything but sordidness,
which cannot discern the dignity at the core of the
laborer's task with axe and saw, or concealed under
the dust and chaff of the market-place, forests and
forestry are incomprehensible. Nor is it a subject
for sentimentalists to play with, and tickle their
pretty fancies and emotions. Forestry is a subject
for men who stand in the midst of the world's
struggle doing their part with brain and brawn,
and feeling the joy which is the heritage of the
strong in victory or defeat.

With the heart-life of the wilderness the forester

Introduction 3

has a sympathy so deep and true that the poetaster
who sings his dainty elegy on the death of a tree
cannot even imagine it. This very depth and
truth help him to realize that the primeval wil-
derness is but one of the changing forms of life,
which plays its part and does its task, and pres-
ently must give way to other and better develop-
ments. Nature untouched by human hands is
beautiful and grand, but grander and more beauti-
ful is the life of man, with its constant striving for
a more complete subjection of the forces and mat-
ter of nature to the aspirations of the human
spirit. Nothing could be farther from the inten-
tion of the author, as it is from the mind of the
forester who loves his work, than to swell the
chorus of those who ignorantly, although often in
imagined superiority of knowledge, cry out against
the activity of those sturdy and simple men who
are adding untold millions to the national wealth
by utilizing the stores which nature has prepared
for us by the patient work of untold ages.

But the author, like the true forester, would fain
do his share to combat, wherever he finds them,
the ignorance which wastes instead of using the
riches kind nature has prepared for us ; the heed-
lessness that does not take the trouble to do its
best ; the greed that overreaches itself in its haste
to get all ; the selfishness which cares not for its
neighbor, though he suffer and perish. The pro-
fessional forester will not find in this book any-
thing that is not already familiar to him, and will

4 North American Forests and Forestry

miss much that he may deem important. But to
him these pages are not addressed. They desire
to be read by the many who take a Hving interest
in all questions affecting the welfare of the nation,
and by those who love the life of nature without
standing apart from the more strenuous current of
human existence. To such the book may be a
convenient help to obtain a comprehensive knowl-
edge of a subject that has already engaged the
attention of many of the leading minds of the
COT ntry, and must soon come to the front as one
of the great questions demanding solution by the
American people and putting to a severe test the
efficiency and permanence of its democratic form
of government and society.

CHAPTER II

THE NORTH AMERICAN FOREST

THERE are in the northern temperate zone
three great forest regions : The eastern Asian,
including principally the eastern portion of Siberia,
Manchuria, and the Japanese archipelago ; the
European ; and the American forests, including
great portions of the United States and Canada.
The American forest may be subdivided into three
groups : The great eastern forest, which originally
covered nearly all the territory on the Atlantic side
of the Mississippi, and in several places extends
considerably beyond that river ; the forests of the
Rocky Mountain regions, including the minor moun-
tain ranges of the great basin ; and the Pacific coast
forest. The immense areas lying between these
subdivisions are occupied by the grass plains of the
eastern slope and the alkali and sage-brush des-
erts of the interior, both of them distinguished by
the almost total absence of tree growth. On the
northern edge these three forest zones converge, so
that there is a subarctic forest belt stretching from
ocean to ocean. We have before us the task of
describing the relations existing between the life
of the American people as a social organism, and

5

6 North American Forests and Forestry

the forest with its manifold productions. It
seems natural to begin by considering the charac-
teristics of the forests themselves, such as they
were before the hand of man wrought the vastly
changed conditions under which they now exist
In doing so we cannot think of delineating in de-
tail the botanical or physiographic phenomena of
this great form of plant life. He who would learn
of the different species of trees composing it, their
dendrological character, their manner of life and
growth, will have to look elsewhere for such infor-
mation. Nor will we have space to wax eloquent
about the beauty of our sylvan inheritance. Al-
though the esthetic point of view has its very im-
portant place in our relations to surrounding nature,
we cannot in this volume concern ourselves with
that aspect. What this initial chapter seeks to im-
press firmly upon the minds of such as may feel
inclined to follow the author through these pages
is simply this : the manner in which the various
trees are associated in the wilderness is not the
result of accident, but determined by complex, but
very definite, laws. If one had a perfect knowledge
of those laws he could predict with absolute cer-
tainty the number, species, and character of the
trees to be found in any given locality. And further :
the forest is not a thino^ that was made once and
remained the same ever after. It has grown and
develops as a whole, just as each individual tree
grows from infancy to old age. Again, this growth
and constant change takes place according to very

The North American Forest 7

complex and unalterable laws. Each tree does not
constitute an independent entity, but is affected in
every moment of its life by every other tree and
minor plant of the entire forest, and in turn itself
influences every other tree. The forest therefore
constitutes an organism, having a united life differ-
ent from, but dependent on, the life of its individ-
ual members. Within this organism, a never-ceas-
ing struggle is going on, tree fighting against tree,
species against species ; while the entire organism
carries on a warfare with other plant associations,
such as the prairie and the bog, in which it is some-
times vanquished, sometimes victorious.

To the ingenuity of man, with the help of such
knowledge as he may acquire of the laws regula-
ting the life of the forest organism, it is possible to
make use of the various phases of this warfare for
his own purposes. By creating conditions favoring
some particular species of tree be is able to help it
to spread and flourish at the expense of its compet-
itors ; and similarly he may create conditions which
help the forest as a whole to maintain itself against
the aggression of other plant associations. No
small part of silviculture — or the art of caring for
woodlands — consists in just such interference in the
natural processes of forest development, rather than
planting and sowing. In order to understand the
relations of forestry to our national life, the reader
should have in his mind an outline at least of what
American forests are like, and also of how they came
to be what they are.

8 North American Forests and Forestry

Each of the three main subdivisions of the
North American forest has pecuHarities distinguish-
ing them from the others. Let us first look at the
great Atlantic region. This immense territory
was, when white men first came to our shores,
almost uninterruptedly covered with forest. For
thousands of square miles, in many portions of it,
there was not enough open space to establish a
forty-acre farm on. There was an occasional strip
of sedge-covered marsh along the streams ; an
open bog had here and there taken the place of a
former lake. The few small clearings made by
the Indians were hardly worth counting. Thus
the interminable woods extended from the salt
meadows of the tide-water line to the Appalachian
Mountain chain, swept up its ridges and peaks,
leaving bare but a few of the highest tops, filled
the broad longitudinal valleys, and descended into
the great rolling plain of the Mississippi country.
But here its character changed by degrees. More
and more frequently the vast continuity of it was
interrupted by prairies, grass-covered and flower-
studded, many of them of vast extent. Towards
the north, to be sure, in what are now the northern
portions of Michigan and Wisconsin, Northeastern
Minnesota, and especially the immense territory
between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay, there
are no prairies. The dense unbroken forest, the
" heavy timber " as it is called by the people of
the locality, is there bounded quite abruptly by the
treeless expanses of the Great Plains, where the

The North American Forest 9

miserable inhabitants talk of a forest when they
see a few willow shrubs and poplars in a ravine by
the river. But farther to the south, there was a
large region where forest and prairie struggled for
mastery, with the result that, generally speaking,
the prairies covered the undulating uplands, sedge
marshes the wet, broad depressions, and forests the
river valleys, as well as the few hilly places. There
were also light groves, called openings, in many
places in the uplands.

The species constituting this great area of prime-
val forest were far from being the same in all parts
of the territory'. Far to the north, on the bleak
shores of Hudson Bay, hardly anything was found
except spruce {Picea 7naria7ia and P. ca?iadensis\
together with the balsam poplar {Popuhcs balsami-
ferd). As you go south, the first additional trees
you meet with will be the little jack pine {Pmiis
divaricata) and the aspen {Pop2ilus tremuloides).
Soon you enter the domain of the king of lumber
trees, the stately white pine {Pinus strobus), with
her cousin, the misnamed Norway {P. resinosd),
and the dignified, slow-growing hemlock {Tsiiga
canadensis). By this time you are fairly within
the realm of the broad-leaved trees, the oaks,
maples, beeches, chestnuts, the walnuts and hicko-
ries, the tulip tree and sassafras, the gigantic syca-
more, or buttonwood as they call it in the Eastern
States, The farther south you go, the greater
becomes the number of species, until when you
reach about the latitude of Kentucky or Southern

lo North American Forests and Forestry

Illinois the list becomes so long that it would fill
several pages of this volume. Here and in the
reofion of North Carolina the eastern forest reaches
its greatest development so far as diversity of trees
is concerned. Farther south, the coniferous trees,
especially the different kinds of pine, again become
more prominent, as they were towards the border
of British America. The southernmost end of the
region, the extreme southern part of Florida, with
the adjoining islands or " keys," takes on a different
character, many varieties properly belonging with
the typical West Indian species. The most dis-
tinguishing feature of the whole region, excepting
the arctic edge, is the prevalence of broad-leaved
trees. Over very wide areas not a coniferous tree
can be seen, unless it be the arbor-vitse {ThiLJa
cccideiitalii) and tamarack {Larix laricina) of the
swamps. Elsewhere broad-leaved and coniferous
trees orrow mingled too^ether, with broad-leaved
ones holding the decided majority ; while, to be sure,
there are also large areas where the pines and their
congeners exclude their broad-leaved rivals almost
altoorether.

But in the other two forest zones, the Rocky
Mountain and the Pacific, the coniferous or ever-
green trees have almost a monopoly. Not as if
there were no broad-leaved species in those sec-
tions. There are many, oaks, maples, poplars, and
others. But they form little scattered groves here
and there, or crouch in the ravines of the mountain
streams, without impressing themselves upon the

f

The North American Forest n

character of the landscape. There is another feat-
ure of the western forests, or the larger portion
of them, which makes their aspect quite different
from eastern woodlands. That is the fact that the
trees, in many cases, stand far apart, so that their
crowns do not always touch. While in the east
the trees, both broad-leaved and evergreen, stand
so close together that the branches intermingle and
form a dense canopy, through which but few scat-
tered rays of sunshine ever reach the ground, such
is not the case in the forests of the Rocky Moun-
tains or the Sierra Nevada. One of the conse-
quences of this manner of growth is that the soil
in the western forests becomes much drier than it
ever does in the east. This fact will probably
have an important bearing upon silviculture when
that is begun in earnest in the western country.
Another feature distinguishing the forests of the
Rocky Mountain region from those of the Atlantic
side is that they nowhere cover such immense areas
in unbroken compactness. They are distributed
along the mountain ranges in belts, leaving bare
the highest portions where reigns the eternal snow,
and rarely occupying the broader valleys and plains.
Not only have the pines and other coniferous
trees the overwhelming majority of numbers in
those western forests ; they also display a far
greater variety of species, compared with eastern
woods. Some of the western species, like the
western white pine {Pinus fiexilis) or the bull pine
{P. ponder osd), spread over large areas, while others,

12 North American Forests and Forestry

like the Monterey pine (Pmtcs radiatd) or the
redwood {Seqiioia sempervirens), are restricted to
a few valleys or mountain ranges. Of the 109
coniferous trees native to the United States and
enumerated in Sudworth's list, eighty belong to
the country west of the great plains, twenty-eight
to the eastern forest, while only one, the common
juniper (^Juniperus communis), inhabits portions of
both regions.

What has been said about the peculiarly open
character of much of the western forest does not
apply to those portions found in the western halves
of Oregon and Washington, and thence stretching
along; the coast into Alaska and far towards the
Arctic regions. On the contrary, these are among
the densest woods in the whole world, where under
the vaults of the immense crowns, that are swung
from the column-like trees at a height of 100 or
150 feet, eternal twilight covers the ground. Of
all the forests of the world these have the most
gigantic trees, barring only the Sequoias of Cali-
fornia, of which we will speak anon. Compared
to the spruces, firs, and pines of the Puget Sound
region, the mightiest of eastern pines and even the
giant sycamores of Illinois and Indiana river bot-
toms are but smallish. No one who has en-
tered those dense forests composed of trees 250
feet tall and havingf six and more feet in diameter
has failed to be impressed with their grandeur,
and literature is filled with attempts to describe
their majesty. But they are surpassed by the

The North American Forest 13

redwood {Sequoia sempervire7is), that magnificent,
cypress-like giant which forms a bek, from ten to
twenty miles wide, along the California coast from
the Oregon boundary to a point in Monterey
County, a little north of San Francisco. And even
the redwood is not equal in size to the famous big
tree {Sequoia giganted)^ the pride of the Sierra.
This tree is known to tourists principally by the
comparatively few specimens growing in the pro-
tected groves of Calaveras and elsewhere. But it
reaches its grandest development farther south, in
the southern part of the Sierra, where it forms, not
small groves, but extensive forests.

How did the forests and the species compos-
ing them come to be distributed over the North
American continent in just the peculiar manner in
which we find them ? Before very much was
known about plant geography, people used to be
content with saying that each tree found itself in
that region the natural conditions of which were
most adapted to its nature. But such vague an-
swers no longer content us to-day. The science of
palaeobotany, or the knowledge of the plants which
existed on the globe in former geological periods,
has helped us on the track of this secret of nature.
To be sure even now we know these things frag-
mentarily only, and an almost limitless field is here
still open to investigation. But this we can now
affirm : The distribution of trees is due to two
sets of factors, — one topographical and climatic,
based upon the differences of soil, elevation,

14 North American Forests and Forestry

temperature, humidity, and so forth. The other fac-
tor is historical, arising out of the order in which the
seeds of different species were deposited in each
particular locality, or failed to be so deposited.

The palaeobotanists, drawing their conclusions
from the remnants of wood, impressions of leaves,
flowers, and fruit, and other small relics of extinct
vegetation which are found imbedded in rocks and
beds of coal or peat, have established the fact that
during what are known as tertiary times, vast for-
ests, composed of trees not very different from
those now growing in the United States, existed in
far northern regions, nearly up to the pole, where-
now everything is decked with ice and snow. But
the warm climate of the tertiary ages was succeeded
by the secular winter, which is known as the glacial
period of the quaternary epoch, and of which most
of my readers have heard. Farther and farther
south crept the great glaciers, joined by those flow-
ing down from the high mountains of the west,
until the whole northern part of the continent, as
far south as the latitude of Cincinnati, and even
beyond, was covered with a sheet of ice of immense
thickness, leaving but here and there an island un-
covered, like the celebrated driftless area of South-
western Wisconsin. Before the advance of the ice
and the cooling of the climate that was both cause
and consequence of the glaciation, the forests suc-
cumbed, and the species composing them were either
extinguished or became restricted to more southern
latitudes. But after thousands of years the climate

The North American Forest 15

gradually became milder, the edge of the conti-
nental ice sheet slowly melted, forming immense
rivers and lakes. As the land was laid bare, vege-
tation recovered the lost territory step by step. At
first, the character of the land recently left by the
ice was undoubtedly very much like what we find
to-day in the Barren Grounds, the solitary regions
in the northern part of the British dominions.
There we find vast areas covered principally with
mosses belonging to the genus Sp/iagti7C7n, inter-
spersed with a few sedges and numerous spe-
cies of the heath family. It is a vegetation very
similar to that of the peat bogs found occasionally
in the Northern States. These moss prairies or
tundras were gradually supplanted by the advance-
guard of the forest : spruces and poplars, that
came slowly marching up from the south and are,
in all probability, continuing their advance to this
day. These most arctic of American trees were
followed by the pines, and these again by the
more southern species of hardwood, maples, oak,
beeches, and the like. While thus the forest as a
whole was advancing northward, the various spe-
cies fought among themselves for each locality.
This fight continues to the present day, and is
changing the distribution of species from century
to century. It is very probable, for instance, that
both north and south the hardwoods are gaining
ground at the expense of the pines and spruces.
The hemlock does not reproduce itself in a portion
of Wisconsin, and therefore will die out there

1 6 North American Forests and Forestry

when the present generation of trees has run its
course, unless man interferes. The red and black
oaks are gradually supplanting the white oaks in
many parts of the country.

We have repeatedly used the terms warfare and
fighting for the competition of trees among them-
selves, and it is time to give the reader an idea of
how such warfare is going on. Trees have no
claws and teeth with which they can attack each
other as animals do, but they can fight, neverthe-
less, and the numbers of the dead and crippled in
these battles are tremendous.

There are two 'things which every tree needs, or
it must die : moisture for its roots, to carry water
containing in solution various mineral salts to all
parts of its body , and light to enable the leaves
to assimilate the material so furnished, and build
up the various vegetable tissues making up the
tree. Each kind of tree, by reason of its specific
characteristics, requires these two things in vary-
ing proportions. For each species there is a mini-
mum of light, and the accompanying warmth, and
also a maximum ; exceedino^ these limits, sufferinof
begins. The same holds true of moisture, as well
as some other requisites. For instance, most trees
will die if their roots are immersed in water for a
large part of the growing season. But a few, like
the black ash or bald cypress, will grow lustily on
swamps wet the year through. They have a very
high moisture maximum. On the other hand,
these species would not flourish on a dry, rocky

The North American Forest 17

rido-e. The conditions there would be below their
moisture minimum ; while a black spruce, for in-
stance, will grow in a Northern Wisconsin swamp
no less than on a dry rock in the Adirondacks, be-
cause it is adapted to a very large range of moisture
conditions.

As to light, dendrologists have divided trees into
two classes, light-loving and shade-enduring species.
The two classes, however, connect by imperceptible
transitions. Generally speaking, the needs of a tree
as regards light can be told by the character of the
shade its own crown makes. The oaks, for instance,
need much light, and an oak sapling that stands in a
dark, shady place will never grow to be a good-sized,
healthy tree. Now, everybody must be struck with
the light character of an oak grove, where the sun
rays everywhere penetrate to the ground and
paint fantastic figures on the vigorous growth of
grass and herbage. A maple grove is much darker,
and if you enter a wood composed of beeches or
hemlock, you find yourself in almost nocturnal twi-
light, where no ray of the sun succeeds in reaching
the ground. The need of light for the light-loving
trees is particularly great in their youth ; while on
the other hand, the seedlings of the shade-enduring
trees often die when they are exposed to too bright
sunshine. If the seed of a light-loving tree should
fall under the crowns of a group of beeches, it
would have very little prospect of growth, while
the young beeches would grow lustily. Here is
one of the ways in which species of trees carry on

1 8 North American Forests and Forestry

their warfare. Suppose that on a tract of land
covered with oak, birches, or other Hght-lovers,
the seed of beech, maple, or other shade-endurers
should be deposited. The light coming through
the crowns of the established species would be
sufficient to start the young invaders into vigorous
growth ; the seedlings would gradually develop
into trees, each forming Its usual dense crown and
casting a deep shade on the ground under it. By
and by they will distribute their seeds, some of
which will grow into trees, and it will make no
difference to them whether they are rooted under
their parent species or under the neighboring oaks.
In either case, the light conditions are favorable.
But with the seeds cast by the oaks things are dif-
ferent. If they sprout under one of their parent
species they will grow. But those that come to lie
under the beeches do not find light enough, and
either do not sprout at all, or soon languish and die.
By and by some of the old oaks will perish, from
accident or age. In the new growth the beeches
already have the majority, and the percentage in
their favor is constantly increasing. After some
centuries the oaks will have disappeared, and in
place of the sunlit oak grove there now stands
a cool, shady beech wood. The war has resulted
in victory for the invader. Of course, the light
conditions are not the only factors to decide the
struggle, else the light-loving trees would long ago
have become extinct. It might happen, for in-
stance, that when the seeds of the shade-enduring

The North American Forest 19

species reached the place, they found the Hght con-
ditions favorable all over the locality, but in one
half of it the soil or the moisture relations were
such that the newcomers could not endure it.
Then the result of the war would be, that on one
half of the tract the beeches have superseded the
oaks, while on the other the oaks remain in un-
diminished vioror. The conditions affecting: the
outcome are rarely so simple as we have here as-
sumed for the sake of clearness. Ordinarily, they
are exceedingly complex, so that it becomes very
difficult to trace them. But a knowledge of these
processes is necessary for the skilful pursuit of sil-
viculture. One important practical rule we may
mention here, which is based on this observation
that the species of tree growing in any given place
is not always directly regulated by the natural cir-
cumstances of the locality, but influenced by the
competition of other species. It is this : The fact
that in any region a species is never found except in
places of some special character, as in swamps, or
on sandy soil, does not prove that it will not flour-
ish elsewhere. It may have been driven into these
retreats by its competitors, and would really much
prefer the better places from which it has been ex-
cluded by them. This may often be of importance
in silviculture, when it is desired to grow a tree
outside of its apparent favorite habitat.

Just as each species competes with evejy other
species for the most favorable places, so every in-
dividual tree competes with every other, whether

20 North American Forests and Forestry

of its own kind or a different species. Again, the
main objects of the struggle are Hght and moisture.
To gain these necessaries, each tree adapts its
manner of growth, the shape of its trunk, branches,
roots, and leaves in a most marvellous manner.
Everybody must have noticed that no tree is the
exact counterpart of another of the same species.
Aside from differences in age and size, each tree
has a different way of disposing its branches,
twigs, and leaves. This difference is invariably
exactly of the kind which is most favorable to the
growth of the tree under the particular local cir-
cumstances among which it must develop. As a
tree cannot run away, it has to make the best it
can out of the situation in which it finds itself as
a seedling. Sometimes the devices the tree hits
upon in difficulties are absolutely startling. Here
is an illustration : At Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, a
pine tree is standing on the side of the almost
vertical quartzite rocks of the locality. It had
originally sprouted in a cleft where there is hardly
a shovelful of soil. The tree is now about six
inches in diameter. From its little cleft, it sends
out a single root, as thick as the trunk, along a
narrow ledge, on which there is practically no soil
at all. On the surface of this ledge, lying on the
exceedingly hard rock, this root runs along, almost
horizontally, for twenty-six feet, where it finds an
accumulation of soil and enters the ground.

While there are Infinite variations of form grow-
ing out of this struggle for moisture and light,

The North American Forest 21

there are a few general rules of practical impor-
tance to the forester. A tree standing in the open,
where the light strikes its crown from all sides,
forms a round, symmetrical top, with the lowest
branches not very far above the ground. Or if it
is of the kind that has a pyramidal growth, like the
spruces and most other coniferous trees, it may be
clothed with living branches to the very earth. If
the same kind of tree should grow in a place where
it gets full sunlight from some directions, while
other sides are shaded, the branches will all, or
nearly all, grow towards the light, thus forming
asymmetrical crowns. Now suppose that a tree of
the same species should find itself standing in a
dense clump of trees, where the light cannot reach
it from any side. Then its only salvation is to
reach the light which comes from above. Conse-
quently it sends out few and small lateral branches,
but puts all its energy into height growth, until it
has grown above the shade cast by the surround-
ing trees. This done, it begins to spread its leafy
branches in all directions, to absorb as much of the
loved sunlight as possible. Where a number of
trees grow closely together, so as to mutually hin-
der the light from reaching their leaves, a race for
the sun ensues between them, in which those are
victorious which by reason of their more ener-
getic height growth first show their tops above
the others. Then these begin to spread their
side limbs, thereby throwing their rivals into
ever denser shade, and the latter cease to grow

22 North American Forests and Forestry

vigorously, and in course of time may even die. If
they are of the shade-enduring kind, they have, of
course, a better chance to survive than if they were
light-lovers. In such a case they may even suc-
ceed, after a while, in their turn, in overtopping the
first victor, because that ceased to grow much in
height when the spreading of the branches began.
But generally the tree which has once been over-
topped by its neighbor never grows into a very
large and vigorous specimen, but joins the ranks
of the suppressed, which the skilful forester cuts
out sooner or later to make room for their betters.

Not only do whole trees languish and die when
they are overshadowed by others, but every branch
shares the same fate if at any period of its life it is
deprived of the free access of light, either by other
branches of its own tree, or by neighboring trees.
Where the trees stand close together, this happens
to all the lower branches, which usually die and
fall off during the first few years of their lives, so
that not only are few side branches produced, but
what few there are soon disappear again. Trees
so grown consequently show tall trunks with only
a few branches towards the top.

Now it happens that the quality of lumber cut
from trees with tall stems is very much better than
that produced by trees where the branches are
many and reach far down the trunk, for every
branch means a knot in the lumber. Conse-
quently the forester who desires good lumber
aims to make his trees tall and with as few

The North American Forest 23

branches as possible on the lower part of their
trunks.

When the tree has succeeded in growing above
the heads of competitors and begins to spread its
crown, it changes its economy in various ways.
For one thing, as it is now enabled to provide itself
with more leaves, it has a chance to produce greater
amounts of wood : for each leaf is a laboratory
where the material is distilled out of which wood
and other vegetable tissue are formed. This in-
creased formation of wood results in an increase of
the diameter of the trunk, while the height growth
is no longer as rapid as before. At the same time,
the character of the wood changes, especially in
those trees which have two kinds of wood, an inner
core of heart-wood, and a surrounding layer of sap-
wood. This is the case with most of our lumber-
producing trees. The greater the diameter of such
a tree trunk, the smaller the proportion of sap-wood,
while a tall tree of very small diameter is nearly all
sap-wood. As heart-wood is much more valuable
for timber purposes, it follows that to make his trees
most valuable the forester allows them to follow up
the period of rapid height growth by a period of
prevalent diameter increase. In other words, he
now cuts away the weaker, half-suppressed trees, so
that the remaining ones get the benefit of an open
stand. Where this happens naturally in the wilder-
ness, by one cause or the other, the result is, of
course, the same as where the new condition is pro-
duced artificially. The forester's art in silviculture

24 North American Forests and Forestry

never amounts to anything more than giving special
direction to the processes initiated by nature.

One of the principal weapons which trees have In
the propagation of their species is the production
of Immense quantities of seed, which are spread
broadcast, trusting to accident that some will find
a favorable spot to sprout and grow into a new tree.
Evidently, the more seeds are sown, the greater Is
the probability that some of them will find such a
spot. Therefore trees that are very fertile have an
advantage over trees which produce a less quantity.
But no matter whether few or many seeds are pro-
duced, a very small percentage ever succeed In be-
coming trees. In fact. It happens not rarely that of
all the seeds scattered over the ground In any given
year not a single one ever reaches the state of a
seedling tree. Those who have never observed
these relations are apt to assume that In a given
tract of woodland, growing healthily under undis-
turbed natural conditions, one will be able to find
trees of all ages, from the patriarch of several cen-
turies down to the little seedling just showing the
tip of Its stem above the litter on the forest floor.
But such conditions are rather rare, and the reason
for that Is not very hard to find. In the first place,
the trees do not bear seed every year. Varying
according to species and perhaps to habitat and
other conditions, what is known as a seed year oc-
curs but once in three, four, or five years, as the
case may be. In such a year, every tree of the
species, old enough to bear fruit at all, is full of

I

The North American Forest 25

them, while in other years only here and there a
few are ripening. Consequently it is only in seed
years that there is much hope for any seeds to find
a favorable sprouting place. But even then it may
happen that not one of them has such luck. The
condition of the ground has much to do with this.
It may be that by one cause or other, as, for in-
stance, too much moisture or too great dryness, it
has become unfavorable to the seedlings, either by
reason of its chemical or mechanical condition. The
older trees are little affected by the change, for
they send their roots deeply into the subsoil and the
character of the surface layer is of relatively little
importance to them. But the seedling depends for
its life upon the condition it finds in this top-soil.
More often the ground is shaded too much either
by the crowns of the old trees themselves or by the
undergrowth, which in turn may consist of former
generations of young trees of the same species or
of shrubs belonging to entirely different kinds of
plants. In still other cases the ground may have
been invaded by grasses or herbs, forming a matted
tangle of roots and stems which make it difficult for
the tree seeds to sprout. Under any of these and
similar conditions long periods may elapse during
which no reproduction of trees takes place, and the
supply of many seed years may go to waste. But
sooner or later an opportunity will come ; and the
trees are always on the lookout to take advantage
of accidents. One of the commonest of such acci-
dents is the death and fall of one of the giants of

26 North American Forests and Forestry

the forest. The prostrate trunk for a number of
years encumbers the ground, but it has torn a wide
breach into the leafy canopy on top, through which
the bright sunHght enters the shady depth of the
wood. Gradually the fallen tree decays, helped in
this process by manifold fungi and other crypto-
gamic plants. After a while all that remains of
what was once a tree is a heap of rich brown vege-
table mould. As yet this is no place for a tree.
Only mosses, ferns, and a few flowering plants
which like to feed on organic matter and are known
to science as saprophytes, or decay plants, find a
congenial home here. But gradually, by various
processes, among which the burrowing of animals
plays no small part, the vegetable mould is mixed
with the underlying earth, and true soil formed.
Now is the time for the tree seeds, but if they do
not hasten to occupy the spot, a host of other plants,
herbs, grasses, and shrubs are lying in wait to get
themselves established and preempt the ground.
Of course, during the whole time while only fungi,
mosses, ferns, and other specially adapted plants
could live in the decaying mass, seeds of other
species continued to arrive on the spot, but found
it impossible to germinate. But now this has be-
come possible for them, and intense rivalry between
them follows. In this, if luck is with it, a young tree
may come off victorious and in course of time de-
velop into another giant like the fallen one on
whose grave it grows.

This is but one Instance where an accident

The North American Forest 27

afforded opportunity for reproduction of trees in a
wood otherwise unfavorable to young growth. Of
course the variety of circumstances making such
opportunities is infinite. Often it happens in the
primeval wilderness that whole bodies of trees are
overthrown by violent winds, and then the condi-
tions brought about by the fall of a single tree are
repeated on a larger scale. This matter of wind-
falls is perhaps not quite understood by the aver-
age layman. Generally speaking, trees adapt their
manner of growth so as to withstand the violence
of all winds to which they are likely to be exposed.
The means by which they increase their power of
resistance to storms are various. One of these is
the elasticity of their fibres, even of the trunk, by
virtue of which they bend before the wind, but im-
mediately resume the upright position when the
blast ceases. Another means of protection is a
root system going very deeply into the ground,
combined with great strength of the trunk. Un-
less the latter quality were added, a strong wind
might not be able to uproot the tree as it would a
shallow-rooted one, but the very strength and un-
yielding quality of the root would increase the
danger of the trunk being broken off. Still another
useful device is the very common thickening of the
lower part of the bole just at the place where the
greatest strain is suffered when the tree is bent.
Now, within the limits set by the characteristics of
each species, each individual tree develops these
means of defence to a greater or less degree accord-

28 North American Forests and Forestry

ing to the measure of its exposure ; that is, a tree
growing in a place where strong winds are con-
stantly blowing, as on the crest of a high mountain,
develops as deep and stout a root, and strengthens
its other wind defences just as much as its specific
nature will permit. On the other hand, a tree
growing in a protected ravine does not waste energy
on such useless objects, but puts it into other forms
of life activity. The trees in the midst of a com-
pact forest protect each other, and consequently
develop relatively shallow root systems. Only
those at the edge of the wood, where the wind can
reach them better, send their roots down deeply.
Now suppose that, either by the hand of man or
natural causes, an opening is made in the forest, so
that individuals which heretofore stood surrounded
by trees are now exposed to the wind on one or
more sides. The trees now forming the edge of
the wood will at once proceed to strengthen their
root systems and thicken their boles, until they are
as well prepared to resist the violence of the wind
as if they had grown in an exposed situation from
the beginning. But this process takes a number
of years, and in the meantime they are in constant
danger of being uprooted or broken off. Undoubt-
edly the majority of disastrous windfalls are in
situations like the one described, where the trees
had not yet become adapted to new conditions.
But it may happen, of course, that a storm of un-
usual violence overthrows trees which had bravely
withstood all ordinary tempests. The trees some-

The North American Forest 29

times left standing by settlers on their clearings
nearly always succumb to the wind sooner or later.
Some species, which have shallow roots under the
best conditions, are more liable to windfalls than
others. Such are, for instance, the basswood {Tilia
A77ierica7id) and the hemlock {Tsiiga canadettsis).
Others, like the various walnuts and hickories, de-
velop deep and stout tap roots even in the most
sheltered situations, and consequently suffer little
from this particular danger. Windfalls are a great
detriment to the American forests. In addition to
the direct damage, the tangle of drying branches
and twigs affords one of the best starting-points for
the fires of which we will have much more to say
later on. The overturned trees are at once at-
tacked by a host of insects and fungi which some-
times spread upon the adjacent sound timber and
injure it.

To return to the opportunities which tree seeds
find for sprouting, such as are small and perhaps
provided with wings, or other devices enabling them
to float for a while in the wind, have evidently a
better chance than heavy seeds which cannot fall
far from the parent stem. To the former class be-
long, among others, the seeds of poplars and
birches, while conspicuous in the latter are the oaks
and hickories. It is impossible to describe here
even a few of the wonderful devices by which
many seeds acquire this useful power to travel.
How much advantage a tree derives from such
power of its seeds can be seen conspicuously in the

30 North American Forests and Forestry

case of the large areas in the Great Lake regiort
which have been deprived of their former pine
growth by the lumberman's axe and the fire. On
these " slashings " the first trees which appear to
provide a new forest growth are almost invariably
poplars, especially the kind known as trembling
aspen, and the white birches. These have es-
pecially effective apparatuses which enable their
seeds to travel long distances. The pines, of which
there are usually quite a number left on these
" slashingfs," beino- trees that were too small for the
lumberman, or of defective timber, have seeds
which can be carried by the wind but a few rods at
best. Consequently they cannot at once cover the
whole area, the way the aspens do. But this instance
also points the moral that the race is not always to
the swift. Though the pines do not travel far, their
little seedlings come up in numbers within a few
rods about each seed tree. The growth of aspen,
as well as bracken, grass, brambles, and other vege-
tation invading these areas, unless it gets to be too
dense a tangle, is of advantage rather than other-
wise to them, for it keeps off some of the scorching
sunshine against which pine seedlings are rather
sensitive. The aspen grows rapidly into saplings
six and more feet high. The pines, for the first
few years, grow but a few inches. Then they be-
gin to shoot upwards, and by the time they are
about fifteen years old, their tops begin to show
above those of the aspen, that are now ten to fif-
teen feet high. Five years more, and the pines are

The North American Forest 31

throwing the aspen into shade and hindering their
growth ; another decade, and most of the aspens
have died out because, being Hght-lovers, they
could not thrive in the shade of the pine, which has
now recovered the ground it lost thirty years ago.
An exactly similar alternation of trees can be ob-
served in New York and New England, with the
exception that ther^ spruces usually play the part
taken by pines in the Lake region. Undoubtedly
other sections of the country might furnish parallel
cases where trees have an advantage at the start
which they lose later on in the rivalry with other
species.

Attentive readers must have observed that the
dangers threatening a tree are by no means over
when the seed has found a favorable locality and
developed into a seedling. Just as very few seeds
ever sprout at all, so very few infant trees ever
reach old age. A very large old tree takes up a
hundred times as much room as a young sapling.
This room must be provided by killing off the
weaker individuals competing for it. A wood com-
posed mainly of very old trees will show far fewer
individuals to the acre than one stocked with young
ones. But the crown canopy may be just as dense,
and the amount of timber contained in it is apt to
be far higher.

It would require a volume by itself to describe
in detail the manifold conditions under which the
warfare of the forest is carried on. We have, al-
most at random, picked out a few of the phases

32 North American Forests and Forestry

which influence its progress. These illustrations
were designed to impress upon the reader the fact
that a forest, left to the undisturbed action of
natural forces, does not remain unchanged from
century to century, but is different to-day from
what it was yesterday, and will be still different to-
morrow. As the individual tree lives through
various life stages, from infanc:^^ to old age, so the
forest as a whole matures and erows old. But
while the individual, when its limit of age is
reached, must die, the forest has the power of con-
stantly regenerating itself, so that its continuity
may remain unbroken for countless ages. There
are, to be sure, certain slow secular changes which
may in the long run destroy a forest altogether.
Thus the forests growing in the northern half of
our continent in tertiary ages were destroyed by
the long glacial winter. But that is a matter of
many thousands of years. Humanly speaking,
there is no reason why a forest, taking its vast ex-
tent as a whole, should not live forever.

Another important principle we have tried to
impress by our cursory observations on the inner
life of a forest : Multifarious and bewildering as
the variety of its life phases is, the forest and the
changes constantly going on in it are not the dis-
orderly results of accident. In their astonishing
complexity they are yet dependent on a few simple
laws of nature. To the desfree in which we under-
stand these and their workinofs, to that decree we
will be able to control their results. As we pro-

The North American Forest 33

ceed in the consideration of the subject-matter of
this volume, we will have frequent occasion to treat
of the forest as subject, not to natural forces, but
to control by the will of man, who may destroy,
maintain, or regenerate it as suits his purposes. To
understand clearly how such control is possible,
we must bear in mind that it is done, not by sus-
pending or reversing the action of the processes of
nature, but by guiding and giving special directions
to them.

Such guidance and control are possible only to
men who have a knowledge of those natural pro-
cesses. Not as if anybody now possessed or was
ever likely to possess such knowledge perfectly.
But even an imperfect knowledge gives us a means
of exercising some influence. It is only within a
relatively short time that a partial understanding of
the life processes of a forest has been accomplished
anywhere, and in America we are still far from
knowing as much of our forests as the Europeans
know of theirs. During the greater part of our
history, we were very far from exercising an im-
portant influence on our forests. On the contrary,
our history as a nation was far more intensely in-
fluenced and largely determined by the primeval
woods. The manner of this influence by the forest
on our national history shall be the theme of our
next chapter.

CHAPTER III

THE FOREST AND MAN

THE bold navigators of the sixteenth century
who gradually made the Atlantic coasts of
our continent known to Europe had before their
eyes hardly anything but the hope of discovering
in the newly found countries stores of precious
minerals. To the wealth of other resources they
were almost entirely blind. But hardly had perma-
nent settlements been established on the continent
when the value of the forest became apparent both
to the settlers and the home government. From
a very early period, the British rulers had their
attention directed to the management of the forests,
particularly in the northern colonies, and the vari-
ous disputes growing out of the attempts to regu-
late the exploitation of the woods were one of the
causes that contributed to the estrangement of the
colonists from the mother country.

To understand the attitudes of the parties to
these disputes it is necessary to recall the views
then held as to the proper relations of colonies to
their central government. Nothing was farther
from the minds of the authorities who promoted
the establishment of colonies than a desire that the

34

The Forest and Man 35

latter should grow up into flourishing communities,
able to produce enough for their own independent
support. The home governments merely wished
to pret from the colonists certain commodities which
could not be produced at home and which would
otherwise have to be purchased in foreign countries.
Thus, in accordance with this theory, Virginia and
other Southern colonies were to supply England
with tobacco and indigo ; the middle colonies were
to furnish peltry. New England was long con-
sidered the most useless of all " His Majesty's
plantations," for most of its natural products
were of the kind that must come into competition
with the products of Great Britain herself. But it
was hoped that its forests might furnish the ship-
ping of England with those great necessities classed
under the name of naval stores : ship timber,
masts, spars, tar, pitch, and the like.

Since Eng-lish navio-ation had increased so much,
in the time of Elizabeth, the supply of these stores
had been a source of constant and anxious care to
the government. The British Isles themselves could
produce practically none of it. Therefore it had to
be procured elsewhere, and the principal sources
were Norway and " the East Country," meaning
the Baltic provinces. This was considered a very
unfortunate circumstance, first because British ex-
ports to those countries were small and most of the
stores purchased had to be paid for in bullion,
but particularly because it made England depend-
ent on the good will of foreign governments. Sup-

36 North American Forests and Forestry

pose that in time of war those governments should
prohibit the export of such stores, what would be-
come of British shipping, both naval and mercantile ?
For these reasons the government tried to In-
duce the New England colonists to quit farming,
and especially the catching of sea fish and the con-
siderable foreign commerce built thereon, and go
to producing naval stores. The colonists would
have been ready enough to do so, though at first
they knew nothing about the business and pro-
duced inferior qualities of tar and pitch, but they
found it did not pay to sell their goods in England,
notwithstanding a bounty offered by the govern-
ment. A British vessel could make three trips to
the Baltic or five to Norway during the time con-
sumed by one voyage to New England. Conse-
quently the cost of transportation made the sale of
such goods in England unremunerative. But the
colonists soon drove quite a lively trade in ship
timber and masts, as well as other lumber, with the
West Indies, and even with Portugal and Spain, to
the horror of the British officials, who became in-
dignant at the wickedness of people supplying for-
eigners with war material. Partly on account of the
efforts of the government and partly through natu-
ral advantages and native enterprise, the lumber
trade soon became a principal source of New Eng-
land prosperity. As early as 1663, a sawmill was
erected on Salmon Falls River in New Hampshire,
and in 1 706 no less than seventy were running on
the Piscataqua.

The Forest and Man 37

This, however, was not what the home govern-
ment had intended. They wanted to benefit Great
Britain, not the colonies, and now England bought
most of her naval stores in the East as before,
while the colonies grew rich by supplying foreign-
ers. Next followed a series of measures intended
to restrict the trade in lumber and naval stores.
As early as 1665 Edward Randolph was made
*' surveyor of the woods and timbers of Maine " at
a salary of fifty pounds per annum. The office
seems to have been a sinecure, for at a later time
Governor Bellamont said that Randolph ** never
did a sixpence work." In 1691 the office of " Sur-
veyor-General of the Woods " was established,
covering all the provinces of which Bellamont was
Governor. At first Randolph held this place, but
a few years later his successor, Bridger, entered
on a quarter-century of what the colonists consid-
ered " pernicious activity." His duties were to
see that no masts were exported without a license ;
that no waste of timber was permitted ; and espe-
cially that no trees reserved for the royal navy
were cut. In the various grants of land by the
government provisions were usually inserted re-
serving all pines of twenty-four inches in diameter
at twelve inches from the ground. By the Massa-
chusetts charter of 1691, the cutting of such trees
on land not included in grants to private parties
was also prohibited. The surveyor was to mark
these trees with the famous sign of the broad ar-
row. The penalty for cutting a marked tree was

38 North American Forests and Forestry

one hundred pounds. There were other regula-
tions, designed to prevent wasteful lumbering,
some of which were not ill-devised and might have
been approved by the colonists had they been im-
posed for their benefit instead of that of the
mother country. For instance, in 1705 a penalty
of five dollars was provided for cutting "pitch
pines or tar trees " of less than twelve inches di-
ameter. As it was, all these regulations were cor-
dially hated, and poor Bridger had a lively time of
it. When he seized timber illegally cut, it was
often rescued by mobs ; juries refused to convict
offenders on the plainest evidence ; the marks on
the king's trees were cut out by persons who, by
way of adding insult to injury, put the broad ar-
row on worthless little runts. Bridger's life was
frequently threatened, and he was accused of all
sorts of malfeasance. Once he had to go to Eng-
land at great expense to defend himself against
charges of corruption. The Board of Trade, un-
der whose jurisdiction he was, pronounced him
innocent and he resumed his office. His succes-
sors showed no better results than Bridger in en-
forcing the laws, although it is said that they knew
better how to make out of the office profits which
would not look well in ofiicial reports. The irrita-
tion growing out of these laws did not cease until
British dominion came to an end.

One of the causes of legitimate dispute regard-
ing these regulations grew out of the vague and
inconsistent character of reservations contained in

The Forest and Man 39

the various grants and charters. The colonial
authorities in Massachusetts held that whenever
a tract of land was established into a new town-
ship, the royal reservations lapsed, and the people
of the new town could cut all the timber they
wanted. The Surveyor-General construed the law
differently. In the Maine district, especially, every
new town meant a new sawmill, to the disgust of
the Surveyor-General, who soon came to put all
kinds of obstacles in the way of new settlements,
and so added to his unpopularity.

The making of tar and pitch never amounted to
much in New England or the middle colonies, not-
withstanding the efforts of government to stimu-
late this industry. One of the most conspicuous
failures in this line was the attempt to utilize the
German Palatines in a scheme for the wholesale
production of tar in New York. The experiment
failed, principally for the reason that the contrac-
tors tried to treat the immigrants like serfs. That
was not what they had come to this country for,
and most of them left, to find independent homes
in the Mohawk Valley and Pennsylvania.

While the mother country never obtained very
much benefit from the American woods as far as
the production of lumber and naval stores is con-
cerned, it was very different with another product
of the forests, — peltry and furs. While lumber was
too bulky and too expensive in transportation to
compete successfully in European markets with
that of the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, furs

40 North American Forests and Forestry

did not suffer on this account. A cargo of beaver
and marten represented a vastly higher value than
the quantity of lumber or naval stores a single ship
could carry. But the manner in which furs were
obtained was very different indeed from the pro-
duction of other staples. It depended almost
entirely upon trade with the Indians, and conse-
quently the people engaged in this business could
not confine themselves to the narrow strip along
the coast where the settlements were, but had to
penetrate deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

To the fur trader, therefore, is due the first knowl-
edofe the white man obtained of the interior of
the continent. The French in Canada were on
the whole far more successful in this branch of
trade, largely on account of their better ways of
dealing with the aborigines. To French voyageurs
and coureurs de bois we owe the discovery of the
country about the Great Lakes. But while they
were the first to penetrate the interior of the great
eastern forest, the inhabitants of the British col-
onies were not slow to follow. And there was
this difference between the French and the peo-
ple from the British plantations : the latter made
permanent agricultural settlements wherever they
went ; the French established nothing but trading
posts, with hardly more agricultural industry than
that of the Indians themselves.

This slow invasion of the forest by the people
from the seaboard resulted, at first, not in any
very decided change in the forest conditions, but

The Forest and Man 41

rather in the modification of the character of the
men who made their homes in these wilds. It
created a type never seen before, a type which one
must thoroughly understand in order to obtain
a true notion of American history. This type
was that of the backwoodsman, the product of
the influence of primeval forest life on civilized
Europeans.

It is very difficult for people of the present
generation to realize what it meant, during the
eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century,
to take up one's home in the heart of the wilder-
ness. It meant a practically complete separation
from all the luxuries and most of the necessities of
civilized life. As the forest closed behind the
settler and his family, he knew that with the few
simple utensils he had brought with him, his axe,
his rifle, he must now manage to get for himself
all he required. His clothing, his simple furniture,
his food, his own hand must get from the soil of
his little clearing or from the forest. A sturdy
self-reliance was the first quality that such a life
must foster. There was no possibility for the
cultivation of the orraces of life. All the virtues
of the backwoodsman were those of a strongr
animal nature, courage, pertinacity, resourceful-
ness. His vices grew out of the same qualities.
No doubt he was coarse, as was his life and his
food. Not rarely, in moments of irritation and
when the poisonous spirits he distilled for him-
self exerted their influence, he was brutal in the

42 North American Forests and Forestry

extreme. But undeniably these people were men — •
no weakling natures were produced by the life in
the forests. There was a strong love of adventure
developed in many of these characters, which gave
evidence of a hidden power of creative imagination.
At a later time, when the scattered forest settle-
ments had grown into comparatively populous com-
munities, this latent power came to the aid of the
men who shaped the laws under which these new
States were to live. For the laws and institutions
of these western commonwealths had to be changed
from those of the East not a little to fit the altered
circumstances. The fact that the original immi-
grants settled on isolated homesteads sometimes
miles away from the nearest neighbor had much
to do with the unwillingness to co-operate with
others for common purposes, or to submit to any
kind of discipline, which later on was shown so
often and sometimes with disastrous results by
the people of the Middle West.

Among the people who took up their abode in
the backwoods were men of all the nationalities
represented in the motley population of the colo-
nies. In the North, people of English descent
predominated. But in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
the Carolinas the backwoodsmen were more apt to
be either of German or Scotch-Irish stock. As
these colonies were more immediately contiguous
to the country west of the Alleghanies, it was in this
section that the type of the backwoodsman devel-
oped in its greatest perfection. No matter what

The Forest and Man 43

the racial differences were between the settlers, the
conditions of frontier life very soon moulded them
into great similarity, so that the type was almost
the same from the Lakes to the Gulf. In fact, the
first white men, aside from the French, both in the
regions towards the North and South, came from
that middle ground of Kentucky and Tennessee
where perhaps the type was most completely
developed.

To what extent the peculiarity of civilization
evolved in the early days of the States between the
Appalachians and the Mississippi was the product
of the forest surroundings becomes apparent when
one compares the development of these States with
those of the trans-Mississippi country. The place
of the pioneer in the forest, with his axe, and his
leathern hunting-shirt, travelling slowly on the
rough trails or drifting down the rivers in canoe or
flatboat, is there taken by the horseman of the
plains. We cannot trace here the details of how
this difference in surrounding nature has expressed
itself in the laws, customs, and institutions of these
sections, but to the attentive student of history it
is plain indeed.

For a long time the writers of American history,
mostly men of the Atlantic seaboard, almost en-
tirely neglected the part played by the backwoods-
man. Yet, now that our history is being treated
with a more truly scientific insight, it is found that
in many a crisis the peculiar character of this class
exercised a determining influence. For one thing,

44 North American Forests and Forestry

it is cominof to be better understood that the
great central fact of the first century of our na-
tional existence was the conquest of the continent,
not the slavery struggle. Even in the latter epi-
sode, the backwoodsmen exercised the greatest
influence, for their sympathies were about equally
with the South and the North, and wholly for the
Union ; thereby the long era of compromise and
delay was made possible, during which the strength
of the North grew so much beyond that of the
South that the final result could not be but what it
was.

The culmination period of the backwoods type
of American may be held to be the time from the
Revolutionary War to the close of the War of 1812.
By this time the various nationalities represented
amonof the western settlers had been welded into
homogeneity, and numbers of people had grown
up that had never known any life but that of the
forest. During this period men springing from
pioneer stock first assumed leading positions, which
they continued to hold long after the conditions
that created them had been much modified. He
who does not understand the backwoods type and
sympathize with its primitive strength, notwith-
standing all its crudeness, will never comprehend
why Clay and Jackson, Benton, Cass, and scores of
similar leaders during half a century commanded
the admiration and affection of the greater por-
tion of the American people, and why at the same
time the eastern commercial and professional classes

The Forest and Man 45

never overcame their distrust of them. These men
owed surprisingly Httle to the European tradition
still powerful in the East. The roots of their
being were sunk deep in the western forests.
The influence of the boundless woods, with their
long, dreary stretches of swamp land, and their
majestic corridors of towering trees, had penetrated
their minds on their long travels through the wil-
derness as circuit riders or military leaders. Though
some of them, in the course of long public careers,
became really men of wide education and broad
minds, who could very well appreciate the points
of view of people of different type, yet they never
lost their affinity with the men whom they repre-
sented. The winds that rustled through the syca-
mores of the river bottom can be heard in the
speeches of Henry Clay, and the odor of the pines
hovers around Cass while he moves throusfh the
over-civilized circles of the East.

The race of backwoods statesmen has disap-
peared. Their successors obtain their training no
longer in the Indian fight and the log cabins that
served as court-houses. Their training-schools are
the library and the university lecture-hall, and the
counting-house, with which even the modern law-
office has but too much in common. No doubt
they will never be guilty of the lapses in good
taste nor of the occasional naive blunders their
rude predecessors committed. But is it altogether
for the best that the influence of the forest has
been so far removed from our modern leaders that

4^ North American Forests and Forestry

they see its beauties, and feel its rugged strength,
merely in the tourist's superficial attitude ? How-
ever that may be, it is certain that to the back-
woodsmen we owe the conception of an America
extending throughout the continent, and even be-
yond, the ideal of a nation, strong, united, able to
lead in the affairs of the world, and ready to assume
such leadership when the opportunity offers, with-
out timid deference to foreign objections. The
generation which conceived this ideal passed away
just as its realization was made possible by the new
nation's baptism of fire, the Civil War ; and as if it
had been the special aim of Providence to set up a
conspicuous mark at the end of the period when
the forest-born generation had accomplished its
task, the President who guided us through the tre-
mendous struggle was the very personification of
that class of men, — the backwoodsman glorified. In
Abraham Lincoln all the repulsive characteristics
of the type, its coarseness, its brutality, its self-will,
had become gradually subdued through a long,
steadfast career of ever-widening responsibilities.
When, finally, the greatest responsibility was cast
upon this man that can fall to the lot of an Ameri-
can, all the dross had disappeared, and nothing re-
mained but the pure metal — strong, keen, tempered
to perfection, and yet at other times as soft and
pliable as gold without alloy. When from the lips
of that man, already under the shadow of death, —
although the throng that drank in his words knew
it not, — came those sentences of the Second

The Forest and Man 47

Inaugural, which will ever remain among the most
cherished words of human speech, who can tell how
much of the pathos, devotion, strength, faith, and
love dwelling therein had its birth from the forest
influences that surrounded the youth in his father's
cabin ? Who will say that we exaggerate in main-
taining that to the primeval woods, to the manner
in which their strength and ruggedness, as well as
their silent, tender workings, were mirrored in the
minds and hearts of the men growing up in their
shade, we owe that which makes us a people stand-
ing unique in the world's eyes, with an individuality
and character all our own, for good and evil, not
a mere feeble counterfeit of European models ?
Surely, if there were no reasons of practical utility
and worldly prudence to make us care assiduously
for what remains of our forest inheritance, it would
behoove an American to give his best skill and en-
deavor to its protection out of gratitude for having
moulded the men who first cast off the shackles of
sectional narrowness and dependence on colonial
tradition.

The task of opening the wilderness to white
settlement, which had been the work of two gen-
erations of backwoodsmen, had, in effect, been
accomplished when, after the second British war,
the power of the Indians was broken. Henceforth
it was no longer necessary for the adventurous set-
tler to have his rifle in readiness while he wielded
the axe. The hearts of the women in their lonely
cabins no longer trembled at every noise which

48 North American Forests and Forestry

their imagination transformed into the warwhoop
of the murderous red man. From time to time an
outbreak Hke Blackhawk's ill-fated enterprise still
sent a tremor of dread through the western coun-
tr)^ but these were like the dying reverberations of
thunder when the clouds are sinkinor below the hori-

o

zon. The throngs of immigrants now increased
apace, and quickly the clearings multiplied ; towns
and villages sprang up, and the forests began to
show the effects of human labors. But so strongly
had the character of the first invaders been im-
pressed by the forest life, and so closely was the
resultant type adapted to the conditions, even aside
from the exigencies of Indian warfare, that for one
more generation the backwoods type remained
dominant in the West. After all, though settle-
ment increased fast, the western people still lived
in lonesome, self-dependent isolation, between
miles and miles of forest almost as untouched by
civilization as when the first white man descended
the western slope of the Alleghanies. The few
clearings scattered here and there lay mostly on
the uplands bordering the navigable watercourses,
and had to be reached from the river by narrow
trails across the tangled forests of the river bot-
tom. It was out of the question to transport
heavy goods over these trails, nor were the means
of communication such that they encouraged fre-
quent trips to town. Consequently, the settlers,
during the slow process of hewing their farms out
of the forest, lived almost in the same isolation as

The Forest and Man 49

the first invaders of the wilderness, and were com-
pelled to rely for many necessaries on their own
skill with the axe. From the forests they obtained
all the material for the construction of their cabins,
from the puncheon floor to the shingles on the roof,
and the moss that calked the crevices of the wall.
All this, together with the rude furniture, they cut
themselves from the trees on their homesteads.
The forests also supplied them with meat to vary
the monotony of salt pork, itself made from hogs
that found every bit of nutriment in the spontane-
ous products of the forest. When the first high-
ways, or " plank roads," were laid out, they were
hailed with delight. Yet what poor substitutes for
real roads these were ; rough, sometimes studded
with sharp rocks, as they ascended a steep hillside,
or, again, composed of equally rough logs laid cross-
wise, called corduroy, where a wet place had to be
passed. Yet these were superior accommodations
of travel, and most of the journeying through the
woods had to be done by boat or on Indian trails.

A correct conception of what is meant by a trail
in the forest has largely been lost by the descend-
ants of those who a hundred years ago toiled along
them into the western country. The fact that trails
are laid down on some maps issued in pioneer days
is apt to give the inexperienced an idea that they
were some sort of rude attempts at roads, made arti-
ficially by the Indians. They were far from that.
In places more than ordinarily frequented a faint
trace of foot-path worn into the ground might be

50 North American Forests and Forestry

discoverable, but generally the trail was nothing
but a succession of landmarks. A spring, a natural
meadow, a striking rock, a peculiarly shaped tree,
these were the things which from time to time
proved to the wanderer that he had not " lost the
trail." Often it took all the skill and experience of
the woodsman to find these marks, which some-
times were nothing but the faintest evidences show-
ing that people had passed here before — evidences
which by the novice in woodcraft could not be dis-
cerned at all. Far as these trails were even from the
simplest idea of a road, they were by no means use-
less ; for they generally led through the portions
of the wilderness most easily traversed, avoiding as
far as possible the impenetrable swamps and wind-
falls, and crossing the rivers at the best fordable
places. Of more importance was the trail by prov-
ing to the traveller from time to time that he was
not lost, but walking in the right direction. To
those unacquainted with travel in the forest it is
sometimes harcj to understand the fear the natives
have of getting lost in the woods, but a little expe-
rience soon convinces them and often throws them
into the opposite extreme of an unreasonable horror
of leaving the beaten path. It is frequently said
that it would be an easy matter to get lost in a forty-
acre piece of forest, and there is some truth in the
statement. On account of the many fallen trunks
one has to climb over or go around, and in places
the dense underbrush, it is very difficult to keep
one's direction. An experienced woodsman, of

The Forest and Man 51

course, can do so better than a greenhorn, and
there are some helps furnished by nature herself.
To follow the direction of the streams is good ad-
vice, provided you know where they are running
to. Some of the counsels found in books are quite
absurd. For instance, it is often stated that in the
absence of sunshine one can tell the points of the
compass by the lichens and mosses on the tree
trunks, which are always thickest on the side of the
prevailing winds. What good do the points of the
compass do one who does not know in what direc-
tion his destination lies ? Besides, this sign may
be true of trees in exposed situations, but not of
those in the sheltered depths of the forest. At any
rate, to be lost in the woods is a sensation which no
one that has once had it even for a short time will
want to repeat. One often hears the statement
that nobody was ever lost for more than twenty-
four hours without sufferinoraderangrement of mind,
and I believe there is a certain amount of truth in
it. The oppressive sense of utter loneliness, the
fear of hunger, and the actual suffering from hun-
ger and fatigue may undoubtedly exert a destruc-
tive influence on all but the strongest minds. Nor
are actual dangers entirely absent. As a general
thing our American forests, at least on the east side
of the Mississippi, are not infested by animals
fiercer than the black bear, who is very careful not
to get into trouble with a human being. Yet there
are even recent cases of people, especially children,
being attacked by wolves. Some eight or ten

52 North American Forests and Forestry-
years ago, for instance, the children of a settler
living a few miles from a town in Central Wiscon-
sin, a little girl of eight and a brother two years
younger, went picking raspberries. When they
had not returned by nightfall, the parents became
anxious and summoned the neighbors to help
search for them. But no trace was found. The
next morning the people of the village were notified.
At once the sawmill was shut down and the whole
male population went to the woods to continue the
search, while the women were busy providing food
for the searchers. All efforts were vain. A band
of tramping Winnebago Indians who happened to
be in the neighborhood were arrested by the sheriff
on suspicion of having stolen the little ones, but of
course there was no evidence of this. Several
months later a woodsman found the remains of the
unfortunate children in the densest tangle of a
windfall, with the clear traces that wild animals,
probably wolves, had attacked and partially de-
voured them.

Let us return to the early settlements of the
western forest. The lack of transportation facili-
ties was the chief reason why for nearly a gener-
ation after emigration into this section had begun
in earnest, the condition of the settlers remained
that of backwoodsmen rather than farmers. They
were still directly dependent on the forest for nearly
all the necessities of life, and the forest still im-
pressed its indelible stamp on their character, while
they produced but little change in the conditions

The Forest and Man 53

under which the woods had existed for countless
ages. The change came with the advent of that
great revolutionizer of economic and social condi-
tions, the railway.

The steamboats which came several decades
before the railroad had not by any means changed
the conditions of western settlement to the extent
one might expect at first glance. They made mi-
gration from the Alleghanies to the remotest por-
tions of the Mississippi Valley a great deal more
easy, and therefore were an immense stimulus
to increase of population. But they were rather
calculated to restrict settlement still more to narrow
strips along the river valleys than had been the
case in the old days of canoes and flatboats. In
the prairie regions, of course, locomotion was com-
paratively easy. This, together with the easier
mode of clearing such lands for agriculture, gave
those sections a great advantage over the heavily
timbered portions. So it came about that those
parts of the Middle West which were continuously
wooded, in the same manner as the East had been
originally, did not come under the influence of the
various waves of settlement until railroads began to
be built through them, and here true backwoods
conditions lingered long after a new era had begun
in the prairie sections. To-day, the last trace of
the backwoodsman is found on the mountainous
portions of the South, such as Eastern Tennessee
and Kentucky, or parts of Arkansas. But like all
remnants of the types of former epochs, it is a

54 North American Forests and Forestry

degenerate relic. The latter-day backwoodsman has
the poverty, the ignorance, the lack of civilized
ways which we found in his predecessor, to an exag-
gerated degree. But he lacks the spirit of adven-
ture, the state-building genius, which made the old
generation so important a factor in our national
life, and above all the energy which enabled the
men of 1812 to lay the foundations for an enduring
civilization. The railway, which gave his prede-
cessor an opportunity to grow, is reaching him also,
and the question is : Will he be able to seize the
chances offered, or will he disappear from the face
of the earth ?

Since the building of railways through the forest
began, the dominion of man over nature has been
established there, as it has been on the prairies and
the plain. Settlement now invariably follows the
railway lines, forming a strip extending a few miles
on either side of them. The conditions under
which newcomers now make their homes in the
forest are very much easier, indeed, than they used
to be in the old days. Scores of things which the
backwoodsman had to provide for himself as best
he could, the modern settler buys at cheap rates
in the railway town : windows, doors, sawed lumber
of all kinds, hardware, furniture — no less than clothes
and a hundred luxuries which his predecessor never
dreamt of havincr. The modern settler is a link in
the great chain of world-wide commerce, where the
backwoodsman was an isolated being, having to pro-
duce almost all he needed with his own hands.

1

The Forest and Man 55

While thus the immediate dependence of the
settler upon the forest has greatly declined, indi-
rectly the forest is perhaps of just as much impor-
tance to him as it ever was. Certain it is that at no
time in our history has the forest been of so much
importance to us as a nation. The immense in-
crease in the business of lumbering dates also from
the time of the advent of railroads. The lumber in-
dustry, in all the forest region where settlement
has gone forward during the present generation,
has been the main support of the settler. Making
a farm out of the primeval forest is slow work. On
the prairie you have but to break the sod, and can
get a crop for sale the very first season. In the
woods you cannot expect to raise field-crops for
sale till after a number of years. Therefore the
forest settler would have had no money wherewith
to buy the commodities brought within his reach
by the railway, and would have had to go on in the
old backwoods life, if it had not been for the
wages earned in the lumber industry.

As long as practically all the settled portions of
the United States were in the close neiofhborhood
of extensive forests, there was little trade in lum-
ber within the country. A few small sawmills pro-
vided all that was needed for home consumption in
each neighborhood. The country people lived to
a great extent in log houses of their own fashioning
and considered sawed lumber as a luxury beyond
their reach. Only along the seacoast, especially
in Maine, New York, and New Hampshire, was

56 North American Forests and Forestry

there a lumber industry intended for consumption
away from home. When timber fit for construction
purposes had become exhausted in many places,
such lumbering on a large scale became a necessity,
and from that time on the relations between man
and the forest underwent a revolution. Hitherto
the forest was the dominant element ; man had to
adapt himself to its nature if he wanted to sustain
life within it, and the strange backwoods type
of civilization was the result. Now man became
stronger than the wilderness. He began to carry
all the appliances of his industrial and commercial
life into the very depths of the forest. Partly
through his deliberate intent, partly by means of
unintended consequences of his acts, he disturbed
the life processes which had for many ages deter-
mined the character of American woods, and cre-
ated new conditions to which the forest, or so much
of it as was not directly destroyed by the invaders,
had to adapt itself or perish.

The men who wrought this change were the sons
of the backwoodsmen. Not a few of them had
themselves spent their youth under backwoods con-
ditions. It was not surprising that they did not
at once realize the changed relations in which they
stood to the forest. The backwoodsman, to be
sure, derived his sustenance from the woods, but
he did so by destroying them. To his eyes, the
fall of a tree was the rise of civilization. The ugly,
repulsive look of his clearing, with the fire-blackened
stumps, or worse, the tree trunks still standing

The Forest and Man 57

upright but killed by girdling, the unkempt, rude
aspect of his cabin, were for him the cheerful signs
of victory over hostile nature. The woods were to
him something to be got rid of, if such a thing was
possible. There was for him no sentimental regret
over a felled forest giant, no elegiac tones in the
song of the axe. But on the other hand the forest
was for him a fact of most stubborn character. He
had travelled through it, slowly toiling along the
trail, carrying his pack of provisions to sustain life,
or gliding down the interminable windings of the
river. He knew how laro^e it was. East and
west, north and south, he knew that forest extended
for hundreds and hundreds of miles. He was but
too well aware what slow work it was to make a
clearing but a few acres in extent, that would hardly
be noticed in the vast expanse of woods. The idea
that the area of this forest could ever be diminished
by human hands to any appreciable extent, so that
people would become afraid of not having woodland
enough to supply them with the needed lumber,
would have seemed an utter absurdity to him. To
be sure, where settlers came in thick and fast, the
forest might disappear and farms take its place ;
but then there would always be plenty of timber a
few miles farther on. Thus the legend arose of
the inexhaustible supply of lumber in American
forests, a legend which only within the last twenty
years has given place to juster notions.

It would have been too much to expect that these
ideas with regard to the forest created by three

58 North American Forests and Forestry

generations of backwoods life would not Influence
the manner In which the lumber Industry was car-
ried on. No doubt It would have been well for
the American people If the better methods of fell-
ing, methods that had a conservative regard for the
reproduction and continued existence of the forest,
could have been adopted when lumbering on a large
scale first began. But such a thing was Impossible.
It could have been done If the pioneer lumbermen
had known what we know now, — that the natural
supply of lumber would be sufficient for our needs
for less than a hundred years. It could have been
done, above all, if those pioneers had held the same
attitude to the forest which we hold, who live in
cities and among well tilled fields. We stand on
the outside, and can see many things which they
who dwelt within the forest could not see. Re-
member that those pioneers were the sons of back-
woodsmen who had struggled for life with those
very forests we blame them for destroying.

Let us not quarrel with that sturdy race for the
harm they have unintentionally done us, for we owe
them too much. Remember that hundreds of
cities, from Pittsburofh to St. Louis, and a million
rich and smiling farms, are lying on the grounds
where our backwoods predecessors counted each
tree that succumbed to their axes a victory for
civilization.

Times have changed, and the tasks of this gener-
ation are different from those of the last. Their
duty was to make room for human life where wild

The Forest and Man 59

nature reigned supreme. Ours it is to bring con-
quered nature into harmony with the higher, fuller
life of humanity, lest the roots of that life be
severed and die. Woe unto us and our posterity
if we fail to do our duty as well as our fathers
did theirs !

CHAPTER IV

THE FOREST INDUSTRIES

NEXT to agriculture the forest industries stand
first in importance to the people of the
United States, while the various forms of mining,
including such occupations as brickmaking and
the like, rank but third. By forest industries I
mean, not merely lumbering, but all those industries
which obtain from forests either finished products
for consumption or raw material for manufacturing
branches. It would be useless to insert in this
book columns of statistics to illustrate these facts.
Those who care to study them can find them easily
in publications printed for that purpose. Nor can
we attempt to give a complete enumeration of the
various products which besides lumber are fur-
nished by the woods. A few of the most impor-
tant ones we may specify, and each reader will find
it easy to add to the list.

First, there are a number of things of wide-
spread use which are very apt to escape the census
taker altogether because they are mostly made on
a small scale for local consumption, not rarely by
the consumer himself. Such is fencings material
of all kinds. The old-fashioned zigzag rail fence

60

The Forest Industries 6i

is not yet a thing of the past. The modern wire
fence may gradually supplant it — but that also
needs posts to hang it on. Since fencing has gone
forward on the treeless plains, a large trade in
fence posts has even sprung up to supply this de-
mand, while formerly fence posts were mostly used
in the neighborhood where they were cut. Tele-
graph poles are another minor article of forest
industry which yet is of large proportions in the
aggregate ; so is the supply of long logs for piles
under the foundations of buildings. Railroad ties
are consumed at an ever-increasing rate. Hop
poles, bean poles, Christmas trees find ready sales
in many places. These and various other pro-
ducts of the woods have the peculiarity that even
in this age of machinery and production on a large
scale they are still, to a very great extent, supplied
by the labor of individuals armed simply with axe
and hand-saw. To the settler in forest resfions the
ready market he finds for such articles is a very
great help during the period when his clearing has
not yet become a farm, and even when agriculture
proper has become his main occupation he can
make many a dollar of cash by work of this kind
in his timber -lot during unoccupied intervals.
Shingles are now usually made by machinery, but
in many parts of the country it still pays to make
them by hand for local consumption.

Charcoal making is a forest industry which em-
ploys not a little capital and a great many work-
men. It is still, to a great extent, carried on by

62 North American Forests and Forestry

the primitive process of the old-fashioned kiln, but
better methods are now being introduced. The
making of wood alcohol and other products of dry-
distillation is an increasing business, and while the
market for such wares will always be limited, the
demand must increase with the progress of the in-
dustrial arts in which such things are used. The
ancient industry of making pitch and the like is
flourishing in many parts of the southern pine
regions, as is the making of turpentine, which is
produced mostly from the long-leaved pine of the
South. While the forest products just mentioned
have been known to man for thousands of years,
modern industrial civilization has added a number
of entirely new forms of utilizing forest products.
One of these is the makinor of excelsior, the narrow
strips of shavings which ever}'body now knows as
a packing material. The making of boxes and
packages of all kinds, from heavy dry-goods cases
to the little thin-walled berry boxes, has also be-
come an important industry within quite recent
years, and opened a market for many kinds of
wood, such as poplar, which was formerly consid-
ered quite worthless. But the most astonishing
case of the rise of a new industry is the making of
wood pulp for paper, which was quite in its infancy
twenty years ago, but now produces goods of the
value of more than a hundred million dollars annu-
ally. There are two methods of making wood
pulp, one by mechanical grinding, the other by
the application to the wood of various acids and

The Forest Industries 63

other chemicals. In both of these processes the
wood most largely used is spruce, but poplar, bass-
wood, hemlock, and several other kinds also enter
into the consumption.

A very important product of forest industry is
bark for tanning purposes. There are in the
United States a number of trees the bark of which
may be used in making leather, notably several
species of oak. But by far the most important
tree of this kind in North America is the hemlock.
The hemlock industry, by the way, furnishes a
strikinof illustration of how the American forests
have, since the coming of the railroads, been drawn
into the circle of the world's commerce. One of
the centres of tan-bark production is the eastern
portion of Central and Northern Wisconsin. Within
a few years large tanneries have there been set up
in the very midst of the forest, and raw hides are
brought there from Aro-entina to be treated with
the bark of the trees growing near by.

. Side by side with the wood-pulp and the tan-
bark industries, — each of them in a different way
illustrating phases of the most modern economic de-
velopment,— the most primitive of all forest indus-
tries still remains one of the most important of all.
That is the cutting and consumption of fire-wood.
Although there are many places, even within
heavily wooded territory, where the use of coal
and various kinds of fuel has almost entirely
superseded the use of wood for heating and
cooking purposes, yet it is probably correct that an

64 North American Forests and Forestry

overwhelming majority of the American people is
still dependent on this most primitive of all fuels.
This refers especially to the rural population, but
also in a large degree to the villages and smaller
cities. Statistics leave one utterly in the lurch when
he tries to realize the extent of fire-wood consump-
tion : for the greater portion of it takes place in the
homes of the producers themselves, while wood
which is sold goes ordinarily direct from the man
who cuts it to the person that uses it. Conse-
quently there is no middleman to whom the census
taker could apply for information. Generally
speaking, the price of fire-wood is limited, in this
country, to the cost of cutting and hauling it. But
there are exceptions in favored localities, especially
near large towns. For instance, the management
of the celebrated Biltmore forest in North Caro-
lina, which will repeatedly be mentioned in these
pages, has during recent years made enough out of
the sale of fire-wood to pay the considerable expense
of managing that property according to silvicultural
methods. In some parts of the country the rail-
way locomotives are still using wood for fuel, and
in a few manufacturing branches wood is preferred
to coal.

Turning now to the lumber industry proper, we
must distinguish between two principal branches of
it, which almost, though not entirely, coincide with
the popular distinction between hard woods and
soft woods. Among hard woods are included the
kinds of lumber coming from broad-leaved trees,

The Forest Industries 65

although some of these, Hke basswood and poplar,
are not at all hard when treated with cutting- tools.
Several species of hard wood are widely used in
building, for floors, wainscoting, and interior finish
in general. But the larger portion of this branch
of lumber is consumed in the various manufactur-
ing industries, such as furniture making, carriage
building, and the like. The other great division of
lumbering is the production of building timber,
obtained principally from coniferous trees and in-
discriminately called soft wood, although some
kinds are harder and heavier than many woods
from broad-leaved trees. Of this the American
people consume larger quantities than any other
nation, for the reason that houses built mainly of
wood are still the rule with us, while in Western
and Central Europe wooden houses are practically
unknown. On account of our prevalent fashion of
building " frame " houses, we consume most of our
lumber in the shape of boards. In Europe, so far
as wood enters into the construction of house walls
at all, it is used in the shape of beams, while the
use of boards is confined principally to floors and
other interior work. These facts are important to
know when one attempts to compare the lumber
industries of two countries, and their neglect would
lead to very erroneous conclusions.

It may be said here that while we have much to
learn from several European countries with refer-
ence to the continued maintenance of forests, and
proper methods of silviculture, we need not go to

66 North American Forests and Forestry

school with them in anything which concerns the
lumber industry proper, the transporting and saw-
ing of logs. Our appliances for transportation,
aside from permanent roads, which we do not need
as long as we do not care for forest reproduction,
are far superior to those employed in Europe ; the
machinery of our sawmills causes admiration and
astonishment to the foreign expert. When one
visits our lumber towns he may at first wonder
at the apparent waste, and ascribe it to crude
methods, when he sees the immense accumulation
of waste material, ** slabs," and other debris encum-
bering the ground. But in reality everything is
utilized for which there is a market or a use. Even
the sawdust often serves as fuel in the mill, and is
transported automatically from the saws to the
fires. If there is some material thrown away which
is saved in a European mill, it is because nobody
will have it, just as, in felling, we must lose the
tops and smaller branches, while the European
lumberman binds them into faggots and can sell
them for fuel.

The occupation of a lumberman, his life in camp
and on the river drive, has a certain picturesque
quality which has always made it attractive to the
outsider. But before we attempt to sketch in out-
line some of the striking phases of this business, we
ought to discuss two questions of very great impor-
tance to a proper understanding of the matters with
which we have to deal. These are : How long will
American forests be able to supply the demand for

The Forest Industries 67

lumber ? and to what extent is it Hkely that substi-
tutes will be found for the use of wood ?

In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the
legend, formerly so widely believed in, of the inex-
haustible supply of merchantable timber in the pri-
meval woods of the country. That stor}^ is no
longer credited, and even the lumbermen are fully
convinced now that the giving out of the original
material is a mere question of time. Nowhere in
North America is lumber fit for greneral buildinof
purposes cut from second-growth timber, that is,
from timber which has grown from seedlings since
the original trees have been removed. Where a
second-growth crop of pine and other conifers is
now harvested, it is being used in various manufac-
turing industries. Where lumbermen, cutting con-
struction material, speak of " second growth," they
merely refer to timber which they left standing
thirty or forty years ago because the trees were
then too small and they culled only the larger in-
dividuals. Exhaustion of timber supply, therefore,
is, under present conditions, identical with exhaus-
tion of the supply found in virgin or primeval
forest.

A distinction must be made between exhausting
the lumber supply of a whole country and that of
a particular region. The former would be an un-
doubted national calamity ; the latter may, under
some circumstances, be a benefit. In the second
part of this volume, when we come to speak of the
manner in which our forest resources ought to be

68 North American Forests and Forestry

treated, we will have to impress upon the reader
the importance of the principle that forests, unless
for protective purposes, ought not to be maintained
on land which could be utilized in a different way
with greater profit to the owner. Therefore, it is
not to be regretted if a region of great agricultural
capabilities ceases to supply lumber and becomes a
farming country. But it is otherwise where an area
is denuded of its merchantable timber and hence-
forth lies as an idle waste, stocked at best with scrub
and inferior species of trees — weeds, as the forester
calls them. Unfortunately, a large part of what
was once magnificent white pine forest is now in
that condition. The eastern part of the white
pine area, Maine and the rest of New England,
New York, Pennsylvania, has long ago ceased to
play a large part in the pine lumber market. The
bulk of the white pine now produced comes from
the Great Lakes country. But here, also, the end
is near. In INIichigan, where, twenty years ago,
Sasfinaw was the centre of the orreatest lumber in-
dustry in the world, the year 1882 marked the cli-
max of the output. A rapid decline followed, and
to-day Michigan pine lumbering on a large scale is
practically at an end. Wisconsin reached its great-
est output just ten years after Michigan. It still
produces a very large quantity everj'^ year, though
much less than in 1892. According to the most
reliable estimates, it may still be an important fac-
tor in the pine lumber market for ten years, and
then the end will have come here also. Minnesota

The Forest Industries 69

is now the State in which the greatest quantity of
merchantable pine is to be found. How long it
will hold out is uncertain, but hardly more than
twenty years, even with somewhat reduced output.
What will be the consequence of this exhaustion
of white pine lumber ? To the States immediately
concerned It will mean that thousands of people
who have made their living in the pineries and
sawmills will have to go elsewhere ; that others
who have prospered by supplying the wants of the
lumber crews must do the same or o-q into some

o

other business. To some extent, agriculture will
take the place of lumbering as the principal support
of this section, but not altogether ; for many large
tracts from which the pine has been cut are quite
unfit for farminof. Even now there are in Michigan
and Wisconsin many places, thriving villages and
little cities fifteen years ago, which are now almost
deserted, with the houses falling into ruin. The
pine timber of the neighborhood has all been cut,
the sawmill shut down, and with it prosperity
disappeared.

Taking the country as a whole, the consequences
of white pine disappearing will not be quite so bad.
The place of this material will be taken, for all
ordinary purposes, by the various kinds of south-
ern pine, especially the long-leaved species {Pinus
pahistj'is), commonly called Georgia pine. This
has already been done to a considerable extent.
This is the reason why there has not been an ap-
preciable rise in the price of white pine for lumber,

/O North American Forests and Forestr}^

notwithstanding the comparative scarcity of the
material. How long the supply of the southern
pine will hold out, nobody can foretell at present
with any degree of certainty. In the first place, no
one knows just how much there may be standing,
and secondly, nobody can guess what the future
demand may be. It may go on increasing at the
tremendous rate at which it has done during the
last quarter-century, or it may remain comparatively
stationary. Probably the extreme limit, however,
for supplying the market with original southern
pine on a large scale is fifty years.

Whether the western conifers, the sugar pines,
Douglas spruce^ and other species, many of which
produce construction lumber second only to white
pine, will ever play an important part in lumber
markets east of the Rocky Mountains is doubtful.
They now supply the demand of the Pacific coast
and several foreign countries, notably Australia.
But it may be that the cost of transportation will
keep them out of the eastern markets, even after
the Nicaragua Canal shall have established cheap
communication with the Atlantic seaboard.

As to hard-wood lumbering, the centre of that in-
dustry is now the great middle region, about the
latitude of Kentucky and Tennessee, where the
broad-leaved forests of the United States reach
their finest development. However, there is also a
great deal of hard-wood lumber produced in Michi-
gan and Wisconsin, and even such comparatively de-
forested States as Ohio and Indiana still contribute

The Forest Industries -^^>'^ 71
a Qfenerous share. Much of the hard wood of

o

the country is still annually wasted, for want of a
market. Many thousands of logs that ought to
bring good prices and be made into furniture and
other manufactured articles are used as fuel, or,
worse, burnt up by the settlers in clearing simply
to get rid of them. With increased transportation
facilities such waste will largely cease, and the
hard-wood forest will for a long time to come
increase as a factor in the industrial life of the
country. This may be a good place to call atten-
tion to the fact that we are naturally far richer in
lumber trees than our European friends. This is
true of both soft and hard woods. In Europe there
may be about a score of trees which are of commer-
cial importance. In the United States and Canada
there are nearly five hundred indigenous trees.
Of these about a hundred are of such quality and
occur in such numbers that they may fairly be
classed among the industrially useful ones. This
list is constantly increased as trees heretofore
neglected come into use and gain a place in the
lumber markets. This happened, for instance, to the
sweet-gum {Liquidambar styraciflttd) within quite
recent years. The same thing is true of the cotton-
wood {Populus moniliferd), which was formerly con-
sidered useless, but is now largely cut for packages.
Whatever may be true of the hard-wood industry,
the supply of soft-wood lumber, which for the
present, at least, is of the greater economic im-
portance, cannot last longer than half a century at

72 North American Forests and Forestry

most. It should not be understood that after the
time which we have above set for the disappearance
of the white pine, together with the Norway and
hemlock which are lumbered in the same area, not
another Ioq^ of merchantable size will be cut there.
On the contrary, some white pine, for local con-
sumption or special uses, will continue to be pro-
duced, but it will not be enouo;h to cut a figrure in
the lumber markets of the entire country. The
same is true of the southern or yellow pine supply.
This refers, of course, to the cutting of virgin pine.
If we could proceed to cut the second growth after
the original material is consumed, we would have no
trouble. But such a thing will not be possible if we
merely trust to the natural reproduction without
taking the steps to promote and protect such re-
production, which will be treated of in the second
part of this book.

The only other way out of the dilemma will be to
substitute for the use of lumber in construction
other materials, wherever that is possible. We
cannot rely on importation from foreign countries
for the reason that there is nowhere a source of
supply of building timber even approximately ade-
quate to our present demand. It should be ob-
served that we consume annually about four times
as much lumber per capita as England, and three
times as much as Germany. That this will have to
be changed during the next fifty years, there can be
no doubt, even if we adopt a policy of systematic
timber culture duringr the next decade.

The Forest Industries 73

Now to what extent is it possible to substitute
other materials where at present we use soft woods ?
To a very limited extent it will be feasible to sub-
stitute hard-wood lumber, as, for instance, poplar for
pine in the making of boxes and packages. This
is already being done to a considerable extent.
But then that means only deferring the evil day of
lumber famine a few decades, for it will make the
hard-wood forests disappear the quicker. For the
erection of buildings, sidewalks, bridges, and similar
structures, the use of stone, brick, and iron of
course suesfests itself. Stone and brick are the al-
most exclusive building materials of Europe, and in
our larger cities these materials, together with the
iron used in large edifices, are rapidly driving out
the typical American " frame " houses. Not un-
likely the latter will have practically disappeared
from the United States in the course of fifty years.
If so, it is by no means a thing to be desired.
Stone and brick houses are no doubt more lasting
and substantial than wooden ones, but also far more
expensive. If the average American family of
small means in the future will not be able to obtain
the cheap and commodious frame dwelling in which
it lives to-day, that will mean a long downward
step in our standard of life towards the European
level. It will mean the spread of the tenement
house from a few large cities to the small towns, the
disappearance of the one-family cottage, with its
lawn and garden-patch, from the villages. It will
mean the loss of one of those advantages by which

74 North American Forests and Forestry

we have kept our economic superiority to the older
countries, another widening of the rent between
the rich and the poor, another difficulty thrown into
the path of a democratic form of society.

But even if we accept the necessity of restricting
the use of lumber in construction, there are many
other uses of wood where a substitute cannot be
found at all. Such uses will easily suggest themselves
to the reader : aside from furniture, he will think
of boxes and packages, various household utensils,
and other things consumed in great quantities by
every civilized society. One very important use,
in which no substitute for wood is likely ever to
be found, is the consumption of mining timber.
Wherever mininof is carried on underground it be-
comes necessary to shore up the walls and ceilings
of the galleries with timber to keep them from
caving in. This necessity is one of the heaviest
sources of expense in most mines, and a constant
supply of cheap timber is necessary to their running.
It is not apparent what substitute could ever be
employed for such and similar purposes, so that the
disappearance of timber supply would be a death-
blow to the mininor interests.

It is clear, then, that the maintenance of a supply
of timber, both of the soft- and hard-wood kind, re-
mains a vital necessity of our economic welfare,
even if our present rate of consumption is greatly
diminished in the future. It is also undoubtedly
true that we cannot rely much longer on a supply
furnished by the original forest in the way we have

The Forest Industries 75

done heretofore. The forests are rapidly disap-
pearing, or where they do not disappear entirely
they deteriorate so as to lose the power of furnish-
ing timber of commercial value. Fortunately, it is
not impossible to so change our ways of treating
the forests now in existence that they may con-
tinue indefinitely to supply us with their products.
By doing so we will at the same time protect our-
selves against certain dangers to our physiographic
and climatic conditions which excessive deforesta-
tion brings in its train. These dangers will be dis-
cussed in another chapter in connection with the
means that should be adopted to prevent the im-
pending famine. But before we proceed to this
part of our subject we ought to attempt an outline
picture of the manner in which the lumber business
has been carried on in the United States since it
first assumed large proportions.

There are few legitimate branches of business,
not consisting of mere speculation and manipulation
of stocks, in which such large fortunes have been
made by individuals during the last fifty years as by
the lumber industry. At the same time few branches,
aside from agriculture, have been so instrumental
in building up the general prosperity of the sections
in which they were carried on. The foundations of
these large fortunes were laid in days when the
scale of operations was small and a man needed but
a few thousand dollars to begin. At the present
time, all lumbering conducted as a business by Itself
is done on a very large scale indeed, mostly by

76 North American Forests and Forestry

corporations the capital of which often amounts to
millions.

The first sawmills built in the Great Lakes
region and elsewhere were small affairs, driven
mostly by water-power and intended to supply
local demand. Sometimes they were run in con-
nection with grist-mills. People of the neighbor-
hood would bring logs cut on their farms to the
mill, and have them sawed into boards, paying a
toll, as they would for the grinding of grain into
flour. When sawing on a truly commercial basis
began, it was done to supply the demand for lumber
springing up in the cities that began to grow all
over the ^Mississippi Valley. This new demand
soon exhausted the timber supplies of the imme-
diate neighborhoods and made it necessary to go
to comparatively remote places to cut the logs
required.

The history of the modern lumber industry may
be divided into two periods, with well marked char-
acteristics. Durinof the first, the sawmills were
as near as possible to the places of consumption,
and the loQfs were brought lono- distances to the
mills. During the latter, it is more economical to
saw the lumber as near as feasible to the place
where the logs are cut, and transport the sawed
material to the place of consumption. The change
from one method to the other is marked by the
advent of the railway, aided by the great improve-
ments in mill machinery, which make it possible to
erect sawmills in the very heart of the forest.

The Forest Industries "JT

The first period is the heyday of the " river
towns " all along the great streams tributary to the
Father of Waters. In those days, when the notion
of inexhaustible supplies was still universal, the
lumbermen were fastidious indeed as to what and
where they would cut. They would take only the
largest and soundest pines, in localities near the big
streams, where logs could be carried to the water's
edge at the smallest possible cost. The transpor-
tation down to the mill was then almost universally
done by rafts. Every large river was covered with
these rafts, composed of pine logs fastened closely
together. The occupation of the raftsman who
guided these immense floats down the river, over
sand-bars and through rapids, was one that required
unusual skill, daring, and strength. The journey
from the pineries to the mill sometimes occupied
many weeks, and was accomplished quicker or
more slowly according to the stage of water. The
dangers both to the raft and to the men floating it
were various, and many a poor fellow has been
sucked under the logs by the current and drowned
in a vain endeavor to release a raft from some rock
or other obstacle In the channel on which It had
stranded.

At the present time, rafts of logs are rarely seen
on the rivers of the West, except on the Missis-
sippi, and also occasionally on the Great Lakes. The
modern rafts are apt to be even larger than those
of the olden time, and are usually towed by steam-
ers, one forward and one at the stern to keep it

78 North American Forests and Forestry

straight in the channel. The greatest rafts ever
constructed have been on the Lakes, but this is
not the usual way of transporting logs there. The
risk of the rafts breaking up and the logs scatter-
ing in a high sea is too great. Since the pine
growing in the immediate neighborhood of the
rivers large enough for rafting has been cut, the
lumbermen have gone up to the very headwaters
of the streams and along brooks of the smallest
kind. On these the logs cut during the winter
are floated down loosely, taking advantage of the
high water when the snow melts. Usually the
freshet caused by frequent rains in June is relied
on to drive down the logs which were not brought
in by the early high water. But of recent years
much complaint is made that the June freshet fails.
When the logs coming down the smaller streams
reach the main rivers, those belonorinof to different
proprietors are very apt to become mixed. To
make the severing of property of different parties
possible each log is identified by the mark of its
owner. These marks are*^ registered in official
records, kept by the proper State officials. To
facilitate the sortingf of loo^s belonofingf to different
people, arrangements have been devised known
as booms. These may be described as lines of
anchored logs floating on the water, by which the
river is divided into various compartments. The
ends of these compartments can be opened and
shut. If the lower end is shut, no loo- can float
out. If the upper end is closed, none can come

The Forest Industries 79

in. As the logs come floating down the stream,
men armed with long "cant hooks" guide each
into the compartment in which it belongs. The
booms are usually maintained by corporations
formed for that purpose, which charge a toll for
the services rendered by them.

Booms are not the only structures used on the
logging rivers to facilitate the " driving." On all the
smaller logging streams the loss by logs stranding
on account of insufficient depth would be so great
as to make the business unprofitable if dams were
not erected at intervals to produce an artificial
head of water. When a sufficient number of logs
are collected above the dam, the gates are opened,
and down they rush, pell-mell, the artificial freshet
being sufficient to carry them far down the stream.

When the logs reach the mill, they are confined
in a boom similar to those used for sortinsf, and
out of this they are drawn up to the saws by an
endless-chain arrangement. A modern sawmill is
a very ingenious piece of mechanism, in which one
of the most remarkable things is the extent to
which the expensive handling of the material by
men is avoided througfh the use of endless chains,
inclined planes, and other appliances of automatic
carriage. Now that most sawmills are no longer
located in the cities, far away from the forest, their
site is often on one of the lakes, large and small,
that dot the pine country of the old Northwest,
and these lakes do away with the necessity of a
boom. Often a small lake is completely covered

8o North American Forests and Forestry

with logs. The larger mills now usually run day
and night during the season, since the electric arc
light has made it possible to do this. Very often
a planing-miil stands next door to the sawmill,
so that the raw lumber may at once be finished.
The grading and sorting of lumber, that is, its clas-
sification according to quality, is one of the most
difficult tasks of the skilful sawyer, and can be well
done only after long experience. There are very
many grades of lumber recognized in the markets,
and unfortunately no great uniformity prevails.
The various grades are known by technical names,
such as clear, select, culls, and the like. They are
based principally on the freedom of knots and the
texture of the wood, especially the proportions of
sap- and heart-wood. The average quality of the
lumber reaching the market has very much deterio-
rated during the last twenty-five years. During the
early days, when the profits of lumbering were
much higher on account of the abundance of ma-
terial in easily accessible places, only the best trees
were taken. At present the lumberman brings to
the mill every stick of timber out of which a board
can possibly be cut, and naturally much of this stuff
is knotty, crooked, and sappy.

While in the old days the lumberman was con-
fined to the neighborhood of loorcrinof streams, be-
cause it would not pay to haul logs far on land,
this is no longer true. Now, when there is no
convenient river to float his logs, he builds a rail-
way into the heart of the pinery. Somewhere

The Forest Industries 8i

along this road a sawmill is set up. The road
serves both to carry the logs to the mill and
the lumber to market. These logging railroads
are of the roughest kind as to roadbed and equip-
ment. They serve their immediate purpose, how-
ever ; and sometimes, after the timber which they
made accessible has been removed, they become
regular railways to supply the traffic of the settle-
ments which may have sprung up in the meantime.
As the pine timber has become scarcer and
scarcer in the easily accessible places, it has, of
course, become more important to know just where
to find it. This has given rise to a peculiar class of
people variously known as woodsmen, cruisers, land-
lookers, whose business it is to give information as
to the existence of pine timber, its location, amount,
value, and ever^^thing else that a party seeking to
buy " stumpage " — that is, standing timber — must
know. These men have a remarkable acquaintance
with large portions of forest, sometimes covering
almost a whole State. Their information is usually
recorded in maps drawn by themselves in little
books made for the purpose — little blank books
that can be carried in the pocket, each page usually
arranged to cover one section of land. As the
information contained in these books is the stock-
in-trade of the cruiser, he is rather jealous of di-
vulging its contents, for which he ought not to be
blamed. Often he is in the permanent employ of
a lumbering or other corporation owning timber
lands ; at. other times he is in independent business,

82 North American Forests and Forestry

selling his services to whosoever wants them. Ver}''
often the woodsman combines other forms of wood-
craft with that of looking up timber. He may
have charge of a logging crew as foreman ; act as
" scaler," that is, measure the amount of logs cut
by some contractor ; show land to intending settlers.
Sometimes he condescends to act as guide to a
party of sportsmen, and lucky the tourist who can
ofet a man of this kind to introduce him to forest

o

ways ; he will learn more in a day than he could
without him pick up in a month. As a class, these
woodsmen are of remarkable intelligence and have
a great stock of empirical information regarding
such matters as fall within the immediate scope of
their business. It is a strange fact that notwith-
standingf this intellig-ence and knowledg^e, and the
great opportunities they have had for speculation
in pine lands and stumpage, these cruisers rarely
become wealth)'. Very few of the great lumbermen
have risen from their ranks. It seems as if their
constant life with unsophisticated nature kept them
from acquiring that worldly shrewdness which is
indispensable for success In money-making.

When a lumberman, acting on the Information
of his woodsman, has acquired a body of merchant-
able pine, he sends a small crew Into the woods to
make preparation for the winter's cutting. A
camp is built of logs ; rough " tote " roads are
made on which supplies for crew and cattle can be
taken Into the woods ; and with the first cold
weather work begins. Practically all felling for

The Forest Industries 83

lumber is done in the winter, as far as the pineries
of the North are concerned ; only hemlock is cut
in summer, because the bark, which is of more
importance than the lumber, must be handled at
this season. Work in the lumber camp is not an
easy matter ; it takes skill as well as strength and
endurance. When a tree has come to the ground,
it is at once cut into lo^js of the usual lenofth, leav-
ing as waste the branches and so much of the
upper part of the main trunk as is below log size
in diameter. The logs are rolled on skids to be
hauled to the river bank or the railway track, as
the case may be. The animals used for hauling
are now mostly horses, but formerly oxen were al-
most universally employed. Very deep snow is
undesirable during the cutting operations, but ab-
sence of snow would be a calamity, because only
snow, or ice produced by flooding the road in cold
weather, can make the rough logging roads passa-
ble for the heavy loads. The men employed in
this work were in former years nearly all experi-
enced men who made lumbering a business. Since
the industry has assumed gigantic proportions, the
lumbermen have been obliged to hire numbers of
inexperienced laborers, whom they find in the large
cities and take into the woods in gangs. These
men do not get as high wages as experienced ones,
and a few of the latter, besides the foreman, are a
necessity in every crew. The commissary depart-
ment and the cook at the head of it are impor-
tant parts of every lumber camp. Work of this

84 North American Forests and Forestry

kind can be done only with good food, and a great
deal of it. Therefore it would not pay to neglect
this branch of the establishment — a niggardly log-
ger would be deserted by his crew. In a well
managed camp no liquor or beer is tolerated ; its
use might mean death to a man working in the
open air with the thermometer at twenty degrees
below zero. But the crew can have as much hot
tea or coffee as anybody wants to drink.

No work is done on Sundays, and if the camp is
near town some of the crew may go there. But
most of them stay in camp, sleeping, " swapping
stories," and playing cards. Wages are paid at
the end of the season, when camp breaks up, and
a man who worked steadily all winter draws quite
a little sum of money in the spring. There is usu-
ally a few days' interval between breaking camp
and the beginning of the " drive," — th^ floating of
the logs down the river. During this interval the
villages and towns in the lumber regions do a lively
business. The streets are full of men just back
from the woods with plenty of money in their
pockets and bound to have a good time. That
their idea of a good time means principally drink-
ing, gambling, and worse, might be expected. Of
course, not all workmen in the lumber camps waste
their earnings. Many of them are married men,
often settlers who use the wages they earn to sup-
port their families until their clearings have grown
into farms. Generally speaking, the notion, preva-
lent in many quarters, that the lumbering regions

The Forest Industries 85

are gathering-places of the " rough " element, is
very erroneous. " Roughs " do not hanker after
work of the character done in lumber camps.
Crimes are rare in these sections, and those which
occur are usually the result of bad whiskey.

As soon as the ice in the rivers breaks up, the
business of sending the logs on their travels be-
gins. Of all the operations required in the prog-
ress of the pine tree to the consumer, this is the
one requiring the greatest hardiness in the work-
man. The river, to be sure, does the carrying of
the logs, but the latter have a persistent habit of
floating to the wrong places, getting stranded on
sand-bars or snags, running into sloughs, and in
various ways trying to escape from human control.
Consequently it is necessary for a crew to follow
the long-drawn procession of logs, or station them-
selves at the points known to be dangerous, and
with their long-handled hooks to keep the obsti-
nate ones in the main channel. In doing so it
is often necessary to jump from one floating log to
the other ; and notwithstanding the sharp, stout
spikes with which the boots are provided, to take
an involuntary bath in the icy water is "just as
easy as rolling off a log." The hardships and haz-
ards of this occupation reach their climax when a
" log jam " is formed, usually at one of the rapids
with which most logging rivers abound. Then it
becomes necessary, often at the immediate risk of
life, to break the jam by removing some of the
logs which by being stuck against the rocks hold

86 North American Forests and Forestry

those above them In place. Many Hves have been
lost by the impetuous rush of the logs when those
key-logs had begun to move.

Lumbering operations differ in various parts of
the country, according to the topography, climate,
and the species of wood lumbered. What has just
been said of lumbering in the Great Lakes country
is substantially applicable also to Maine and other
northeastern lumber regions. Where hard wood
is cut, transportation of logs by river is ordinarily
out of the question, because these woods are too
liable to sink and be lost. Some kinds of hard
wood will not float at all. In the South, where the
swamp-loving bald cypress {Taxodunn distichin)t)
is a very important timber tree, access to the
places where it grows is sometimes gained by
the dredging of canals, along which the logs are
hauled to the mill. In the mountainous regions
of the West, both the absence of heavy snowfalls
in the woods and the immense size of the logs add
to the difficulties caused by the topography. Here
the logging railroad is of nearly universal neces-
sity, supplemented by slides, on which the logs are
sent to fly down steep mountain sides. Logging
on the Pacific coast is even more interesting and
picturesque to the spectator than that along the
rivers of the Great Lakes country.

The business of bringing logs to the mill is not
always done by the owner of the stumpage, or the
mill, at his own risk. Often the job is let out to a
contractor, who furnishes his own tools, teams,

The Forest Industries 87

men, and supplies, and is paid a stipulated price
per thousand feet board measure. The measuring
of the logs is a constant source of annoyance and
frequent litigation. Rarely do the results of the
scaler in the forest tally with those at the mill. The
universal practice in the United States, is not to rely
upon an actual measurement of the cubic contents
of the log, but to compute the number of feet board
measure ; that is, the amount of boards of cus-
tomary size that ought to be cut from each log.
This is done accordino^ to one of a number of sim-
pie formulas known as Doyle's rule, Scribner's rule,
and the like. These rules do not pretend to give
accurate results, and the inherent deviations from
the truth are increased by the size of the saw used,
the skill of the sawyer, and other circumstances.
The advantages over measurement by the cubic
foot are that only one computation is necessary to
get the amount of sawed lumber to be expected,
and that the rule can be applied by any intelligent
person, without even a rudimentary knowledge of
mathematics. In several States ofiftcial scalers are
appointed, who receive their compensation by fees
from the parties needing their services, and it Is a
rule of construction of logging contracts that in
the absence of stipulations to the contrary the logs
are to be scaled by these officers.

As we have seen above, the end of the lumber
business, as now conducted, is in sight, although
it is impossible to fix a definite date for its disap-
pearance. But the service which it performs for

88 North American Forests and Forestry

the national interests is too indispensable to let us
believe that this disappearance will be more than a
change of methods. To the art of utilizing timber
will be added the art of producing timber. Hith-
erto, the influence which lumbering has exerted
upon our forests has been a purely destructive one ;
the time has come when it must also become a pro-
tective force. But before we proceed to discuss
the manner in which this great change may be
brought about, we must devote a chapter to the
ways in which the destruction and deterioration
of forests has gone on since the influence of man
was first felt by the primeval woods.

CHAPTER V

DESTRUCTION AND DETERIORATION

THAT the area of forest land within the boun-
daries of the United States is decreasing, there
can be no doubt. It is unnecessary to bore the
reader with columns of statistics on this point,
even if accurate statistics were in existence ; for it
is quite unnecessary, in order to understand this
phase of our subject, to know even approximately
the number of acres of woodland annually con-
verted into other forms of plant association.

However, for such an understanding- it is neces-
sary first to get rid of a number of vague and
erroneous notions that are widely prevalent among
people, even persons who ought to know better,
such as lumbermen, economists, and leaders of pub-
lic opinion. One of these mistaken notions is that
there is danger of the forests disappearing all over
the country, so that our grandchildren may be in
the position in which it is alleged that the people
of Spain, Greece, and other Mediterranean countries
find themselves, where, according to popular view,
wide regions have been converted into deserts by
the ruthless destruction of forests. It is very likely
true that there are districts in several portions of

89

90 North American Forests and Forestry

the United States, where, on account of the reckless
destruction of mountain forests, all those unfortu-
nate consequences of excessive erosion, sanding up
of valleys, excessive low water and floods in the
rivers, and danger to the fertility of soils exist,
which are probably more familiar to the general
public than any other branch of the forestry prob-
lem. But for the country at large no such perils
are threateningf. For all reo^ions that are not
mountainous or in the immediate vicinity of moun-
tain ranges, the question of over-erosion is of very
little practical importance. This refers especially
to the vast agricultural States of the Mississippi
Valley and the Great Lakes country. By far the
greater portion of this vast extent of territory is
nearly level or rolling, and most of it is of such a
nature that from an economic standpoint it would
be a waste if much of the land were left to be forest-
covered. Yet even here, notwithstanding the long
and thorough settlement of much of this territory,
the aggregate of woodland is still very consider-
able. Nearly every farmer has a more or less ex-
tensive wood-lot, for the purposes of fuel, fencing
material, and pasturage of his cattle during the heat
of summer. Whether these wood-lots are usually
treated in the most profitable manner for their
owners will be discussed in another chapter. Here
we are only making the point that there is no prob-
ability of these regions being entirely deprived of
forests.

Aside from the wood-lots of the farmers, there

Destruction and Deterioration 91

are in many parts of the Lake and Mississippi re-
gion tracts of greater extent which are likely to be
woodland for generations of men to come. These
are sandy, broken, or swampy districts. There
are in many even of the long-settled parts more or
less extensive islands of this kind, where aofriculture
has made hardly any Inroads on account of the
infertility of the land. The swampy districts are
perhaps the most hopeful of these tracts from an
agricultural point of view ; for they may be drained,
or where that is impracticable, gradually dry up in
the natural course of their development, and in
either case they are apt at last to form very fertile
meadows and fields. But there is no such prospect
for the sand barrens and the " broken," hilly dis-
tricts.. The former are now, in the three great
lumber States of the Lake region, as well as in the
South, furnishing the greater part of the output of
pine lumber. When that is removed, little of it is
taken up by settlers, but most of the land is left to
the forces of nature to do with it what they will.
In nearly every case it still remains woodland,
though of a very different kind from the original
forest, and of little economic value. Large tracts
of such lands, deprived of their original growth of
merchantable timber by former lumbering opera-
tions, but still in an uncultivated state, can be seen
in nearly every part of the country within the limits
of the eastern forest zone.

There is also a very considerable amount of land
being converted into forest which was formerly

92 North American Forests and Forestry

devoid of tree growth. This will be a surprise to-
many people who hear only of the destruction of
forests. I have in mind not only the planting of
timber strips on the plains, which is rapidly redeem-
ing the older settled portion of the region between
the Mississippi and Rocky Mountains from the
opprobrium of being treeless ; I am also thinking
of what is going on in the eastern prairie zone,
and in the forest region proper. Since destructive
prairie fires have become rare in Illinois, Southern
Wisconsin, and other prairie States by the almost
complete conversion of prairies into cultivated fields
and pastures, the neighboring trees, both from the
''openings" and the "heavy timber," have begun
to occupy such prairie territory as the hand of man
has not appropriated to himself. In many parts of
these States there is actually to-day more forest
land than there was twenty-five years ago, and as
no lumbering on a large scale is carried on in these
regions, the extension of the forest area is likely to
continue for some time. Again, in the forests of
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where open
peat bogs are gradually drying, they are being
covered by the spruce, tamarack, and arbor-vitse of
the neighborhood. The same process is reported
from the bogs in Western New York, and is prob-
ably going on in many other localities. Finally a
large acreage of woodland is being added each
year by the natural reforestation of abandoned
farms and " old fields " in the States of the Atlantic
border and the South.

Destruction and Deterioration 93

While, therefore, no grounds exist for the fear
sometimes expressed that our posterity will know-
nothing of forests, nor the multitude of beautiful
and ennobling influences radiating upon civilized
men from woodland scenes and woodland life,
still the fact exists that, taking the country as a
whole, the disappearance of forests has reached
that point where, in the interest of our national
welfare, it should stop. And what is still more
important, the character of our remaining forests
is rapidly deteriorating in economic value. The
place of old and valuable timber, capable of sup-
porting our enormous lumber industries, is being
taken by species of inferior value. White pine,
the king of lumber trees, has almost gone, as
far as its capacity is concerned to furnish the
whole country with lumber and send a surplus
to foreign parts. Black walnut, once exceedingly
abundant in many sections of the country, some
time ago became so rare and expensive that its use
for furniture making has been largely abandoned.
Hickory, on the use of which the world-wide fame
of American " buggies " and other vehicles was
based, threatens to follow the example of its cousin,
the black walnut. Thousands of square miles that
were once covered with tall and thick trees of great
age, fit to be converted into the best kind of lum-
ber, show to-day nothing but young growth of trees
that will not be ripe for market in a great many
years. Even that is the best and most desirable
case. Far oftener the trees which have succeeded

94 North American Forests and Forestry

the original forest are of different and inferior spe-
cies. Where the comparatively valueless poplars
and white birches or the despised jack pine have
taken the place of white pine, there is a distinct
loss of natural wealth. Still worse is the frequent
case where, instead of young trees of vigorous
growth, that in course of time promise a good crop
of lumber, no matter of what species, scattered
clumps of scrubby brushwood cover the land. All
these conditions are found in the woodlands of
the present, where the original forest has been
cut ; and unfortunately the first case seems to be
the rarest.

As far as the eastern and much of the Pacific
coast forest zones are concerned, it is self-evident
that, under any circumstances whatsoever, the first
necessity of civilized man in peopling this country
was to gfet rid of the trees. In distinction from
the prairie country and the Rocky Mountain for-
ests, trees covered practically all the land. There
would have been no room for men to dwell in, no
room for cities and villages, no room for tilled fields,
— in other words, no chance for civilized life, — if the
settlers had not waofed relentless war asrainst the
forest. This condition still exists in those regions
east of the Mississippi where settlement is now go-
ing on, — as in Northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota, as well as in parts of the South. Here
the first necessity of the settlers still is to destroy
the forest and to make farms in its place. This
will continue to be the case as loner as there are

Destruction and Deterioration 95

forest covered lands valuable for agricultural pur-
poses. No power on earth, under our form of gov-
ernment, can in the long run keep these lands out of
the reach of the land-hungry settler. Nor is there
any good reason why an attempt should be made to
preserve forests of this kind, to a greater extent
than the farmers themselves are doing by maintain-
ing their wood-lots, provided there are areas of for-
ests elsewhere sufficient to supply our national
needs. Let it be remembered : Generally speak-
ing, farming brings a larger profit from land than
forestry, except on the poorer soil. Therefore, no
good soils should be kept as forest, if poor lands
are to be had for that purpose. For all who are
interested in the promotion of a better forest policy
on the part of our public authorities this point is
of the greatest importance. They should never
lose sight of it in their advocacy of measures and
their attempts at enlightening the public. One of
the commonest objections to laws for the protection
of the forests in newly settled regions is the plea
that it would retard the development of the coun-
try. It would keep away settlers. People living
in the older parts of the country can form no idea
of the importance which the residents of new dis-
tricts attach to the coming of new settlers. A hun-
dred new families taking up land in a county every
year is the condition which makes every business
man in the county towns prosperous. If immigra-
tion stops, bankruptcy is at the door. No wonder,
therefore, that people in such localities, people of

9^ North American Forests and Forestry

intelligence and weight in the community, are afraid
of anything which seems to interfere with the
course of settlement. Therefore the point that
agricultural lands are not wanted for forestry must
ever be emphasized and repeated.

To return to the question of forest disappear-
ance, from what has already been said it must
be clear that such destruction of forests as is detri-
mental to the interests of the nation cannot be laid
at the door of the settler, at least so far as his clear-
ing of wild lands for legitimate purposes is concerned.
Must it then be charged to the lumberman ?

At first blush an unqualified " Yes " seems to be
the proper answer to this question. The methods
of lumbering in this country have been from the
beginning of a rough-and-ready sort. Lumbermen
have been intent to convert the timber standing on
their holdings into cash in the shortest possible
time and have cared little what became of the land
after they had removed such timber as they could
find a profitable market for. If these lands could
be sold, they have sold them for what they would
bring. If no purchasers were on hand, they have
abandoned them, not caring even to pay the taxes.
Where lumbering consisted of culling a few trees
of marketable species from among the mass of
others, it has affected the original condition of the
forest comparatively little. Where, on the other
hand, lumbering meant cutting practically every
tree on the land, as in these latter years has
been done in the pineries of the Northwest, a

Destruction and Deterioration 97

revolution in the condition of the land has been
wrought which offers to the forester and the legis-
lator perhaps the most difficult forestry problem
anywhere in the world. Rarely did the lumberman
bother himself about the future supply of timber,
or its reproduction-. The most he did was, in the
early days when small logs were not salable, to
leave uncut trees of less than twelve inches. To-
day he goes over the same lands and takes what he
left thirty years ago, this time down to the " pole "
of eight inches and less in diameter. This is what
is misnamed second-growth timber in many parts of
Maine and the Northwest.

These methods were rough, no doubt, and appar-
ently irrational. Yet there was an excuse for it.
Lumbermen did not do business for the benefit of
posterity or for the general good. Their only ob-
ject was to reap the largest possible profit in the
shortest possible time. They were in the same
condition of mind with practically the whole people
when they gave no thought to managing their forest
property in such a way as to provide for a repro-
duction of their crop. That the whole people were
regardless of such provision is shown by the fact
that in all legislation touching the public lands,
their disposal and protection, the maintenance of
the forests growing thereon was, until within a very
few 'years, absolutely lost sight of.

It is, then, the lumbermen no more than the set-
tlers who must bear the chief blame for the deteri-
oration and unnecessary destruction of American

98 North American Forests and Forestry

forests. The greatest burden of guilt rests on our
public authorities, which is only another way of say-
ing that it lies upon all the people of the United
States. The question of the relation of the legisla-
tive and executive authorities of the country to the
forestry problem is treated in a-nother chapter. But
here is the place to show how, through the almost
utter neglect of its duty to take proper police meas-
ures, the people of the United States has given un-
checked opportunities for the work of the worst
enemy of our forests, an enemy that has caused a
great part of the undesirable decrease of area and
nine tenths of the deterioration in value of the area
still covered with woodland.

Nearly every reader must have guessed by this
time that the enemy here referred to is the fire.
For, unfortunately, the American public is very
familiar with forest fires. Not a year elapses whe^
tales of disaster from this source in one part or an-
other of the country do not fill the columns of news-
papers. If this familiarity has not bred contempt,
it has at least caused a prevalent belief that forest
fires are inevitable events, incidental to the exist-
ence of forests, and to be submitted to as visitations
of Providence against which one can guard no more
than against tornadoes and earthquakes.

Yet this belief is utterly wrong. No proposition
in connection with American forestry is better* es-
tablished than that forest fires, practically without
exception, are the result of human agency. It is
sometimes said that lightning causes forest fires.

Destruction and Deterioration 99

This may be possible, but as far as I know no case
of such origin has ever been actually observed and
recorded. One popular writer repeats after the
other the story that forest fires have been caused
by two dry branches being rubbed against each
other by the wind. No experienced woodsman or
forester will believe in such a tale. It belongs in
the same category as the two-headed snake and the
hybrid between the rabbit and the lizard.

Fires are kindled in the woods constantly for
perfectly legitimate purposes. Settlers are obliged
to get rid of the debris in clearing by burning it ;
cruisers, hunters, and other travellers build camp-
fires. Both these uses of fire cannot be avoided.
In some parts of the country, especially towards
the South, where the tree growth is very heavy,
the underbrush is fired for the purpose of killing the
trees, to make clearing more easy. This is a bad
practice, for several reasons, and should be discour-
aged as much as possible. Still less to be com-
mended is the custom indulged in throughout
much of the Alleghany Mountain country, in the
far West, and possibly elsewhere, of firing the dry
covering of the forest floor every spring, in order
to produce young shoots from the stumps, promote
the growth of herbage, and uncover the acorn and
chestnut mast littering the ground. All this, of
course, is done for the benefit of browsing cattle,
and especially that pest of southern woodlands, the
razor-back hog. Pasturing cattle in forests is rarely
an economical practice, but where it is favored by

I

loo North American Forests and Forestry

systematic firing of the woods it cannot be consid-
ered but evidence of low standards of civilization
on the part of a population that allows it.

Where fires are kindled for legitimate purposes,
where due precautions are taken in doing so, a care-
ful watch kept over them, and, in the case of camp-
fires, where they are put out before campers leave
the place, there is no need of their doing any in-
jury. But, unfortunately, such careful treatment is
not very frequent. One would imagine that the
settlers, who are oroine to be the p;reatest sufferers
if the flames get beyond control, would be those
most careful in their handling of fire. The con-
trary is true. This is a sad commentary on human
intelligence, but no doubt can exist of the fact.
The settlers themselves are very apt to deny that
fires are largely caused by their own negligence.
They lay the blame on almost anybody else. Some-
times it is the railroads ao^ainst whom the charge
is made ; then ao-ain the hunters and fishermen
from the city ; where Indians are present they get
most of the blame, and the hated tramp never es-
capes condemnation. As a matter of fact, the rail-
ways used to be very careless about how sparks
from their locomotives set fire to brush heaps along
the road. But stringent laws were passed in many
States requiring them to keep their rights of way
clear of debris; heavy judgments for damages caused
by their negligence were repeatedly awarded against
them, and the railways have learned the lesson.
No doubt it is still very common for fires to start

Destruction and Deterioration loi

along the tracks, not in forests only, but on the
prairies and among cultivated fields. But they are
extinguished almost immediately by the section
crews, or even by the train hands themselves. It
is very doubtful whether many destructive fires
during recent years have been caused by passing
trains. As to the city sportsmen, they are mostly
persons of not a little intelligence ; they have heard
a good deal about forest fires, and are rather in-
clined to be cautious. Moreover, they are usually
accompanied by experienced woodsmen and guides,
who see to it that fires are properly handled. As
to the Indian, no doubt little good can be expected
of most of his race ; still I doubt whether he is, on
the whole, more reckless than the white settler.
The tramp, to be sure, may fairly be charged with
all iniquity, for he stands convicted of almost every
crime ; but, on the whole, his kind is not very com-
mon in most of the forest regions. So the attempt
of the settler to shift the burden on other shoulders
must fail, and the fact stands out clearly that his
own negligence is the most frequent cause of the
conflagration of which he is apt to be the first
victim.

If the settlers are apt to be reckless in their
manner of kindling and guarding fires, they are
still more negligent in the matter of extinguishing
fires that have arisen in one way or the other and are
no lonofer beins: used. Nothincr is a more common
sight almost anywhere within the larger forests of
the United States than to see small fires smoulder-

I02 North American Forests and Forestry

ing along the roadsides or trails. Yet hardly ever
does a passer-by take the trouble of putting them
out. This would seem to arorue a strano^e moral
defect on the part of the inhabitants of these
regions. Would any decent man hesitate to put
out a fire he saw approaching a powder-mill ? Yet
a little thought will convince us that the moral
callousness of the passers-by is only apparent.
They are merely following the prudent rule of
mindinor their own business. Fires kindled in the
woods, intentionally and legitimately, are so com-
mon that you cannot tell but what the roadside
blaze may belong to this class. Its originator may
be in the immediate vicinity and reappear the next
minute to watch the flames. In such a case would
not the officious stranger who put them out be
like the man who forcibly kept a bather from going
into the water, in the belief that he was saving an
unfortunate fellow-man from suicide ?

Most fires, even if left entirely to themselves, go
out after a while of their own accord, without
having spread over more than a few feet of ground,
or having done appreciable damage. Green vegeta-
tion is not a good food for flames, and is rarely
consumed except by fires of very great dimensions
and consequently enormous heat. In places where
there is no large accumulation of dry, dead material
the danger is consequently insignificant. It is
but a small part of the fires that ever spread at all,
and even those which assume large proportions
soon come to a stop. The great disasters so often

Destruction and Deterioration 103

recurring are not usually the work of a single fire,
but of numerous small fires burning throughout the
district.

Ordinarily, during a dry season, there are many
small fires burninor in all the forest regions of the
country, but especially where lumbering is actively
carried on, or where clearing for settlement is rap-
idly progressing. This is particularly true of the
coniferous forests, while broad-leaved woods are
comparatively exempt from fire.

The odor of smouldering pine wood is one of the
most familiar sense impressions one experiences in
such districts. Its pungency is very characteristic
of the pineries, and never to be forgotten by one
"who has once noticed it. These low smoulderlnof
fires show very little flame. In the daytime, at
least, there seems to be nothing but smoke, a dense,
blue or grayish cloud rising towards heaven and
gradually taking a paler hue as it disperses in the
air. At night, one sees the fire itself gleaming
afar, close to the ground, without tongues of flame
breaking forth, but rather looking like a pile of
glowing coals. Very often the fire is located in a
stump of pine, or in a fallen log. In these cases it
rarely spreads to the surroundings. The grass and
litter for a foot or so surrounding the seat of the
fire is quickly consumed, marking a charred, black
circle. But thereafter this zone of charred litter
acts as a confining band, across which, under ordi-
nary conditions, the fire cannot spread to attack the
vegetation beyond. Thus the stump or log is

I04 North American Forests and Forestry

slowly converted into charcoal. The smouldering
may go on for days or weeks ; if rain comes, the
fire is quickly extinguished. Otherwise it burns
on till the whole is consumed.

This is the ordinary progress of a neglected fire
of this kind. But far otherwise is its history when,
during a long drought, a wind fans the smouldering
fires into active, leaping flames. During those long,
oppressive summer days, when day after day the re-
lentless sun beats down, even the dense shade of the
broad-leaved trees no longer suffices to keep the
forest floor damp and cool. In the pine woods,
the heat becomes stifling. The litter of needles on
the ground becomes as dry as sand. The cushions
of moss lose their softness and turn brittle, so that
you can rub them to powder between your fingers.
On the open slashings the soil dries up and the litter
of dry branches, tree tops, and other debris left by
the lumbermen during the preceding winter becomes
so dry that the first spark must set the whole
ablaze. Small fires multiply everywhere, for every
day new ones start, and there is no rain to put out
the old ones. The smoke begins to fill the at-
mosphere, and there is a dark grayish haze over all
distant prospects, quite indescribable and entirely
different from the silvery haze caused by light
mists, or the ordinary blue produced by the mere
distance. The pungent smoky odor penetrates
everywhere. In the villages and towns it enters
houses, causing the women to look with dismay at
the lace curtains before the windows.

Destruction and Deterioration 105

As yet there is no danger. Here and there,
fanned by light winds, the fire begins to run along
the ground, eating up the litter, grass, and herbage,
coloring the lower portions of the tree trunks black,
and destroying the humus, sometimes to a great
depth. These small fires seldom spread over more
than a few acres. They really do untold damage,
more, perhaps, in the aggregate than the great blazes
destroying live trees. For, especially if they recur
year after year in the same place, they prevent the
propagation of trees by killing the seeds or seed-
lings. They also render the soil infertile by de-
stroying the organic matter contained in it. But to
the settler this kind of fire seems hardly worth men-
tioning. If the blaze comes too near his fences, he
attempts to put it out or check its spread. If it is
burning far away, on the pine slashings, he lets it
burn.

Still, as the days go by and the smoke becomes
denser and denser, as at night the villages seem to
be surrounded by the camp-fires of hostile armies
on all the neighboring hills, the people of the towns
begin to be anxious about what may be coming.
The railway crews, as they come in on each train,
begin to tell about fires along the line. Then
" homesteaders," whose log cabins are in the most
remote fastnesses of the wilderness, come into town
with tales of distress. The fire has reached their
clearing ; without the aid of neighbors, who may be
miles away, anxious about their own safety, the
homesteader, with his wife and older children, has

io6 North American Forests and Forestry

made a hard fight for his property. But in vain ;
his cabin, with what Httle furniture he possessed,
with the family clothing and the provisions that
were to keep them alive, have been consumed
by the fire. With his little children on his arm,
followed by the older boys and the wife* carrying
the baby, he trudges along the trail through the
hot, stifling, smoke-filled wood to the village. The
people of the town relieve the distress of their
stricken fellows and go to bed thanking God that
still they are safe.

But there comes an evening when nobody thinks
of going to bed. All day the smoke has become
denser and denser, until it is no longer a haze, but a
thick, yellowish mass of vapor, carrying large parti-
cles of sooty cinders, filling one's eyes and nostrils
with biting dust, making breathing oppressive.
There is no escape from it. Closing windows and
doors does not bar it out of the houses ; it seems as
if it could penetrate solid walls. Everything it
touches feels rough, as if covered with fine ashes.
The heat is horrible, although no ray of sunshine
penetrates the heavy pall of smoke.

In the distance a rumbling, rushing sound is
heard. It is the fire roaring in the tree tops on
the hillsides, several miles from town. This is no
longfer a number of small fires, slowlv smoulderino-
away to eat up a fallen log ; nor little, dancing
flames, running along the dry litter on the ground,
trying to creep up the bark of a tree, where the
lichens are thick and dry, but presently falling back

Destruction and Deterioration 107

exhausted. The wind has risen, fanning the flames
on all sides, till they leap higher and higher, reach-
ing the lower branches of the standing timber, en-
veloping the mighty boles of cork pine in a sheet
of flame, seizing the tall poles of young trees and
convertinof them into blazinof beacons that herald
the approach of destruction. Fiercer and fiercer
blows the wind, generated by the fire itself as it
sends currents of heated air rushing upward into
infinity. Louder and louder the cracking of the
branches as the flames seize one after the other,
leaping from crown to crown, rising high above the
tree tops in whirling wreaths of fire, and belching
forth clouds of smoke hundreds of feet still higher.
As the heated air rises more and more, rushing
along with a sound like that of a thousand foaming
mountain torrents, burning brands are carried
along, whirling on across the firmament like evil
spirits of destruction, bearing the fire miles away
from its origin, then falling among the dry brush-
heaps of windfall or slashing, and starting another
fire to burn as fiercely as the first.

In the village there is a suppressed excitement.
Little is said by anybody. Every man and woman
is busy preparing for the worst. The sawmill has
shut down, and the hands are busy refilling the
water barrels on the roof ; the merchants put bar-
rels of water in front of their stores, and get pails
handy. In the dwelling-houses similar preparations
are made. Women pack their clothes and valua-
bles into trunks and boxes. The captain and

io8 North American Forests and Forestry-
members of the volunteer fire brio-ade gret their
apparatus into readiness, although they doubt
whether it will be of much effect if the flames reach
the town.

Down at the railway depot the telegraph opera-
tor sits at his instrument, "talking" to the people
" down the line," in the happy places far from forest
fires. He tells them that fires are surrounding the
village on all sides ; there is danger of the town
beinof reached to-niorht. Several small blazes,
caused by flying brands, have already occurred but
been quickly put out. Many of the settlers in the
surrounding country have come into the town,
after havino- lost all their oroods. There is a ru-
mor that several persons have perished, but as yet
it is unconfirmed. Suddenly the clicking of the
receiver ceases — the connection has been inter-
rupted, undoubtedly by the fire. Still he can tele-
graph by the other end of the line — until that also
ceases. Now the villao-e is cut off from all the
world, except, thank heaven, for the night train.
If that goes through safely, and the fire has reached
us by that time, a relief train can be up here by
to-morrow noon.

As night comes, the flames in the distance be-
come more visible, and now it is seen that there
are fires on each side of the city. The fire on the
west threatens the greatest danger, for from that
direction the wind is blowing. On the east side
the road to the lake, two miles away, is open.
There is hard wood in that direction, until you get

Destruction and Deterioration 109

to the tamarack swamp along the shore. A boy
has been down there and reports that there is some
fire in the swamp, but otherwise the road is clear.
Horses are being hitched up, wagons loaded with
household stuff, everything brought into readiness
to take flight to the comparative safety of the hard-
wood tract. If that also should succumb to the
fire, then there will be no safety except in the lake.
From the west, the wind brings the fire nearer and
nearer. It does not travel fast like the sweep of a
prairie fire. There is something horrible in the
slow, steady approach of a top fire. It comes on
with the pitiless determination of unavoidable des-
tiny, not faster, perhaps, than a man can walk.
But there is no stopping it. You can fight a ground
fire, by trying to beat it out with brush, or throw-
ing earth upon it. You cannot fight a fire that
seizes tree top after tree top, far above your reach,
and showers clown upon the pygmy mortals that
attempt to oppose it an avalanche of burning
branches, driving them away to escape the torture
and death that threatens them.

By midnight the fire has reached the village.
The first houses, standing as they do in the midst
of forest trees on their lots that were partially
cleared but a few months ago, are quickly consumed.
Each man in the village is straining every nerve to
protect the houses which at each particular moment
are most in immediate danger. But all is without
avail. Building after building is rapidly turned
into a smoking pile of ashes. The heat, the smoke,

no North American Forests and Forestry

the excessive labor are beginning to exhaust the
workers. There is one hope left. The little river
and the vacant places on both sides of it may check
the advance of the fire. Vain hope ! Firebrands
soon carry the destruction to the other side, and
the very ground in the open spaces carries the fire
along, for it is mostly sawdust and other refuse of
the lumber-mill. Now there is nothing left but
retreat. When the morning breaks, the people of
the village and the many families of settlers who
came in from the woods the preceding day find
themselves huddled together in the adjoining hard-
wood tract, which happily opposes an effective
barrier to the progress of the flames.

But not all are there. Many have perished in
the flames or been smothered to death by the
smoke. What need of dwelling on the harassing
scenes accompanying such disasters ? The next
day the relief trains come and the hearts of the
American people — which is more ready to try by
lavish outlay to heal wounds after they are made
than to prevent them by wise forethought — open to
the sufferers and relieve their necessities.

Such descriptions as these are no pictures of
fancy. Not a year passes when forest fires do not
cause losses of life and destroy the habitations of
industrious settlers. From time to time horrible
calamities, with enormous losses of life, occur, and
send a thrill of horror throusfhout the civilized
world. Of such calamities, the worst that is on
record is that known as the Peshtigo fire, which,

Destruction and Deterioration m

in 1871, during the same month of October when
Chicago was laid in ashes, devastated the coun-
try about the shores of Green Bay, in Wisconsin.
More than three milHon dollars' worth of prop-
erty was burnt, at least two thousand families of
settlers were made homeless, villasfes were de-
stroyed, and over a thousand lives lost. The next
greatest forest fire was that of 1881, in the Saginaw
region of Michigan. After having burned here and
there in the usual manner for weeks, it became un-
controllable on September 5th, when many of the
separate blazes united into one immense sea of
flame that swept resistlessly over the counties of
Huron and Sanilac, as well as portions of adjoin-
ing counties. About eighteen hundred square miles
were involved in ruin, and in a large portion of this
territory the flames made a clean sweep of trees, as
well as crops, fences, houses, bridges, and every-
thing of an inflammable nature, turning the land
temporarily into a desert. The total loss in prop-
erty, aside from standing timber and injury to the
soil, was estimated at over two millions of dollars.
One hundred and thirty-eight persons, many of
them women and children, perished in the flames.
The relief sent to the sufferers by the people of
the entire country, in addition to large quantities
of supplies, amounted to $1,006,102.47.

In regard to the loss of life, few forest fires have
been more appalling than that which, in 1894, de-
vastated the country southwest of Duluth, Minn.,
and Is usually known as the Hinckley fire. Over

1 1 2 North American Forests and Forestry

400 persons were killed in the holocaust, 233 of
them in the village of Hinckley alone. At the
same time the flourishing city of Phillips, in Wis-
consin, was also destroyed, and numerous persons
perished, while many others were saved only by
plunging into the waters of the little lake on the
banks of which the city stands.

With the happy buoyancy characteristic of the
American people, and so quickly caught by the im-
migrants from foreign lands, the inhabitants of the
regions where forest fires are of common occur-
rence have been quick to discover that the fires
are not an unmixed evil. It is said that they help
to clear the land and make it easier for settlers to
establish their farms. In a sense, this is true, and
it might be added also that settlers, if they happen
to burn out during the first few years after they
have taken up their land, often find themselves bet-
ter off than before as soon as the inconvenience of
the first houseless days is over. They are quickly
provided with new clothing, furniture, supplies, and
other necessaries ; their log cabins are quickly re-
built, without cost to themselves ; not rarely seed
corn and potatoes are provided by appropriation
out of the public treasury, and a year after the fire
the stricken settler is again on the road to prosper-
ity. While this hopefulness and moral elasticity is
of the greatest advantage to the welfare of the peo-
ple in the forest regions, it unfortunately also has a
tendency to keep them from really appreciating the
seriousness of the injury done by fire to our national

Destruction and Deterioration 113

wealth. The lumbermen appreciate this serious-
ness, for they derive none of the incidental benefits
from the fires. But as a rule the settlers do not.
Nothing is more frequently heard than the expres-
sion that forest fires are really at the bottom a good
thing. Naturally, this state of mind makes it diffi-
cult to convince the voters of the desirability of
taking steps for the prevention and extinction
of fires, and especially of incurring the unavoidable
expense connected therewith.

Another frequent view of the question on the part
of settlers is that there is but one way to get rid of
fires, and that is to get rid of the forest. Both this and
the preceding opinion are, of course, utterly selfish,
narrow, and short-sighted. But most people, from
ignorance and moral obliquity, see only those sides
of the question which immediately touch them in
their own personal affairs. Consequently, these
opinions among the people are hard to combat, and
they constitute one of the most serious obstacles to
the passage of proper fire-police laws.

As far as the injury done by forest fires to farm
and village property is concerned, this subject is
really but indirectly connected with forestry. The
modifications undergone by the methods of lumber-
ing on account of the prevalence of fire, and the
measures calculated to guard against destruction
by fires, are treated in other chapters of this book.
Here is the place to speak of the injury done to the
value and condition of the growing forests. In this
connection it should be stated that a systematic

114 North American Forests and Forestry

study of this question has never yet been made.
Scattered observations are found throughout the
voluminous forestry Hterature of the country, but
much remains to be learned by actual detailed
study in the field.

It has already been stated that the origin of
practically every forest fire is by the negligence of
human beings. Such negligence, however, would
find nothing to act upon if it were not for the
enormous quantity of dry, inflammable litter which
accumulates in the uncared-for forests of our
country. Enormous brush heaps, consisting of the
tops and branches of felled trees, are left by the
lumbermen lying on the ground to dry ; every
windfall causes an even worse tangle of drying
sticks ; in many forms of vegetation a large amount
of thin, dry twigs accumulates on the ground as the
trees gradually clear themselves of their lower
branches. In the Lake region tamarack and cedar
swamps are one of the most prolific sources of
fires. Many of these swamps are rapidly drying
in the natural course of their life-history. In fact,
many tamarack thickets in that section no longer de-
serve the name swamp. The cushions of sphagnum
and other mosses, which in these swamps often reach
a thickness of several feet, become dry every sum-
mer, and in this condition are as easily set afire as
a pile of loose cotton. The Phillips fire started in
a drying tamarack swamp just west of the city.

As a general rule, fires do little harm to hard-
wood forests, although occasionally the flames

Destruction and Deterioration 115

from adjoining coniferous areas spread and destroy
the broad-leaved trees. In all parts of the country,
coniferous trees, the pines and spruces and their
kin, are most liable to fire. One must not Imagine
that a single fire often destroys large quantities of
large, vigorous timber. Top fires, — that is, fires
which reach the crowns of trees, spread from branch
to branch, and consume the whole tree, leaving at
most a charred, dead remnant of the trunk stand-
ing upright like a blackened ruin until the wind
overthrows it, — are the exception. The ordinary
fire is a surface fire, eating up the litter on the
ground, the feebler undergrowth, and the young
trees, and only scorching more or less severely the
large timber. If a fire of this nature is very hot
it may even kill the large trees, without, however,
consuming them. In such a case, much of the
timber can be saved if it is cut at once, before
fungi and insects have destroyed the wood. Fires
of this kind do their greatest harm by making
it impossible for trees to reproduce themselves,
because the young trees are killed or even the
seeds destroyed in the ground. It is remarkable,
by the way, how much heat some tree seeds can
stand. The cones of the jack pine {Pinus divari-
cata, Ait), for instance, remain on the trees some-
times for several years without shedding their
seeds. When a fire burns over the ground, the
heat causes the cones to open, and the seeds fall
on the hot ground. Yet these scorched seeds often
survive and bring forth seedlings.

ii6 North American Forests and Forestry

The Injury to seedHngs and young trees is even
greater in places where the old trees have been
removed than it is under the growing timber. In
the latter places, reproduction is often prevented
or hindered by other causes, even if no fire inter-
venes. But on all detimbered areas there should
naturally come up a new forest growth, either of
the original or different species. These cut-over
tracts, however, are the very ones where fires are
most common. During the first dry season, often
in the very spring after the timber has been
cut, the debris left by the lumbermen is burned.
Thereafter, for a number of years, the danger of
fire annually running over the tract is very great.
The soil is very quickly covered with rank grass
and herbage, which in the fall dries up and be-
comes very inflammable. Few seedling trees,
coming up amid this tangle, remain alive after
even one such scorching. After the trees have
passed the seedling stage, still the danger is not
over. For although the young trees coming up
may be largely of broad-leaved varieties, what was
said of the comparative immunity of hard woods
refers to old timber and not to young trees. While
the latter remain in the sapling stage, they are liable
to have their foliage destroyed, even if the stems
escape serious injury. It stands to reason that such
loss of foliage interferes with the healthy growth of
the tree, and, if often repeated, must kill it. In any
event, there is danger of the trees remaining value-
less runts instead of producing tall, clean timber.

Destruction and Deterioration 117

After a fire has killed brushwood or a body of
standing timber the scene is one of dreary desola-
tion. The ground is thickly covered with gray
ashes or black cinders. Charred branches and
trunks, some of the latter still standing erect,
others strewing the ground in wild confusion, is all
that remains of the once green forest. But nature
does not lono^ leave her nakedness uncovered.
Grasses and herbs of various kinds at once begin
to sprout, and it is a curious fact that few of the
varieties appearing on the burnt-over places are
identical with those p^rowinor on the floor of the
forest while it was still standing. The species
which appear on such burnt areas differ, of course,
very much according to the part of the country and
the nature of the locality. One would not expect
the same vegetation to cover the slashino-s in
Maine, in North Carolina, in Wisconsin, and on the
Pacific coast. But everywhere there are some
characteristic plants that mark the place where
the fire has been, and these plants have often been
popularly distinguished as fire-weeds. One of the
most widely spread is a tall plant with showy, pur-
ple flowers, called Epilobmm angiisti folium by the
scientists. When it is in blossom it imparts a great
splendor of color to the tracts it covers in large
masses. The little red cherry shrub known as
Prumis pen7isylvanica is called fire cherry in Wis-
consin, and probably elsewhere, because it is always
found on burnt tracts. Blackberries and rasp-
berries are apt to follow the fire. In the meantime.

ii8 North American Forests and Forestry

while these smaller plants are vigorously spreading,
the seedlings of trees are struggling upward be-
neath the tangled mass, sometimes protected by
their shade, at other times hindered by their rank
growth. After a while they are sure to win, and
as they raise their tops over the weeds, they in
turn begin to shade the ground, and the first
comers gradually die off because they no longer
get sufficient sunlight. Now, if the fires keep off,
there is no reason why in the course of time a new
forest should not grow up, with trees as tall and
vigorous as in the old one. But, unfortunately, in
most parts of the country the fire does not keep off.
During all the younger stages of the new growth
the soil remains covered with much inflammable
material, and oft-repeated scorchings prevent the
trees from ever becoming tall and healthy. In this
way, what was originally fine forest, producing
valuable merchantable timber, is in many cases
succeeded by a wilderness of shrubs and stunted
trees, hardly good enough to furnish fire-wood.

Recapitulating what has been stated regarding
the influence of fire upon the extent and value of
American forests, it may be said : Fire reduces the
extent of forest area by destroying growing timber ;
it prevents reproduction of forest by deteriorating
the soil, killing seeds and consuming seedlings ;
and it deteriorates the value of existing^ woodlands
by hindering the vigorous and healthy development
of trees. Which of these three forms of injury is
most prominent depends on the section of country,

Destruction and Deterioration 119

the topography, the character of the forest, and
many other conditions. A detailed study of these
considerations would far exceed the limitations of
this volume.

Another factor in the struggle for life of the
American forests has hardly yet been mentioned.
That is the injury done by the pasturing of domes-
tic animals. This source of injury is neither so
wide-spread nor so picturesque as the damage done
by fire. Yet in some localities it is an equally
great obstacle to profitable forest cultivation. In
the Lake region it is of comparatively small im-
portance, for the reason that the tracts where the
farm cattle go are usually among those which will
soon be cleared and converted into fields. But in
the mountain forests of the Rockies and the Paci-
fic coast, where immense herds of cattle and sheep
are pastured, the injury done to the small trees by
the biting off of young shoots, the tearing down of
branches, and the trampling down of seedlings is
enormous. In the great forest reserves recently
set apart in that section by the federal government,
the herding of animals is now permitted only under
strict rules designed to reduce the damage to a
minimum, to the great disgust, however, of the
cattle owners, who, like other people, can see but
their own interests and cannot be convinced that
other people, and especially the nation as a whole,
have rights in the matter. In the Alleghany region,
and especially those portions which are thinly set-
tled by a poor and ignorant class of farmers, but

I20 North American Forests and Forestry

where agricukural development is not Hkely to
continue, much damage is done by cattle, and es-
pecially by hogs, which tear up the ground and
destroy seedlings and tree roots. The abominable
practice of annual firing of the undergrowth, so
prevalent in this section, has already been men-
tioned. In the miniature forestry operations of
the farm timber-lot throughout the great agricul-
tural States east of the Mississippi the pasturing of
cattle also plays its vicious part and is one of the
causes of the deterioration which so many of these
small forests are undergoing.

From all the facts which have been briefly con-
sidered in this chapter the following main conclu-
sions may be drawn. Taking the North American
continent as a whole, the decrease of area covered
with forest growth, while considerable, is not such
as to warrant alarm. But, on the other hand, in
almost every part of the country existing forests
are rapidly deteriorating in value as sources of
wealth and foundations for the numerous industries
dependent on forest products as their raw material.
These conclusions should be firmly held in mind
for a proper understanding of the forestry problem*

CHAPTER VI

FORESTS AND FORESTRY

IN the preceding chapters of this book we have
attempted, in a necessarily faint outHne, to de-
scribe the character of the American forest in the
various sections of our continent ; the part it plays
in the economic and social life of the nation ; its
history, as determined by the forces of nature and
modified by the activity of man. The last-named
feature forms a natural transition to the second
part of the subject-matter of this volume, Ameri-
can forestry.

To the great mass of the American public the
word forestry conveys but an indistinct meaning.
Not rarely it is said that forestry is something new
in this country. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. It is the word that is comparatively
new, but the thing itself is as old as human life on
this continent. With the same truth could it be
said that agriculture is something new in this
country because agricultural colleges and experi-
ment stations are but a generation old, as to say
that forestry is new because only within the last
few years has it been systematically and scientifi-
cally treated in the United States.

122 North American Forests and Forestry

For let it be understood as clearly as the Eng-
lish language can express it : Forestry is not, as
many imagine, the science or natural history of
woodlands ; nor is it the art of planting trees ; nor
that of preserving woodlands. It embraces all
these things, or at least special phases of them
are required in its practice. But it is made up of
many things besides. Nor should it be forgotten
that forestry as such is not a matter for poets, art-
ists, or sentimentalists, nor even for lovers of sport
with rod and gun. There is no reason why the
forester should not be a lover of the beauty of
woodland scenery. Very often he is, but not by
virtue of his being a forester, but because he is a
man of wide and liberal culture and with strone
esthetic sensibilities.

If forestry is not all this, what under the sun is
it, the impatient reader will be ready to cry. It is
simply the art of managing forests and utilizing
them for the benefit of their owners. As soon as
a human being- beg^ins to take for his use the
manifold natural sources of wealth contained in
the primeval woods, he practises the art of for-
estry. The mountain farmer who uses the un-
cleared portion of his land as a pasture for his
lean cows and a rooting ground for his razor-back
hogs, is practising a rude sort of forestry ; the
lumber king who sends out his crews to fell the
white pine and convert it into boards and beams,
is a forester on a large scale ; the turpentine manu-
facturer of North Carolina, the maple-sugar boiler

Forests and Forestry 123

of Vermont, both are engaged in forestry. Even
the rich man who fences off a tract of woodland
for a game preserve is a forester. In no country
of the world has forestry in one form or another
played so important a part as in the United States
and Canada.

If forestry is nothing more than that, then why
all this hue and cry, this agitation by word and
pen, this petitioning of legislatures and spending
of money which has been going on all over the
•country for the last twenty years or more ? The
answer is that forestry in this country need not be
introduced, but its methods must be reformed. In
the rapid changes of conditions which the develop-
ment of our country has brought about, prevail-
ing methods of forestry have become antiquated.
What was once the most advantageous way of
utilizing woodlands has become wasteful and in
the end ruinous to us as a nation, and often to
the individual land-owner. Therefore the per-
sons who have realized these changed conditions
are anxious to disseminate among the people a
better knowledge of the facts and principles con-
cerning the best treatment of forest property, and
wherever necessary to cause the passage of laws
designed to further this end.

If forestry is nothing more than the utilization
of forests, it necessarily follows that improved
methods cannot be inimical to the interests of
forest owners. That is the best method of for-
estry which is to the greatest advantage of the

124 North American Forests and Forestry-
proprietor of the wood. Ahnost self-evident as
this appears, the contrary opinion was formerly
very common among timber-land holders, lumber-
men and others. It still lingers here and there.
To some extent the promoters of reform have
themselves been at fault for this odd circumstance ;
for they have sometimes laid such exclusive stress
on the preservatio7i of forests that outsiders could
easily be led to think that they wanted all lumber-
ing operations to stop.

Such a misunderstanding cannot last long in an
intelligent community, and is rapidly disappear-
ing from the public mind. In its place another
delusion sometimes takes hold of well meaning
people. That is an idea that what is needed con-
sists in a transplantation to this country of the
forestr)' system flourishing in some foreign coun-
tries, and particularly in Germany. Such a step,
if it were possible, would be foolish. Conditions
in this and European countries differ so much that
what is practicable in one country is often out of the
question in another. What we can learn from Ger-
many and other countries with highly developed
forestry is, not their methods and systems, but the
principles on which they are based, for those princi-
ples are determined by the universal laws of nature
and human society.

It being understood that forestry is the art of
utilizine forests for the advantao-e of their owners,
we will make a great step towards a clear compre-
hension of the subject by considering what that

Forests and Forestry 125

advantage may be. I now have in mind the case of
private ownership, for where forest lands are owned
by the pubhc, certain considerations come into play
which must modify the conclusions. Clearly a man
may have a diversity of objects in view when he
becomes the owner of woodland. The most numer-
ous class of forest owners in this country are farm-
ers who keep a portion of their homestead under
timber. Forests of this kind are rarely over a
hundred acres in extent, and usually much smaller.
Their obvious use is supplementary to agriculture.
They supply fire-wood and fencing material, pastur-
age to the farm cattle ; occasionally some logs are
sold to produce an incidental cash revenue. In
such cases the dominant principle of treatment
should be to maintain the forest permanently in as
good condition as possible for the use it is put to,
with as little outlay of money and labor as will ac-
complish that end. Ordinarily it would not pay
to manaofe it with a view to larcre or continuous
pecuniary returns.

On the other hand, a person may own large tracts
of timber-land from which he may desire a revenue.
The land represents a large amount of invested
capital, and good business principles demand that
the investment should yield a reasonable interest.
In such cases a variety of different systems of
treatment would be indicated, according to the
circumstances of each case. If the proprietor finds
that his capital will be most productive if he takes
from the land the greatest possible amount of timber

126 North American Forests and Forestry

growing on it, markets it as quickly as he can,
and then disposes of the land, so that he may buy
new tracts to repeat the same operation, or put his
money into some other business, then this will be
the best method of forestry in that particular case.
If, on the other hand, the owner thinks that, for any
reason whatsoever, he will be best off if he conduct
lumbering in such a way that he can cut successive
crops of timber from the same land, then he would
be a poor business man if he did not adopt forestry
methods calculated to accomplish that end. The
former of these conditions is the one in which most
lumbermen in this country find themselves at pre-
sent. As long as the value of the land, aside from
that of the merchantable timber growing on it, is
very low, and as long as plenty of original timber
is still in the market, waiting to be cut, a lumber-
man who would attempt to incur the additional ex-
pense of shaping his cutting with a view towards
the best manner of timber reproduction would be
unable to compete with other lumbermen who do
not care for the permanency of their industry. It
follows that, generally speaking, the lumbermen are
not the reckless destroyers of forests they are often
considered, but are merely doing what the nature
of their business compels them to do ; and they will
continue to do so until the conditions have changed,
either by the action of economic laws, or by the
effect of governmental action.

Supposing that in any given case it is economical
to treat a timber tract so as to insure its perma-

Forests and Forestry 127

nence as a lumber producer, the owner may still
have different objects in view. He may wish to
derive a regular, annual revenue from his forest ;
or he may be satisfied to obtain pecuniary returns
only at more or less distant intervals of time.
Again, he may insist on having a net profit upon
the value of the invested capital, calculating the
same by including the value of the land at each
given period ; or he may be satisfied with a like
profit on the actual cash outlay, without consider-
ing for the purpose the increased value of the land,
or unearned increment, as the political economists
call it. All these different objects, together with
numerous other considerations, must modify the
manner in which a skilful forester would treat any
given piece of woodland. In every such case,
however, the management proceeds in such a way
as to obtain the largest possible cash revenue with-
out impairing the ability of the land in the course
of time to produce another installment of income.
In other words, instead of considering the timber
a crop to be reaped but once, the land is expected
to furnish crop after crop, at due intervals, just as
a skilful farmer expects to repeat the operation of
planting and harvesting indefinitely on the identical
piece of land.

There are still other purposes for which forest
lands may be held by private parties. H ere and there
one finds a man who has planted a tract of land
with trees of a particularly valuable kind, such as
black walnut, to be cut and harvested by his children,

128 North American Forests and Forestry

or in his old age. Forest operations of this kind
are advantageous even if the final harvest does
not produce a net profit upon the outlay with
compound interest during the period of growth.
They are considered in the light of making a sure
provision for the future, reasonably free from the
vicissitudes of business affairs, very much in the
nature of life insurance. On the formerly tree-
less plains between the Mississippi and the Rocky
Mountains, a large aggregate area has within twenty
years been planted with trees in small strips. In
this case the question of pecuniary profit from
these small forests has not usually been taken into
consideration, but the owners derive other advan-
tages of various kinds. The timber strips protect
the farms against injurious winds ; they afford shade
for man and beast ; and are in many other ways a
benefit to the inhabitants of these monotonous re-
gions. In many of the mountainous districts of
the East, and to a less extent elsewhere, considera-
ble tracts of forest have of late years been acquired
by individuals or clubs, and are maintained as
game preserves and pleasure resorts. The ques-
tion of revenue from lumbering, or otherwise, usu-
ally plays no part in the intentions of such owners,
and all management has in view merely the pro-
tection and maintenance of such forests in their
natural state. In cases such as these we have
reached the borderland of forestry and another art
which is sometimes confounded with it, the art of
landscape gardening. It is, of course, possible to

Forests and Forestry 129

manage a forest with a view both to profit and to
the beautification of its landscapes, although usu-
ally one or the other of these objects will suffer.
Something like this is done, for instance, in a por-
tion of the celebrated Biltmore forest in North
Carolina. But landscape gardening is an art min-
istering to the luxury of the well-to-do. Its object
is beauty. Forestry deals with one of the first
necessities of life ; its only end is usefulness.

We have enumerated the most important ends
which private parties may have in view when
they become owners of woodlands. In every case
they hold such property for their own benefit,
either to derive a profit from harvesting the pro-
ducts of the forest, or in the expectation of deriving
an advantage to some other business in which they
may be engaged. The methods pursued by them
in the management of their forests are decided by
the question, What will pay the best ? No method
of forestry ever will be adopted by private owners
unless, directly or indirectly, it pays in dollars
and cents.

The private owners of woodlands, however, are
not the only parties interested in the rational treat-
ment of the forests of North America. The entire
public, and the federal, state, and local governments
as its representatives, has the deepest possible con-
cern in this subject, for on skilful forestry depends
the supply of one of the greatest necessities of
civilized life, and with improper forestry methods
several of our most important industries must

130 North American Forests and Forestry-
soon begin to decay. Besides, the extent and
character of our forests has a powerful influence
on the climatic and physiographical conditions of
the country. It sometimes happens that the in-
terest of private owners and those of the public
are opposed to each other. In such cases it is the
duty of wise governments to endeavor to change, by
legislation, as far as possible, the conditions which
cause such conflicts of interest, and in extreme
cases to restrain the injurious acts prompted by
private greed. A discussion of such measures of
this sort as may at present be advisable in the
United States must be reserved for a succeeding^
chapter.

Besides being the protectors of public interest in
the management of private forests, both the federal
and many state governments are also the owners of
large areas of timber-lands. Most of the States to
this day have no intention of permanently retain-
ing the title to them, but try to dispose of them as.
fast as they can. Formerly this was the universal
custom, but within a few years both the federal
government and several of the States have come
to the conclusion that it would be wise for them to
keep the possession of a certain amount of forest
lands. A few States, notably Pennsylvania and
New York, have even appropriated large amounts
of money for the acquisition of such tracts.

A government owning and managing forests may,
like private persons, do so with several objects in
view. It may manage them for the purpose of

Forests and Forestry 131

obtaining a revenue ; and in doing so it may calculate
its profit either upon the cash outlay, with com-
pound interest, without considering in the com-
putation the rental value of the soil, or it may
include the latter. In either case the methods of
treatment adopted will be somewhat modified. As
yet no American government has ventured upon
such an enterprise, but either system of state fores-
try is in full working order in several European
countries. Which of the two systems is adopted
depends on fiscal rather than forestal reasons.

A government also may manage its forests with a
view to furnishing a steady and ample supply of raw
material to the industries of its people. In such a
case it would be of secondary importance whether
the forest afforded a large or small revenue. It
might even be expedient to run it at a loss. Upon
this system many of the public forests of Europe
were managed a hundred years ago, but at present
the aim to produce the largest possible revenue has
almost entirely superseded it. The system is akin
to that of a furniture manufactory which raises its
hard woods on its own land ; or the manner in
which the farmer treats his timber-lot.

A third object of the management of public
forests may be the protection of the climatic and
physiographical interests of the country. The set-
ting aside of large forest reservations in the moun-
tain regions of the West by the United States
government has been principally for this purpose.
The States of Pennsylvania and New York also

132 North American Forests and Forestry

consider their public forests in the first place as
protection to the waterflow of their rivers and the
fertility of their valleys. Such forests are usually
located in the most rugged and inaccessible parts of
mountain ranges, where forestry for revenue is gen-
erally unprofitable, either because the sterile soil
does not produce good timber or because the trans-
portation facilities are insufficient. Forestry oper-
ations in such localities are mostly confined to
measures protective against injuries from fire and
other causes.

It cannot be the object of a book like this to set
forth in detail the various systems of forest manage-
ment in existence. A voluminous literature is ex-
tant on this subject, and in order to treat it at all
adequately, a mass of technical detail would be
necessary that can be of no interest except to the
professional forester. My aim is merely to give
intelligent men a clear idea of what forestry really
means, and I hope that by this time attentive read-
ers have learned that it is simply a matter of busi-
ness, usually a question of dollars and cents. It
remains to give to readers entirely ignorant of the
manner in which forests designed for continuous
wood crops are treated, an outline of the nature of
such operations. This is less for the purpose of
showing them how forests are cultivated, than in
order to clear their minds of some erroneous no-
tions. Such erroneous ideas are at the bottom of
much of the popular resistance to forestry reform.

In the first place, not a few people imagine that

Forests and Forestry 133

the ordinary way of reproducing forests is to plant
trees. When they contemplate the immense extent
of forest area in the country and the outlay which
replanting even a moderate proportion of the de-
forested tracts would involve, the enormity of the
task appalls them. They flout the possibility of
such an enterprise, and in the belief that this is
what forestry reformers are advocating, set the
whole tribe down as impracticable visionaries. This
state of mind used to be more common than it is,
but it is still encountered far too often. Now the
fact is that the planting of nursery trees, or even
the seeding of trees in the places where they are to
remain, is but a last resort in forestry. It is not so
much that it will not pay. For under reasonably
favorable conditions the final harvest will yield
enough to net a profit even where the original out-
lay of planting has reached twelve or fifteen dollars
per acre, which ought to be considered the outside
limit of cost. Ordinarily it will be found much
lower, especially where the forester has his own
nursery', as he would in most cases. But the trou-
ble is in finding capital willing to be invested in an
enterprise that will not return it for so long a period
as is required to develop merchantable timber out
of seedlings.

Fortunately, the planting of trees on entirely
denuded tracts is necessary in but few instances.
The greater portion of American woodlands is in
the condition of culled forests, that is, forests from
which the merchantable trees have been cut, leaving

134 North American Forests and Forestry

the younger individuals, as well as all trees belong-
ing to unmarketable species. Even on the areas
where the lumbermen have made a clean cut of the
original timber, new trees will come up of them-
selves, from seeds blown from the surrounding
forests, or falling from occasional individuals left
standing. At first the new growth of trees is apt
to come up in scattered groups ; but as these first
comers arrive at an age where they bear seed
themselves, they fill up the spaces with their off-
spring, and after a while the whole tract is again
densely timbered — always provided that fire, cattle,
and other injurious causes have not hindered the
normal development.

While thus nature herself provides, in most
cases, for the reforesting of the lands man has
denuded, it does not follow that all the art of the
forester should do under such circumstances is to
protect the young wood from injury. That would
be much, a great deal more, in fact, than is ordinarily
done in this country. But it would be very far
from getting the best result, that is, the largest
amount of cash when the crop is harvested again.
Many people probably imagine that a primeval
Avood, *' by nature's own hand planted," cannot be
surpassed in the number and size of its trees, and
consequently the amount of wood to be derived
from it. But the very opposite is true. No wild
forest can ever equal a cultivated one in productive-
ness. To hope that it will is very much as if a
farmer were to expect a full harvest from the grain

Forests and Forestry 135

that may spring up spontaneously in his fields
without his sowing. A tract of wild forest in the
first place does not contain so many trees as might
grow thereon, but only so many as may have sur-
vived the struggle for life with their own and
other species of plants occupying the locality.
Many of the trees so surviving never attain their
best development, being suppressed, overshadowed,
and hindered by stronger neighbors. Finally,
much of the space that might be occupied by valu-
able timber may be given up to trees having little
or no market value. The rule is universal that the
amount and value of material that can be taken
from an area of wild forest remains far behind what
the same land may bear if properly treated by the
forester. It is certain, therefore, that in the future,
when most American forests shall be in a hiofh
state of cultivation, the annual output of forest
products will, from a much restricted area, exceed
everything known at the present day.

It is the business of the forester, therefore, to see
that the land bears as large and as valuable a crop
as possible. For this purpose he uses the axe far
oftener than the planting tool — another idea that
will come with a shock of surprise to not a few.
One of the most common silvicultural operations
is a series of what are known as improvement
cuttings, that is, the cutting away of a proportion of
trees where they grow so thick that they hinder
each other, the elimination of species that are not
wanted and take up the room required for more

136 North American Forests and Forestry

valuable kinds, and the removal of sickly or crippled
individuals that can never become eood timber
producers and may even infect sound neighbors
with their own malady. There are certain rules
according- to which the trees are allowed to grow
thickly together or farther apart, according to the
object aimed at in each particular time and place.
It is surprising to see the extent to which the
forester can regulate the manner of growth of
trees and the character of wood produced by them.
As a general thing saplings should grow close
together for a series of years. This forces them
upward into long, clean shafts with few branches.
Thereby clean, straight timber is produced. For
the presence of each branch produces a knot in the
lumber sawed from the log, and thereby reduces its
value. The loncrer a branch is allowed to ofrow,
the larger will be the knot. If the trees stand close
together, not only will fewer branches be formed,
but those existing on the lower parts of the trunk
will soon die off for want of light. This process is
technically called the cleaning of the shafts.

After a number of years a time comes when
height growth is no longer the first thing to be
aimed at. The object now must be to cause the
young tree to increase the diameter of its trunk,
and thereby the size of the logs that will some day
be cut from it. In order to accomplish this, a por-
tion of the trees is removed, this giving the crowns
of the rest a chance to develop. With the broad-
ening and filling out of the crowns comes also an

Forests and Forestry 137

increased accumulation of wood in the trunk.
Naturally, in making these thinnings, individuals
that are of particularly vigorous development are
favored, and their weaker fellows selected for the
axe. Such thinnings are repeated from time to
time. They require the exercise of much skill and
discretion on the part of the forester, for besides
the growth of the saplings several other things
must be considered. For instance, care must be
taken that the fertility of the soil is not injured by
too much light being admitted to the forest floor.
In such cases, what is known as raw humus is apt
to be formed, — a kind of peat generated on dry
land, which, like its kin in the bog, is inimical to
most forms of plant life. Too much thinning may
also cause the invasion of an excessive o-rowth
of weeds, either of grasses, herbs, or underbrush,
which may hinder the reproduction of the desired
species. Various other objects are attained by
light or severe thinnings, as occasion may require.
A discussion of these would lead us too far into
silvicultural details of purely technical interest.

Nor can we give a detailed description of the
various systems of silviculture known to foresters,
each of which has its peculiar advantages and
drawbacks, making sometimes the one, then the
other, most adapted to existing circumstances.
A few of the most important of these systems we
may mention in passing. A forest may be com-
posed of trees all of the same species and the same
age ; consequently, the time when it will be most

138 North American Forests and Forestry-
profitable to cut them down will be the same for
the whole body of timber. If an owner wishes to
have a regular annual revenue from his forest of
this kind, he must evidently have a series of tim-
ber bodies of different ages side by side. For in-
stance, if the cutting age is a hundred years, he
must have a hundred bodies of timber, each a year
apart in age, from the one-year-old seedlings to
the hundred-year-old ripe wood. Such a system is
known as a normal forest, which, however, proba-
bly nowhere actually exists in its complete form.

Again, the same body of timber may contain in-
dividuals of all ages, from the seedling to the ripe
wood. In this case, the trees arriving at the cut-
ting age are each year culled out. This system of
culture is known as a selection forest. Like the
preceding form, it is rarely found in its complete
development. Some of the age-classes are usually
missing, for reasons springing from the phenomena
of struggle for life outlined in Chapter II.

Forests may be composed entirely of one species
of timber trees, or a number of species may grow
together on the same tract. We speak accordingly
of pure or mixed forests. Either form is favored
by foresters, according to various considerations.

An interestinor form of forest culture is occasion-
ally adopted under special conditions, and is known
as coppice wood. Some trees among American
species — for instance, most oaks, many maples, and
the basswood — have the capacity of sending up
shoots from their stumps, or stools. These shoots

Forests and Forestry 139

sometimes reach considerable height and diameter,
although they never attain the dimensions of the
original trees. One of the advantages of coppice
woods is the short periods within which successive
crops can be taken. Where merely fire-wood is
desired, coppice is profitable. Where oak bark
is produced for tanning, it is the usual form of
culture.

The treatment of a given tract of forest is rarely
determined by purely silvicultural reasons. This
would be the case if simply that form of treatment
and those species of trees were adopted which, un-
der the particular conditions of soil and topography,
would produce the most and best timber. But as
the ultimate end of forestry is not the production
of fine trees, but the gaining of a profit, othec con-
siderations must modify the policy of the forester.
These considerations are especially those of trans-
portation and of market price. Without going
into details, we will in the following chapter
briefly treat of these and a few allied matters. In
doing so our principal aim will be, as it has been
in this chapter, to make it clear that the whole sub-
ject of forestry is simply a question of business, of
dollars and cents to the owner and of economic
advantage to the community.

CHAPTER VII

FOREST FINANCE AND MANAGEMENT

FORESTRY resembles farming in this, that both
operations are not conducted in a perfect man-
ner unless it is sought not only to obtain the best
possible crop a single time, but to provide for suc-
cessive crops at the proper intervals. The great
difference between the two industries flows from
the fact that farm crops ripen annually, while wood
crops can be taken from the land but once at inter-
vals ranging, according to the species of trees and
the character of the product desired, from twenty
to one hundred and twenty or more years.

How is the time known when a forest is ripe for
fellinor ? It is determined bv a series of considera-
tions, partly arising out of the natural qualities of
trees, partly out of financial reasons. When a tree
is very young it is not good for much of anything,
aside from such special uses as hop-poles, Christmas
trees, and the like, for which there is a limited mar-
ket. Even when a tree has become large enough
to furnish lumber, the wood may not be of the kind
which is best for general use ; for instance, small
pines have too large a preponderance of sap-wood
over heart-wood, and the lumber made from it is

140

Forest Finance and Management 141

not so strong as that cut from older trees, and con-
sequently does not bring so high a price. Again,
when a tree gets too old it is apt to rot at the
centre, thereby diminishing the quantity of sound
lumber it will furnish, even though it may still form
a new layer of wood every year. Another factor is
the different rate of growth of trees at different
ages. Take the white pine and its cousins, for in-
stance. The first three or four years the little
seedling grows but very slowly, except as far as its
root-system is concerned. Then comes a period,
which may last from thirty to fifty years, when its
growth is very rapid. If the young pines stand
close together, as they ought to if good lum-
ber is expected from them, this growth is especially
rapid in an upward direction. After that period,
they ought to be made to grow principally in diam-
eter, and that is done by cutting out a certain num-
ber of the trees, so that the rest may have a chance
to spread their crowns. As soon as they have done
this and formed a full, leafy top, they devote them-
selves to increasing their diameter, without, however,
ceasinof to ofrow in height. This diameter ofrowth
may continue for an almost indefinite time. Pines
have been known, that were over three hundred years
old, as shown by their annual rings, and still formed
new wood in their boles up to the time of their
felling. The amount of wood so formed every year
begins to decrease after a certain time, and in very old
trees is apt to be inconsiderable. The rate at which
the increase of wood takes place, at the different

142 North American Forests and Forestry

periods of the hfe of a tree, is fairly constant among
trees of the same species grown under similar con-
ditions. It is possible, therefore, to ascertain by
taking the average of a very large number of trees
felled and examined, to calculate the probable in-
crease of wood which other trees, still growing, will
show at any given period of their future lives. Ta-
bles furnishing such information are known as yield
tables, and have been, in Europe, constructed with
great care, for all trees of commercial importance
in that country. As far as is known to the author,
as yet no such tables have been constructed and
published regarding American trees, except a set,
prepared by Messrs. Pinchot and Graves, for white
pine grown in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and
another for spruce in the Adirondacks.

These are some of the considerations orrowinof
out of the botanical nature of trees and required for
determining when a forest is ripe for the axe. Clear-
ly you must not fell the trees while they are still so
young as to furnish little and inferior lumber ; but
while you may know, in this way, the lower limit of
felling, you have not yet sufificient data to find the
upper limit. You cannot tell whether you would
most profitably cut your forest at a hundred or two
hundred years of age, for it is clear that, barring
accidents, the longer you wait the more lumber you
will harvest. The upper limit, however, is set by
financial calculations in the following manner :

It costs something to keep your forest untouched,
and yielding very little revenue, year after year.

Forest Finance and Management 143

First there is your original investment, with in-
terest at the current rate, — compound interest,
too, for, as in a different kind of investment you
might draw your interest annually and either con-
sume or reinvest it, you are evidently entitled to
get something for forbearing to draw out of the
business. Then there is the cost of maintaining
your forest, which will vary considerably according
to circumstances. In this item you must include
such preliminary expenses of surveying and other-
wise examining your forest as may have had to be
incurred at the start, in order to make intelligent
plans for the way in which you want to manage it.
You also include herein the cost of labor every
year, the cost of superintendence by a skilled
forester, not forgetting to reckon the interest on
these items of outlay. Next you must think of
the expense incurred for necessary tools and imple-
ments, as well as other plant, their wear and tear,
and again the interest on the outlay. Still another
item of expense will be the preparations for market-
ing your crop, which may include not only plant
and labor, but also the expense of building roads.
Finally, there are taxes to be paid — an item of
cost of which we will have something more to say
anon. All these things are to be paid for between
the beginning of the business and the final harvest.
There are, during this interval, certain sources of
income from your forest, consisting principally
of the money to be made out of material taken
away by thinnings and other kinds of improvement

144 North American Forests and Forestry

cuttings. These sums, together with the cash
received at the final harvest, must evidently be
equal to the cash outlay with compound interest
at the usual rate ; else you would have done better
if you had invested your money differently, and
your forestry has not been a financial success.
Strictly speaking, we must consider still another
factor in order to judge of the profitableness of the
enterprise. It may be that the land you maintain
as forest has risen in value to such an extent that
you would have realized more from a sale of the
land than from your wood crop. At any rate, the
increased market value might be taken into con-
sideration, but I believe that it is neglected in the
calculations of most forest estates, the world over,
principally because there are often motives for not
disposing of the land aside from the hope of larger
returns by holding it.

The loncrer the interval between the beeinninof
of forest orrowth and the final harvest, the oreater
is, manifestly, the amount of cash that must be
received in order to make a profit on the invest-
ment. The increase of cash is, generally speaking,
determined by the increase in the volume of wood
contained in your forest. Now we see how we
can find the upper age-limit for felling our trees.
We have learned that after a certain aee the
amount of wood annually formed gradually de-
creases. The time for cutting most profitably is,
therefore, the year when the increase in volume
of wood no longer exceeds the annual cost of

Forest Finance and Management 145

maintaining the forest, reckoned as we have just
shown. This time can be predicted in advance
with considerable accuracy by the help of the yield
tables, of which we have spoken above.

The time when the cut is made in practice is not
always the exact year so ascertained in advance.
It may happen, to take but one of many con-
tingencies, that a year before the time set for the
final harvest the market price of the particular
kind of lumber produced in our forest is exception-
ally high ; then it would evidently be the part of
prudence to take advantage of this accident, and
possibly by the increased price realize more than
would be represented by the wood increase of a
single year. Or the reverse may happen ; prices
may be unusually low in the year when ordinarily
the final harvest must come. Then we had better
wait awhile till prices rise again.

The slight modification brought about in the
time of the final harvest is not the only way in
which market price becomes a factor in determin-
ing the system according to which a forest is man-
aged. It may, among other things, affect the
choice of the species to be raised on your land. It
may happen that, from a purely silvicultural stand-
point, your land is best adapted to one kind of
tree. But you choose deliberately to raise another
kind, because you foresee that it will find a readier
and better market than the first. The difficulty of
forecasting the market price is naturally very great,
on account of the long periods of time with which

146 North American Forests and Forestry

you must deal. Who can be certain what economic
changes affecting the market for your commodity
may occur in a hundred years ? Still, as in agricul-
ture there are certain staples which will always be
in demand, so there are in forestry. The kinds of
wood used in building, and for ordinary rough
work, such as pine and spruce lumber, are not likely
to ever fall into disfavor. It is different with many
of the hard woods required for furniture and other
manufacturing uses. Among other things, these
are subject to the changes of fashion, which may
at one time destroy the market for wood there-
tofore in common use, and at another bring a wood
that was despised as valueless into favor and con-
sequently into the high-priced class. It is not very
long ago when the common red oak was considered
valueless except for fuel. To-day none other of
our oaks is in greater demand by furniture makers.
New uses have recently been found for quite a
number of woods that once were unsalable. This
has been brought about, for example, by the intro-
duction of excelsior, the more wide-spread use of
wood alcohol and similar distillatory products,
and especially the use of wood pulp in paper
makincr.

o

While the species which, like the pines, furnish
lumber principally for building and other rough
uses have the advantag^e of a surer and steadier
market, the other kinds of trees, required for spe-
cial uses, generally speaking have the advantage
of higher prices. They also, in most cases, may

Forest Finance and Management 147

be harvested at shorter intervals, which is an ad-
vantage, especially where your forest is a small one.

The cash returns one may expect from his forest
are strongly affected by the facilities existing for
bringing one's product to market. The question
of transportation can, of course, like other ques-
tions of this sort, be treated in nothing more than
the faintest outline in a volume like this. It is
very closely bound up with the whole economic
life of the nation, and an exhaustive treatise on the
transportation of forest products would be in effect
a treatise on the whole transportation problem.

The cost of transporting forestry products nat-
urally divides itself into two stages. The first
covers the way from the forest to the mill, the sec-
ond the farther journey of the finished product
into the hands of the consumer. Perhaps one
might say that only the first division properly falls
within the field of forestry, and we will direct our
attention principally to it.

The business of sawing logs into lumber is ver)'
often conducted by other parties than the owners
of the forest where the trees are felled. In most
foreign countries, I believe, this is the rule, while
in this country the opposite case is perhaps more
often to be found. But no matter how soon in
its progress to the consumer the forest product
changes ownership, the question of transporting it
is of the utmost importance to the forester. There
are to-day billions of feet of timber in this country
which, from a silvicultural standpoint, ought to be

148 North American Forests and Forestry

cut without delay, but which cannot be touched by
the axe on account of the lack of transportation
facilities. As these bodies of timber are in danger
of constant deterioration from the numerous causes
treated elsewhere, there is here a distinct loss of
natural wealth, due directly to the absence of roads
of all kinds.

We have described in another chapter some of
the manifold devices adopted by our lumbermen
to bring their heavy and unmanageable goods to
market. The distinQ^uishino- feature of all road
building by American lumbermen has been that
these works were of a temporary nature. Even
railroads built by the loggers are put up hastily,
cheaply, and without a durable and smooth road-
bed, so that in case the locrcringr railroad is later on
w^anted for permanent railway use, as happens not
rarely in the progress of settlement, both roadbed
and rails must be practically laid anew. The justi-
fication of this rough kind of work lies in the fact
that lumbermen have not heretofore had occasion
to care for a second crop to be taken from their
lands in the future. Consequently the roads were
of no further use after the grrowinor timber had
been removed, and expending money to insure
greater durability would have been wasteful. If
in the future forestry methods are employed look-
ing towards a continuous succession of crops, it
would be wasteful to fail of building permanent
roads, as the expense incurred in building tempo-
rary ones would have to be repeated every time

Forest Finance and Management 149

the period for cutting timber came around again.
Besides, the roads are necessary during the inter-
vening silvicuhural operations, such as improve-
ment cuttings and so forth, and they serve as
effective fire-breaks. In a permanent forest estate
the sinking of a considerable amount of capital in
road building cannot be avoided ; but hardly any
employment of capital upon the estate is calculated
to give a greater increase of value than this, pro-
vided, of course, that it is done judiciously and
without excessive expense.

We have now outlined the main principles which
must be the guides in choosing the manner of
treating a forest from which we expect to derive
a continuous series of profit upon the investment.
First we mentioned the purely silvicultural factors,
the questions depending on the nature of the
climate, soil, and topography, and the manner of
growth of trees. Then we considered the finan-
cial side of the question, the calculations regarding
the amount of capital needed, the rate of interest,
the price to be expected for the crop, and the facil-
ities of bringing it to market. We could not do
more than mention the elementary principles on
which these considerations are based, for to treat
even one of them in detail would far exceed the
limits of this volume, besides being of little inter-
est to most readers. But this I hope to have
made clear to all, — that for the successful manage-
ment of a permanent forest as a profitable invest-
ment it is of the greatest importance that the

150 North American Forests and Forestry

beofinnlnof be rigfht. You must raise the rio-ht kinds
of trees in the right places, and lay out your plans
of treating them in advance. For your crop can-
not be changed for a long time after you have
started it and, unlike the farmer, a mistake made
in one year cannot be corrected by you in the
next. The making of the working-plans for the
treatment of a forest is rightly considered as- one
of the most important as well as the most difficult
parts of the professional forester's art. The larger
the forest the greater are, of course, the difficul-
ties of making It, but even the smallest wood-lot
ouMit to be treated accordlnor to a well-considered
plan in order to realize the highest benefit for the
owner.

Where a person has invested a considerable por-
tion of his fortune in forest property It may be as-
sumed that he desires a continuous annual revenue
therefrom. As it takes a great many years before a
body of timber becomes ripe for the final harvest,
and the intermediate revenues are hardly large
enough to satisfy the wants of the proprietor, the
only way out of the difficulty is to divide the forest
into different bodies of different ages, so that one
of them may be ripe for the axe every year. From
this it follows easily that forestry as a business by
itself, not merely supplementary to a farming or
manufacturing enterprise, pays only on a large
scale, for only in that way can a sufficient cash
revenue be realized every year to pay reasonable
interest on the investment. The divisions and

Forest Finance and Manag-ement 151

■&'

subdivisions into which a forest is usually divided
are technically known as blocks and compartments.
They serve to mark the body of timber to be felled
each year, and are also convenient for various silvi-
cultural purposes. The number of compartments
ought to correspond, as nearly as possible, with the
number of years which the trees require to become
ripe for the axe, according to the principles already
explained. In a forest so arranged there will, con-
sequently, be trees of every age, from the seedling
to the ripe timber. It should be said that what
has just been stated applies especially to the system
of silviculture known as normal high forest. In
such systems as selection forest or coppice, consid-
erable modifications in applying these rules are re-
quired, but the principle remains the same. In all
cases the forester's aim is to have a sufiicient quan-
tity of timber ready for marketing each year, and
to provide annually for the future supply of timber
by beginning anew reproductive cycle to supply the
place of what has been removed. The period elap-
sing from the time when the young seedlings begin
to sprout to the year when the mature trees are cut
is known as the rotation period. One speaks ac-
cordingly of a sixty-year rotation, a hundred-year
rotation and so forth. Generally speaking, the
production of ordinary lumber requires the longest
rotation. Where it is intended to raise special
kinds of lumber for manufacturing purposes, or
wood for pulp material, charcoal, or other industrial
uses, the rotation is often materially shortened.

152 North American Forests and Forestry

I trust that from what has been said in this and the
preceding chapter, attentive readers, even if entirely
unfamiHar with the subject before, can form a con-
ception of the character and objects of the improved
methods of forestry now so widely and zealously
advocated in this country. The next matter to be
considered is how far such methods are applicable
to the condition under which American forests must
be utilized by their owners.

The dead-weight of a stupid repugnance to all
change, which is encountered by every advocate of
improvements, opposes itself also to forestry reform..
Without having even a hazy notion of what is pro-
posed by the reformers, and being too lazy to inform
themselves upon the subject, not a few in some re-
spects, quite intelligent people content themselves
with saying that the methods possible in little Ger-
many cannot be applied to our immense country,
with its inexhaustible resources. In order not to
fall into the same error with our antagonists and
judge of things we know not of, we ought to ex-
amine what modicum of truth there is to this
objection.

Always bearing in mind that the chief end of
forestry is to make money, let us see whether the
producer of timber, who looks to a succession of
crops from his forest, can hold his own in competi-
tion with the lumberman, who merely seeks to mar-
ket the store of timber provided by the forestry
methods of nature. To begin with, there is no
doubt but what the provision for forest reproduction

Forest Finance and Management 153

entails a considerable expense to which the or-
dinary lumberman is not subject. Yet this would
be no obstacle if the capital so sunk were certain to
return into the pocket of his owner with reasonable
profit. Can it be expected to do so with any degree
of certainty ?

There was a time when the amount of merchant-
able timber in our natural forests was considered as
practically inexhaustible. To-day no intelligent man
believes it so. White-pine lumbering on a large
scale will cease within ten or fifteen years. Its
place will be taken by the southern yellow pines,
and to a smaller extent by the various soft woods of
the West. But this supply also will give out in a
not distant future, especially if consumption goes
on increasing in the way it has done of late. If
land-owners were to begin restocking their cut-over
land at the present time, they would have their new
growth in merchantable condition just about the
time when the last remnant of natural supply will
give out, and would be in condition to supply the
market practically without competition from natu-
rally grown timber.

This conclusion is so obvious that the very fact
must make us suspicious. The men who stand at
the head of the great lumber corporations are cer-
tainly, as a rule, men of great ability, wide experi-
ence and large knowledge in the sphere of their
business. They are ever anxious to adopt new
methods by which their operations can be made
more successful. If the matter were so plain as we

154 North American Forests and Forestry

stated it above, these men would have discovered
the fact long ago and gone into the business of
raising young forests. The lumber business is
usually conducted by corporations which continue
when their officers die, so it cannot be a reluctance
to invest in an enterprise from which returns do
not come in one's own lifetime. Moreover, these
concerns have such great means that they could
well afford to have a portion of them tied up in
Wisconsin during the time when the new growths
were slowly maturing on the cut-over lands, while
with the rest of their capital they were harvesting
the original pine in the South. Then why do they
not do it ?

Some of the answers occasionally given are quite
insufficient to account for this singular circum-
stance. One of the commonest objections heard,
at least in the Lake region, to any plan for the re-
stocking of denuded lands with pine, is that the
pine will not grow there again. I speak of pine in
this connection, because with its allied soft-wood
species it will always furnish the greater portion of
material for the lumber industry. This notion is
based on an erroneous analogy drawn from agricul-
ture. People imagine that a rotation of crops is
needed in the raisinor of trees as well as of sfrain,
while for reasons we need not discuss here the case
is quite different. Observation, if well directed,
will easily convince one of the fallacy of this no-
tion, for in all parts of the pine regions of Michi-
gan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario, young

Forest Finance and Management 155

pine is coming up lustily, wherever seed has reached
the soil and the fire has given the young growth a
chance. These small white pines, however, are
not rarely mistaken for jack pine by the inhabitants
of the region ! A circumstance which often pre-
vents a careless observer from recoornizing; the new
growth of pine is, that the cut-over lands almost
invariably cover themselves at first with rapidly
growing broad-leaved species, such as the aspen
{Popiilus tremidoides, Michx.) and paper birch
{Betula papyrifei^a, Marsh). Under the light shade
of these trees the little pine seedlings increase slow-
ly in height and vigor, until after about fifteen years
they begin to overtop them, and gradually by their
own shade kill the trees that have protected them
in their infancy. In Maine and the other eastern
lumber regions there seems to be no such supersti-
tion about white pine not reproducing itself, prob-
ably because there the second growth is by this
time of such age and size that even the most super-
ficial observer cannot deny its existence.

Another way of explaining the reason why refor-
estation has not yet recommended itself to the
owners of pine lands is hardly more founded on
fact than the legend that pine will not grow again
in its old habitat. It is sometimes said that the
reforestation would be too expensive to bring
profit from the final harvest within the bounds of
probability. Let us see what there is in that.

Undoubtedly the cash expense to be incurred
by the American forester for the labor required

156 North American Forests and Forestry

in silvicultural operations is higher than it is in
Germany or France. Just how much higher, it
does not matter for our purposes. But American
labor is more effective than European. In nearly
all industries It is a well-known fact that a work-
ingman in the United States accomplishes more
work In the same time than his fellow In Europe.
There Is no reason to doubt that the same rule will
hold good In forestry work. In addition, we may
count on the usual labor-saving devices, as soon as
Yankee Ingenuity has been turned upon silvicul-
tural problems. Consequently we may expect a
counter-weight to the apparently greater cheapness
of European labor. In another regard we have the
advantage of Europe. That is the value of the
land. Five dollars an acre is considered a pretty
high price to pay for timber-land In the United
States, while Immense tracts can be had for far less
than that. In Central Europe values are very
much higher, if we except mountainous regions
where forests are maintained less for the revenues
they will yield than for the Indirect benefit to be
derived from them. It is plain, therefore, that
there can be little, if any, difference In the average
cost of maintaining forests for continuous crops In
the United States and Central Europe under the
same system of management. But can the Euro-
pean forester expect a substantially higher return
from forests grown under approximately similar
conditions ?

This question must be answered principally with

Forest Finance and Management 157

reference to market facilities and market price. In
one respect we are undoubtedly at a disadvantage
to the European. His forests are mostly in close
proximity to densely populated districts. Conse-
quently he has a market for a number of minor
forest products which we cannot utilize. He may
sell the nuts, berries, and mushrooms growing in
his woods, although in many cases a benevolent
custom allows the poor people of the neighborhood
to avail themselves of this not quite inconsiderable
revenue. There Is very little waste in felling, for
the branches and tops, which we must leave on the
ground as a constant menace of fire, he binds into
fagots and sells at a reasonable price for fuel and
other purposes. The cost of transportation from
the mill to the consumer is apt to be less. As to
the average price of lumber in Europe and this
country, it is not easy to make accurate compari-
sons. In the first place, in Central Europe at least
there is comparatively little use made of soft-lum-
ber boards, most of their spruce and fir timber be-
ing used in the shape of beams, while nearly all our
pine, spruce, and fir lumber consists of boards. It
is rather difficult to make precise calculation in
converting the price of one of these into that of the
other. Moreover, prices in Germany and France
are quoted for the cubic metre, while we use the
foot board measure as the unit. This adds another
element of difficulty and uncertainty. If one wants
to compare the prices, not of sawed lumber, but of
logs, in the forest or at the mill, the first difficulty

158 North American Forests and Forestry

is eliminated, but the second remains. On the
whole, I think that hard wood brings materially
higher prices in Europe, but the market price of
soft-wood timber is nearly the same there as in the
United States, Still, I am not by any means cer-
tain that this conclusion is quite correct.

Assuming that the European forester receives a
higher price for his crop, yet the high rental value
of his land compels him to wring from the soil the
very greatest amount of cash it can possibly yield.
In other words, his forestry must be what political
economists call intensive, just as the European
farmer must resort to an intensive cultivation of his
high-priced land in order to compete with the farm-
ers of our western States and other countries with
low land values. This increased productiveness of
the land can be brought about only by the employ-
ment of additional capital and labor. Now, every-
body who has ever studied political economy knows
the law of diminishing returns, which is briefly
stated as follows : There is a point where the appli-
cation of capital and labor upon land brings the
highest return in products, in proportion to the cost.
If the amount of capital and labor so applied is in-
creased still further, the amount of products result-
ing will increase absolutely, but the proportion it
bears to the cost of production will become smaller
and smaller. In other words, the cost of production
will increase more and more until finally the further
increase of capital and labor so applied becomes un-
profitable. This law is as effective in forestal as

Forest Finance and Mana^^ement 159

&

in agricultural operations. It follows from it that
Central Europe, with its high cost of production
(high notwithstanding its lower money wages), must
receive higher prices for its forest products in order
to make forestry pay, just as it must receive higher
prices for its agricultural products in order to make
farming profitable. In the United States we will
not for a long time be compelled to resort to inten-
sive methods of production ; in fact, such methods
would in most cases be ruinous because we would
not have a higher market price to off-set the in-
creased cost. But giving due weight to these facts :
that the cost of labor in Europe is only apparently
less ; that the rental value of the land there is much
higher ; and that, with increased cost of production,
the price of staple products is little, if at all, higher
in Europe than here, it seems that we have even a
better chance to make forestry pay than they have
there, just as on the whole farming is more profita-
ble in the United States than in Europe.

Still another consideration must not be forgotten.
If forestry based on silviculture were begun to-day,
its product would not be ready for market until
about the time when the merchantable timber pro-
vided by nature had disappeared. The wild and
the cultivated timber would therefore not come into
competition at all. The producers of the new sup-
ply would hardly underbid each other to any extent
so as to lower the price below the cost of production.
As to foreign competition, it is impossible to say
with any certainty whether there will be, seventy-five

i6o North American Forests and Forestry-
years from now, a supply of soft-wood lumber
anywhere, able to compete with home-grown lumber
in sufficient quantity to disturb the market. But
assuming that such competition will be possible, we
may consider it as the settled policy of the country,
in cases of this kind, to protect itself by tariffs on
importation, and in the supposed contingency such
measures would undoubtedly be resorted to.

After all this has been said, the fact remains that
our lumbermen do not provide for a future supply
of timber. We must repeat the question : Why
do they not ?

The true answer can be summed up in two
words : Fire and taxes. But before we discuss
further these important factors in the forestry
problem, we ought to devote a chapter to consider-
incr the interest which the State and federal oovern-
ments have in the matter. After we have done so
we may be in a better condition to understand the
part played by the government in the question of
fire protection and taxation of forest property.

CHAPTER VIII

FORESTRY AND GOVERNMENT

GOVERNMENT may have an interest in for-
estry matters in two different ways : It may
be the owner of forests, or it may find that the
general welfare of the country is seriously affected
by the manner in which the forests are managed,
and therefore desire to regulate such management
to a greater or less extent.

As everybody knows, the government of the
United States has from its incipiency been the
greatest land-owner of the country. A very large
part of its land was and still is covered with original
forests. The policy of Congress has been until
very lately to dispose of these public lands to
private parties to be utilized for agricultural, gra-
zing, mining, or lumbering purposes, as the case
might be. At first the lands were sold outright, a
policy which resulted in large tracts going into the
hands of speculators. Then various devices were
tried for making sure of the lands being taken up
by actual settlers. The most important of these
devices was the Homestead Act of 1862, with its
amendments, by which patents to not to exceed
160 acres are issued, without payments except a

161

1 62 North American Forests and Forestry

small registration fee, to any settler after he has
resided on the land and improved it for five years.
Large tracts were also granted to various railway
companies, in aid of their building railroads through
unsettled territor}', and all of the new States carved
out of the public domain were given a part of the
lands within their limits. The grants to States
were mostly coupled with the condition that they
were to be used in aid of various public institutions
to be established, such as schools, universities,
agricultural colleges, and so forth. Large grants
were also made for drainage purposes, and the
courts have held that the States had the right ta
judge how much of the revenue derived from them
was needed for that object, and that they might
divert the rest to something else. So this class of
lands, at least, is held by the States virtually with-
out being burdened with any trust. The States
have mostly followed the example of the general
government and disposed of these lands to private
parties as fast as a demand was found for them.
The result is that the older States which were
benefited by these grants have but little public
land left, while the younger ones still have con-
siderable tracts, much of it not yet surveyed and
patented. Suppose that a State should decide to
retain possession of such public lands as are fit for
the maintenance of forests, and manage them as
such. What objects could be held in view by such
a policy ?

Clearly, the State might proceed just as a private

Forestry and Government 163

owner would, and attempt by proper silvicultural
treatment to derive the greatest possible revenue
from them. This policy is followed by many of
the European states where forestry most flour-
ishes, and it is well known that several of the
states of the German Empire, as well as France
and other countries, derive a very considerable
part of their revenue from such public forests.

The objections to such a course are obvious, both
from an economic and a political standpoint. They
are the same objections which are usually urged
against the conduct of a business enterprise by
public authorities. Raising timber and other forest
products for the market is not a proper govern-
mental function. It smacks of paternalism and
socialism, and is opposed to the settled policy of
the American people. It would be folly to deny
the weight of these objections. Without entering
upon the controversy as to how far the adoption
of socialistic measures might be wise, we may say
that no American government will, for many years
to come, enter upon the business of forestry simply
as a convenient means of raising a revenue.

But there may be other reasons why it should
be expedient to permanently maintain public for-
ests, so that the revenue becomes a mere incident
to more important objects. If a State, or the
federal government, sho'dd become convinced that
the continued existence of forests capable of pro-
ducing commercial timber and other forest products
was absolutely demanded by the public welfare,

164 North American Forests and Forestry

and that private enterprise could not be rehed upon
to maintain such forests, then the poHcy of pubHc
forest maintenance might well be resorted to, not-
withstanding the objections mentioned above.

I dare say that none but the extreme followers
of Adam Smith would deny that government ought
to shape its measures so as to prevent, if possible,
the decay of so important a series of industries as
those depending upon forests for their raw material.
The majority of the American people, which favor
a system of protective tariff, will not object to a
reasonable internal policy of protection to so vital
a source of national wealth as the forests, and if
the people become convinced that nothing but gov-
ernment management can assure the permanency
of forests, the bugaboo of " paternalism " or " so-
cialism " will not terrify them.

Now, I am very far from arguing that it has
been demonstrated that, taking the country as a
whole, private forest management cannot be made
a business success. I believe that even under pres-
ent conditions it can, in many cases, be made to
pay, and that as soon as by proper legislation the
problems of fire protection and taxation, which will
be discussed in the next chapter, have been solved,
it will pay well in all localities where it is proper
that forests should grow. But even if this is true,
as the future will undoubtedly show, it will be wise
to have by the side of private forest enterprises a
system of public forests, managed according to the
most approved business principles.

Forestry and Government 165

A forest, under reasonable natural and economic
conditions, can be made the source of a fair, steady
income proportioned to the investment. But like
all safe investments, very large profits need not be
expected. It takes more self-restraint than the
average, speculative American has at his com-
mand in times of "boom" and business activity,
when high profits are being made on every hand,
to resist the temptation of turning one's growing
timber prematurely into cash and investing the
proceeds elsewhere. For after a certain age a
forest lends itself very readily to being made cash.
Although the trees may still be far from the age
when they would be cut most profitably, they will
yield a large quantity of lumber and find a ready
market. If the owner should be in financial diffi-
culties, the felling of his growing forest would be
one of the best means of obtaining the money to
save him. In Europe much of the private forest
property is protected by entails and other legal
devices to prevent waste. Still greater tracts are
ancestral estates and their owners are restrained by
sentimental reasons from destroying them, but
even there it has been found by experience that
private ownership cannot be trusted to prevent an
excessive diminution of forest-covered area, nor to
insure a rational treatment of forests. For this
reason many of the European states are gradually
purchasing more and more of the private forests
for public management. In the United States we
will probably find, for the same reasons, that

1 66 North American Forests and Forestry-
public ownership cannot be entirely dispensed with.
Exclusive state forestry would perhaps not be de-
sirable because it would create a state monopoly in
the raw material of some of the most important
industries. Such a thing is tolerable only under a
despotic or a socialistic government. As long as
we desire to have neither, a mixed system will
probably be best, in which public and private own-
ership is represented in such proportion that per-
manency of supply is insured by the one and fair
treatment of the consumer by the competition of
the other.

There is a class of forests which ought to be
maintained irrespective of revenue or questions of
supplying raw material to industries. These are
forests which protect the water supply of river sys-
tems. This branch of the subject has been given
rather excessive prominence by most writers on
forestry in this country, and a large portion of the
public has been led to believe that it embraces the
whole of the forestry problem. Much indiscrimi-
nate theorizing has been indulged in about the
influence of forests on climate, rainfall, waterflow,
and erosion. Much of this has not been verified
sufficiently by actual observation or experiment to
be at all above question. Some of the favorite
statements of popular writers are directly false ;
others are true with important qualifications.

No assertion is more familiar than that the fer-
tility of the countries surrounding the Mediter-
ranean Sea has, within historical times, become

Forestry and Government 167

greatly reduced on account of the destruction of
forests. It has not been estabHshed, however, that
these countries had a very much larger forest area
in ancient times, or that with rational methods of
agriculture they would not be as productive to-day
as they ever were. Just so it would be pretty
hard to prove that any considerable portion of the
North American continent is in danger of being
turned into a desert on account of the destruction
of forests, even if it proceeded with much greater
rapidity. The whole question of the influence of
forests on climate is still under investigation, and
many more and systematic observations are neces-
sary before it can be considered settled.

However, a few facts in this regard may be taken
as above dispute. It is not improbable that the
extent to which the general climate of a country is
affected by forests is overrated, but they certainly
affect the conditions in their own immediate vicin-
ity. The absence from forest areas of the hot,
scorching^ winds so inimical to agriculture on our
treeless plains is one of the instances of such influ-
ence. Large areas of forest also seem to have a
tendency, similar to large bodies of water, to lower
the average temperature of summer and raise that
of winter, but this is more doubtful. Whether
forests tend to increase rainfall, as is often asserted,
is, to say the least, not proven. The most con-
spicuous and best ascertained effect of forests upon
natural conditions is the manner in which they
regulate the flow of streams and surface water.

i68 North American Forests and Forestry

The humus accumulating on the floor of forests,
the litter of dry leaves, the cushions of moss and
covering of herbage have a tendency to soak up
the rain-water and hold it much longer than it
would be held by the comparatively thin vegetable
covering of grass-covered areas, let alone slopes
devoid of dense vegetation. The shade of the
forest also retards evaporation of the water after it
has fallen, and the tangle of dead trees, branches,
and leaves often obstructs the flow of streams and
causes the water to form pools and swamps that
are drained but slowly. The tendency of forest
covering is, therefore, to make the processes of
evaporation, percolation of the ground, and run-
ning off of surface water proceed much slower than
in the open country. Consequently, the rivers fed
from forest regions are apt to have a more regular
flow. The floods after heavy rains, or after the
melting of the snow, will not be quite so high, and
the low-water stage will not come quite so quickly
after the rain has ceased. So much is certainly
true. But it is not correct to assume that the
great floods occasionally doing so much damage
along the Mississippi and other great river systems
have been caused by the destruction of forests
around the headwaters. In the first place, the
deforestation around these headwaters has not been
excessive. In the second place, great floods were
known long before settlement in these regions had
made the slightest inroads upon forests, as can be
learned from the notes scattered throucrh the

Forestry and Government 169

writings of the early travellers. Much more con-
spicuous than in the floods of the great rivers is the
influence of forest disappearance on the dwindling
of small rivers and brooks, and the occasional dry-
ing up of springs. This process is quite noticeable
in all regions that have been settled within the last
fifty years ; but it is by no means certain that the
phenomenon is caused exclusively by the removal
of forests.

The greater instability in the water stages of
rivers, the more destructive freshets and protracted
low water, which are characteristic of streams in a
district with little or no forest cover, are, of course,
injurious in many ways. But the greatest damage
caused by them is that of over-erosion. A stream
running rapidly at high water is a far more effective
agent than a moderate stage of water in tearing
away soil and carrying it down to be deposited
where it may not be wanted. What is true of the
river is true of the smallest rill. The danger of such
excessive erosion is but small on plains or districts
with slightly rolling topography. But among the
hills and mountains it becomes very great. Where
a forest covers the steep sides of a hill the rush of
water into the valley is ver}^ much retarded, but on
an open slope it can act with full force, as may be
seen at every such hillside, where the rain-water is
gradually wearing ravines into the surface. Where
the mountains are deprived of a considerable por-
tion of their forests, the streams occupying their
valleys are sure to receive a much greater amount

170 North American Forests and Forestry

of detritus than in forested districts, and the low-
lands will gradually be rendered infertile by their
soil being covered, at every freshet, with a layer of
gravel and sand carried down from above. This
experience has been had, among other places, in
Pennsylvania, and has been among the chief reasons
which have led that State to enter upon a course of
reforestation at State expense. The State has be-
gun to purchase large tracts around the headwaters
of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Ohio, with a
view towards preserving them as forests, so that the
harmful phenomena of over-erosion may be avoided.
For the present, the question of obtaining a reve-
nue from these lands by silvicultural operations is
not considered by the authorities, although that also
may come in time. Forests which are selected with
such particular regard to their protective effect are
likely not to be in such localities as would promise
a very good crop of timber or proper transportation
facilities. It need not be expected, therefore, that
private parties ever will find it expedient to protect
and manage them. In such cases it is absolutely
required that the public authorities assume the bur-
den, and maintain such forests even if they will be
a permanent drain upon the public treasury. The
money so expended will return into the pockets of
the people with interest, through the protection that
forests of this class afford to the welfare of man. If
the land in localities where forests are required for
protective purposes has already been transferred to
private hands, the only safe way for government is

Forestry and Government 171

to reacquire the title to them. In some countries it
is attempted to regulate the manner in which the
private owners of such forests may manage them so
as to keep them from endangering the public wel-
fare by removing them or impairing their effective-
ness as a protection. Such violent encroachments
on the right of the people to do what they like with
their own property are not to be thought of in this
country, and there is nothing left but for the pub-
lic to take such tracts into their own hands.

In the western half of the North American con-
tinent forests are almost exclusively confined to the
mountain ranges, while the surrounding plains and
plateaus are devoid of timber. As much of this
region is arid or semi-arid, precipitation being
largely confined to snowfall on the higher eleva-
tions, agriculture and every other form of civilized
life is dependent upon artificial irrigation. The
water for these works must be derived principally
from the snows accumulating on the higher moun-
tain slopes, and the forests covering the steep sides
are of the greatest importance in protecting the
irrigation works. Without them the floods at the
time of melting snows and after heavy showers in
summer would rush down with such impetuosity
that the dams, basins, and canals could not with-
stand their force. The erosion of the mountain
sides would be. so great that the valleys together
with the irrigation works would be quickly filled up
with gravel, silt, and mud. The United States,
which still holds most of the land in this region,

1^2 North American Forests and Forestry

has seen the absolute necessity of preserving the
mountain forests and has recently set aside a num-
ber of large forest tracts in various parts of the
mountain regions, to be preserved as protective
forests. We will, in a succeeding chapter, briefly
treat of some of the discussions which have arisen
out of the setting aside of these reservations.

There has been some controversy on the manner
in which the Rocky Mountain forests act upon the
melting of the snow and thereby affect the irriga-
tion problem. It is actually argued by some that
the presence of forests is injurious instead of bene-
ficial. It is said that the forests prevent the drifting
of snow and its accumulation in immense heaps
filling the ravines and depressions. The compara-
tively light and evenly distributed snow covering in
the forest melts rapidly and runs off into the valleys
early in spring ; the very deep snow masses filling
the ravines do not melt until late in summer, and
therefore supply a full stage of water long after the
spring freshet has run by. There is some truth in
this observation, but by no means as much as some
of those advancing it imagine. In the first place,
something depends on the character of the forest.
In localities where it is rather thin, the drifting and
filling of ravines is not by any means entirely pre-
vented. On the other hand, where it is very dense,
its own shade tends to retard the melting, in the same
manner as the depth of the snow does in the ravines.
Again, it must not be forgotten that much of the
melting snow does not run off on the surface, but

Forestry and Government 173

percolates the ground. Necessarily, where the snow
is all drifted together in certain localities, while the
rest of the ground is bare, a much smaller percentage
of the water has a chance to enter the soil than
where the whole ground is covered and every
square inch of it can absorb its share of moisture.
The water so enterincr the soil is the source from
which the springs and smaller watercourses receive
their supply during the summer and continue to
feed the larger streams long after even the snow
masses of the ravines are melted.

There is a way of utilizing forests for the benefit
of the community which comes properly, perhaps,
within the province of the municipal and other
local authorities rather than the State and federal
governments. Forests are not merely places where
raw material for human industries is produced,
nor tracts of land which protect mountain sides
from over-erosion and reo^ulate the water-flow of
the streams. They are also the great play-grounds
of nations, where thousands fiock to gain new
health and vigor, physical, intellectual, and moral,
and find a temporary escape from the strain and
stress of modern civilized existence. The sports-
man with rod and gun, the lover of scenery and
outdoor life, would feel it a serious deprivation if
he were robbed of the privilege of enjoying the cool
shades of the forest. To the inhabitants of the
regions where the forests are, the annual arrival of
the city people, as tourists or summer residents, is
a very important matter of dollars and cents. Not

1 74 North American Forests and Forestry

a few small towns and villages in various parts of
the country could be named which are absolutely
dependent for their prosperity upon their reputation
as "summer resorts." Notwithstanding this fact,
and the constantly greater importance which the
tourist and summer-resident business assumes, very
little is done by the people who desire to derive the
pecuniary benefit from it to make their localities
more attractive. This is particularly true about
the western resorts. The idea of a summer resort
entertained by the average inhabitant of these
places is a lake, a lot of boats and fishing-tackle,
and a hotel, possibly a few cottages standing in the
midst of an unkempt lawn with a few trees scattered
over it. Of course, this is all very well as far as it
goes, but what a mass of unused opportunities there
is here ! All over the Northwestern States, as well
as in many other sections of the country, there are
thousands of inland lakes lying in a country abound-
ing with forests. Not rarely these woods are on
hills and ridges unfit for agriculture. They are
now in private hands, parcelled out among many
small owners who have no use for them except for
fire-wood. Being ignorant of the very rudiments
of silviculture, these owners allow them to dete-
riorate from year to year, till finally they will be
nothing but unattractive brushlands.

The summer residents would gladly enjoy roam-
ing through these woods. They are soon tired of
the monotonous round from the hotel piazza to the
tennis ground, thence into the boat and out on

Forestry and Government 175

the hot, sunshiny lake. Fish and fishing become
burdensome after a while ; they would rather hear
the thrushes and warblers, or see the rabbits skip
through the underbrush. The woods are there, less
than half a mile away, but to the majority of the
summer guests as inaccessible as if they were on
another planet. There are no roads through the
woods. As if in mockery, the hotel-keeper adver-
tises the fine drives of the surrounding country.
But every road that an ordinary vehicle dare ven-
ture on runs through the sunny, uninteresting
fields down in the valleys. The woods, where one
would like to drive, are carefully fenced off, and
only the more venturesome among the guests ever
enter their shades. Then they are left to chance
as to whether they get the most enjoyment out of
them or not. There is no guide-post, not even a
foot-path leading to the spot where that fine view
of the lake can be had. The particularly fine group
of large trees at the other side can be found only
by accident, and then you must crawl through four
barb-wire fences, which keeps the ladies from ever
reaching the spot.

Such a picture is true of hundreds of American
summer resorts, even some of the most famous
ones. Nobody seems to think of the enormous
advantage a place of that kind would derive if the
picturesque surroundings were made accessible to
the travelling public. Suppose that a tract of for-
est in the hilly portion of the neighborhood were
in some way acquired by the village, town, or

1/6 North American Forests and Forestry

county. vSuppose the authorities engaged a com-
petent superintendent, who would make roads and
foot-paths, put up benches and other resting-places
in the appropriate spots, and in other ways improve
the tract for the benefit of the public. Would not
such a measure add immensely to the attractions
of th^ summer resort, and would it not easily out-
strip all its competitors that lacked these accessible
woods ? But the expense, you say. Why, if the
management were at all competent there would be
no expense. The money to purchase the land
w^ould be borrowed, and thereafter the annual in-
come from the forest, under proper silvicultural
treatment, ought to be enough to pay running ex-
penses, interest, and successive small instalments
to repay the principal. If the public authorities
did not care to undertake the burden, it w^ould be
almost as well if an association were formed for the
same purpose. There could be no objection to a
small toll beine charcred to vehicles entering the
tract, and that would aid materially in defraying
the cost. Such associations hold considerable
tracts of forest land in the Adirondacks and other
parts of the East, and cannot but be considered a
benefit to the whole public, even where they are
primarily organized for the pleasure of their own
members.

Another branch of this subject deserves consid-
eration. The tendency among the well-to-do all
over the country now is to maintain their own pri-
vate summer residences instead of spending their

Forestry and Government 177

vacations at summer hotels. There are many of
those northwestern lakes I have mentioned the
shores of which are entirely occupied by such sum-
mer residents. There are some considerable bodies
of water where a tourist or other stranger cannot
get to the water's edge without passing through
somebody's private garden or park ; or if some-
how he has got into a boat, he cannot land any-
where without being a trespasser — not a mere
technical one, but a trespasser whose presence is
hotly resented, as is shown by the warning signs
that greet him on every hand. This movement
towards excluding the public from places of this
kind will go on with increased speed until it has
practically reached every available spot of beauty.
Aside from the wrong thus done to the great mass
of people for the benefit of a minority, what will
be the effect of this change upon the permanent
inhabitants of the region ? At present they derive
large revenues from the travellers by furnishing
them with board, lodging, boats, vehicles, acting
as guides, and so forth. But to this revenue the
people who have their own summer residences con-
tribute very little. They have their own boats and
teams, get their supplies from the city, and hardly
ever patronize the local tradesman. If they are al-
lowed to drive out the transient visitors by more or
less completely excluding them from all the beauti-
ful spots to be found in the place, the permanent
inhabitants will lose nearly all the economic bene-
fits to be derived from the vacation season of the

178 North American Forests and Forestry-
city people. The protection against this danger
evidently lies in reserving a portion of the sur-
roundings to the public by letting the local au-
thorities, or associations, acquire the possession
and manage these parks for the benefit of all.

There is one branch of forestry work, indepen-
dent of the proprietorship and management of the
woods, which is pre-eminently within the province
of governments and public institutions. That is
the acquiring and dissemination of information re-
garding our forests and forest industries. Work
of this kind can be done by private parties to a
limited extent only. The greater means of gov-
ernmental agencies and of the great universities
of the country are necessary to do it effectively.
Facts regarding the life, history, and properties of
trees ; their relations to geological, topographical,
and meteorological conditions ; their interdepen-
dence with other plants and with animals, — all these
have to be gathered, collated, and studied, if silvi-
culture in this country is to be based on accurate
knowledo^e instead of beino; forced to trust in
chance. Much work has been done in this direc-
tion, mostly by men of science who had no im-
mediate pecuniary interest in the phenomena they
were studying. But the field to be covered, in-
cluding, as it does, nearly all the natural sciences
and extending over a whole continent, is so im-
mense that all that has been learned is but an
insignificant beginning of what should be known.
What is true of the biological side of forestry is

Forestry and Government 179

also true of the economic side. Thorough and
rehable information on markets, inventions affect-
inof the use of woods, leijislative measures in the
various States, and economic conditions generally
must be at the command of the forester for the
proper conduct of his business. The owners of
woodlands, the lumbermen, and other exploiters
of forests cannot, as a rule, be expected to acquire
such information for themselves, still less to pub-
lish it for the benefit of others. They rarely have
the training required to make scientific investiga-
tions even of the simplest sort. If they had the
ability, yet they would lack the time and inclina-
tion to do work of this kind. The work must
be done, not for the interest of these exploiters
merely, but in the interest of the nation, which
needs the forest and the forest industries. There-
fore it is eminently within the province of the gov-
ernment to provide means and men to do work of
this kind. It must be said that both our federal
and State orovernments have done more in this
branch of forestry work than in any other, yet
much still remains to be done. Just what the
various scientific bureaus of the United States and
of many of the States have accomplished in this
direction, we will outline in another chapter. In
this place we merely want to make the point, that
no matter what our view may be regarding the
expediency of private or public systems of forest
management, we cannot deny that here is a great
field for the activity of governmental agencies.

I So North American Forests and Forestry

So far in this chapter we have treated the rela-
tions of the public authorities to the forestry prob-
lem principally from the side of the executive and
administrative branch of government. We have
discussed the government as a forest owner, and
seen that it may manage such property in the
manner of private parties, for the purpose of gain-
ing a profit, and by the income the treasury ob-
tains from this source lio-hten the burden of the
taxpayers. We have also learned that the ques-
tion of making a profit on the investment may be
left in the backg^round, and the grovernment be
willinsf to own and manag^e forests althouofh for
one reason or the other a profit cannot be ex-
pected, and the forest is a source of expense rather
than revenue. This may be either because the
authorities feel that without government manage-
ment a permanent supply of raw material for the
various industries cannot be depended upon ; or
the burden is undertaken because otherwise forests
which are necessary to protect the water supply of
rivers or irrio-ation works would be in danger of
destruction. We have mentioned how municipal-
ities could serve their interests if they acquired the
possession of forest tracts as recreation grounds
for their own people and summer visitors. We
have also spoken of the duty of government in
acquiring and disseminating knowledge regarding
all matters pertaining to forestry.

But aside from such executive and administrative
functions, the action of crovernment is of the utmost

Forestry and Government i8i

importance by the laws it may make, and which
through their intentional or unforeseen action may
exert the greatest influence upon the forestry of
the country. To be sure, legislation is not all-pow-
erful in this any more than in other spheres. It
cannot create a forest industry where the natural
and economic conditions do not favor it. No legis-
lative fiat can produce a forest where nature disap-
proves. But it can to a great extent create favorable
economic conditions, for the maintenance and ra-
tional exploitation of forests. By legislation we
can on the one hand protect ourselves against the
greed of private interests, which look exclusively
towards the immediate profit, heedless of the rights
of future generations. We can also protect our
woodland owners and lumbermen from injuries done
to them and their business by the recklessness and
uncontrolled self-interest of others. Leofislation
can not only do these things, but it is our duty as a
people to see that they are done. More than that,
by unwise legislation we may impose upon forest
exploiters such burdens that their business becomes
unprofitable if carried on with a view to the greatest
advantage of both the owners and the community,
while, on the other hand, legislation may create con-
ditions by which the interests of the forest exploit-
ers and the people are brought into harmony.
Considering all this, we may well come to the con-
clusion that the leofislative relations of grovernment
to the forestry problem are even more important
than its executive or administrative action, and it is

1 82 North American Forests and Forestry

worth while to devote some separate chapters to
forest legislation. In those chapters we will treat, in
addition to a number of minor subjects, the ques-
tions of fire protection and taxation of forests.
These two questions, the reader remembers, afford
a solution to the problem why the lumbermen and
other owners of cut-over timber-lands do not reforest
their holdings ; and we will see that the way to deal
with these questions is by proper legislation.

CHAPTER IX

FIGHTING FIRES AND THIEVES

IN the cultivated forests of Europe, fires are rare
events and, if they do break out, cause compar-
atively little damage. In British India, forest fires
used to be as destructive as they are in North Amer-
ica. But since the government, through the adminis-
trative genius of Sir Diedrich Brandis, has taken
the work of rational forest management in hand,
they have practically ceased in all districts to which
the work of the forester has extended. These ex-
amples show that forests, even where they are situ-
ated in the midst of dense settlements and are
constantly being lumbered over, are not necessarily
subject to great danger of fire. But they show by
no means that the salvation of American forests lies
in an adoption of the protective measures relied on
by these foreign countries. Differences arising out
of natural, economic, and political conditions make
it necessary for us to work out our own salvation in
this, as in most other problems that confront our
national life.

Readers will remember that in an earlier chapter
we emphasized the fact that practically every forest
lire is the result of human carelessness. This

183

1 84 North American Forests and Forestry

means that they are first kindled for legitimate pur-
poses, but afterwards abandoned and left to go out
or spread as accidental conditions favor. In the
term " legitimate purposes " we must here include
even such uses of fire in the woods as are in them-
selves injurious, but are excused by the necessities
of makinor some use of the forest while economic
conditions are such that more profitable forms of
management are not available. In this category
belongs, for instance, the burning up of valuable
logs by settlers in clearing their lands, because they
can find no market for them on account of lacking
transportation facilities. The burning of under-
brush to improve the pasture may also be sometimes
excused on the ground that pasture is the best use
the land can be put to. This practice, the results
of which have already been dwelt upon, is but too
prevalent in portions of the Appalachian region,
where most of the mountain farmers are miserably
poor, ignorant, and shiftless. It is the condition of
the people in this section rather than the economic
circumstances which makes this wastefulness appar-
ently necessary. The firing of underbrush to im-
prove the pasture is also indulged in to some extent
by the owners of the great flocks of sheep in the
far West. These people have much less excuse for
doing so than the poor mountaineers of Tennessee
and North Carolina. Their business is at best one
of the worst causes of forest destruction, and their
immense herds, scattering, as they do, over hun-
dreds of square miles to bite off every vestige

Fighting Fires and Thieves 185

of young sprouts and seedlings and trampling
down what they cannot devour, have not inaptly
been called "hoofed locusts." If to the injury
done by the feet and teeth of the sheep is added
the damage by fires set for their exclusive benefit,
we can hardly continue to speak of a "legitimate"
industry.

Occasionally it happens that a fire is set mali-
ciously, with the express purpose of doing injury
to a body of timber. This, however, is rare in
America. The motive is usually lacking. In some
parts of the world the country people living in the
neighborhood of forests are inimical to the owners,
because a rational forest management interferes
with their ImaQfined riofht to make use of other
people's property, and this hostility every now and
then leads to incendiarism. In India, popular su-
perstitions sometimes lead to the same crime, as
where a fine forest in the Himalayas was destroyed
by village people as an offering to the spirit of
smallpox that was ravaging the community. Mo-
tives of either kind are unknown in this country.
But it is suspected by lumbermen, once in a while,
that some person has fired a body of timber which
its owners intended to let grow for a while longer,
in order to compel the cutting of the half-killed
trees to save them from destruction by fungi and
insects. The motive of the miscreant in such cases
is supposed to be the hope of getting the contract
for logging the timber. How well founded such
stories are I do not know. As far as I am aware,

1 86 North American Forests and Forestry

no such crime was ever brought home to anybody
in a legal proceeding.

The means which European foresters employ to
protect the property under their care against fire
are chiefly the following : in the first place, every
forest is penetrated, in addition to the main roads,
by a network of open lanes, so-called "fire-rides."
These are kept bare, not merely of trees and un-
derbrush, but also, as far as possible, of the ranker
vegetation of grass and herbage, and especially all
dry and inflammable debris. If a fire gets a start,
it will soon come to one of these rides, where it is
easily checked. One not familiar with the ways of
forest fires is likely to be surprised at the idea that
comparatively narrow roads and lanes can check
conflagrations which, at other times, destroy whole
forests and villages. But they must remember
what was said above, that by far the greatest num-
ber of forest fires are not so-called top fires, which
envelop large trees with flame and spread from
crown to crown. They are generally surface fires,
that merely consume the dry litter, dead branches,
withered erass, and such stuff on the forest floor.
The moment such fires come to a bare earth road,
or even to a lane covered with sparse, short, and
little inflammable vegetation, they stop for want of
fuel. After a fire has once attained great dimen-
sions, and especially where it has developed into a
top fire, roads and lanes are no longer of the least
benefit. For great fires, by sending currents of
hot air upward, create strong winds by the inrush

Fighting Fires and Thieves 187

of air to fill the space emptied by the vertical cur-
rents. These winds in turn carry the flames for-
ward, so that they easily leap over roads, and even
pretty broad watercourses. The object of fire pro-
tection must always be to prevent the blaze, when
it has once broken out, from gaining such dimen-
sions that it becomes uncontrollable. The beofin-
ning is always small, and easily managed.

Next to the system of roads and lanes comes a
careful policing of the forest. If there is some-
body whose business it is to see that no fire gets a
start, there is practically no danger of appreciable
damage being done. There is no reason, of course,
why the watchman should not combine with his du-
ties of fire-guard more or less of the other work of
the many kinds constantly to be done in a well-
kept forest, so that the expense of maintaining a
guard becomes very insignificant. In fact, every
person employed in or about a forest naturally be-
comes a fire-guard as soon as it is once understood
that fires must not be allowed to smoulder. It is
quite possible for one man sufficiently to police a
forest three thousand and more acres in extent.
Forest fires rarely spread rapidly at the beginning.
They may smoulder even for days and weeks with-
out extending over more than a few square feet of
ground, waiting to be fanned into a blaze by a live-
lier wind. During all this time they make their
presence known by clouds of blue, pungent smoke
that cannot fail to strike the guard's eyes and
nostrils.

1 88 North American Forests and Forestry

Effective as these means of fire protection have
proven to be, they are evidently appHcable to our
conditions to a Hmited extent only. They pre-
suppose a cultivated forest where roads and rides
either exist already or can be built without an ex-
pense greater than the business can bear. Most of
our large forests are remote from the densely set-
tled districts ; they extend over areas immensely
larofer than even the o-reatest forests of Central
Europe; and hardly an acre of it has been subject
to silvicultural operations. Roads are few, and
before a network of roads and lanes can come into
existence, many decades will elapse. Clearly, then,
if we are to have fire protection, we must for some
time to come get it in a different manner from that
prevailing in Europe.

It may be stated right here that the available
means of protection here proposed, and which are
in partially successful operation in several States,
will not, even if employed to their fullest possible
extent, do away with forest fires entirely. That
result can be obtained by no means other than
those adopted in Europe. But it is possible to
very materially reduce the damage done by the
flames, and to reduce the number of fires a great
many times. This is something worth doing, es-
pecially as every step in that direction will bring us
nearer to the conditions under which the more
perfect system is possible.

To let the reader understand this matter clearly,
I must again dwell upon the point that all fires can

Fio^htinor- Fires and Thieves 189

easily be put out when they first start. All effort
must therefore tend towards a speedy detection of
the incipient blazes. How can this be done?

First of all there should be somebody in every
forest neighborhood whose express business it is to
be on the lookout for fires. To leave this duty to
the chance action of volunteers is to leave it un-
done. On large, compact tracts of land this duty
would naturally be attended to by the owners, who
would soon enough find it profitable to maintain
their own fire police, but, unfortunately, large, con-
tinuous tracts of timber-land owned by the same
parties are rare ; and here we come to another con-
dition which is an obstacle in the way of forestry
reform In this country.

Ever since the beginning of the federal gov-
ernment it has been its laudable aim to prevent the
rise of a class of larg^e land-owners tilling their
holdings either by gangs of hired laborers or
through the help of dependent tenants. It was
rightly judged that a continuance of a large and
influential class of yeomen farmers, such as existed
at the time of the Revolution in New Eng-land and
the middle States, was essential to the stability of
democratic Institutions. With this object In view
the method of disposing of the public lands was
from time to time amended. The recoQfnItlon of
squatters' rights, the pre-emption and homestead
laws, all tended to restrict the acquisition of public
lands to parcels of a few acres by each individual,
so that the normal size of an American land-owner's

TQo North American Forests and Forestry

possession is now the " quarter-section," or one
hundred and sixty acres. When large portions of
the pubHc domain were granted in aid of raihoad
building, still the same object was sought to be
attained by giving to the beneficiaries of these
grants alternate sections only. In pursuing this
policy the government took it for granted that
persons taking up public lands did so for the
purpose of establishing farms thereon. Not un-
til the dividing up of the government lands
reached the arid and mountainous regions of the
far West did it become evident that all of the
public domain could not be treated in the same
manner. Then a distinction was made between
agricultural, mineral, and desert lands, and the last
two classes were subjected to different rules from
the first.

The settlement of the older western States had
in the meantime progressed rapidly. In the east-
ern half of this section, within the forest zone
proper and overlapping on the intermediate or
wooded-prairie zone, there were large tracts which
we may, for brevity's sake, call the " pine barrens,"
although not all of it is barren, nor was all of it
ever covered with pine. These tracts, some of
them very extensive, were really little adapted to ag-
riculture, being mostly sandy or so hilly and broken
that farming is rendered difiicult. They are the
natural forest reserves of the middle western coun-
try, and here it was and is that most of the
lumbering operations of the Northwest were and

Fighting Fires and Thieves 191

are now carried on. But, unfortunately, during the
period when the settlement of this section was
going forward most actively hardly anybody in this
country had yet thought of the advisability of re-
serving a portion of the land for forests. So it
came about that the really non-agricultural lands of
this section were divided up in the same checker-
board fashion ^s the farming lands proper. Even
now, a party buying timber-lands buys so many
" forties," which may or may not be contiguous,
but are rarely so for more than a few sections at
a time. More often, one's purchase consists of
quarter-sections contiguous at the corners only,
which is almost as inconvenient as if they did not
touch at all. The intervening tracts may belong
to some other lumber concern, or they may be still
public, or they may be held by settlers. For al-
though the tracts we now have in mind are not
really fit for any sort of agriculture, there are
many reasons which prompt settlers to occupy
them. Often the latter are " homesteaders " who
take up a quarter-section of pine land, make a
pretence of improving it and, when after five years
they have received their patent, sell the timber.
Not rarely these alleged settlers are really the
hired " dummies " of the lumber companies. Again,
much of this kind of land is sold by unscrupulous
speculators, after the merchantable timber has
been taken off, to immigrants from foreign coun-
tries or people from the cities who are without
previous knowledge of farming and often buy

192 North American Forests and Forestry

without having ever seen the land. What attracts
these people is the apparently low price for which
these lands can be had, but in reality even one or
two dollars an acre is far too much to pay if the
land is to be used for farming. For a year or two
the new settler gets a fair crop, because the humus
accumulated during the standing of the forest
nourishes the plants. But very soon this is ex-
hausted, and then the most that can be done is to
raise a few potatoes and other sand-loving crops in
the depressions of the soil, where the wash from the
sides makes the latter a little more fertile. Proba-
bly by an elaborate application of fertilizers these
lands could be rendered fairly productive, but the
settlers have neither the means nor the skill to do
this. Most of them, after a few years of struggle,
either abandon their ill-chosen homesteads or if
they stay resign themselves to a hopeless poverty.
This and the demoralization consequent upon such
conditions make such people an exceedingly unde-
sirable element in any community.

The conditions here described apply in the first
place to the lumber districts of the Lake region,
especially to the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota. But with slight local variations they
are also found in much of the southern forest zone
between the Appalachians and the western plains.
It is easily apparent that this scattered manner of
holding timber-lands makes the proper policing of
their holdings by the owners themselves exceedingly
difficult and costly. Such policing is necessary

Fio^htinor Fires and Thieves 193

not only for protection against fire but also against
timber thieves.

Timber stealing is a practice exceedingly com-
mon in all districts of the United States where
lumbering is carried on on a large scale. Although
many of the States have statutes making the cutting
and carrying away of timber from other people's
land larceny instead of mere trespass, a convic-
tion or even prosecution for such an offence is
practically unknown. For a conviction requires
proof of malicious intent, and it is so easy to per-
suade the jury that there was merely a mistake,
when there are, in the primeval wilderness, no
boundary marks except, at best, the section lines
blazed by the government surveyors many years
ago. Even the most reputable lumbermen occa-
sionally indulge in this little pastime, taking their
chances of being caught at it, and having to pay to
the owners what the stolen material is worth. The
greatest sufferers from these depredations are the
governments, both state and federal, whose lands
are usually less well guarded than private holdings.
Besides, many otherwise fairly honest people have
no scruple about robbing or defrauding the govern-
ment. In the remote and sparsely settled lumber-
ing regions of the West, the stealing of government
timber has at times reached incredible proportions.
It has often happened that a sawmill has been set
up in the midst of government forests and operated
without even an attempt at concealment. Where
such depredations were committed by the inhabitants

194 North American Forests and Forestry

of the region, they might be to some extent ex-
cused because these men were still imbued with
the backwoodsman's notion of the early days, that
public property is the property of nobody. But
no such extenuation exists for the great corpora-
tions owned and managed by wealthy people of
the East, who deliberately engaged in this business ;
although perhaps this thievery is no more dis-
honest than other practices of people whose only
notion of commercial honesty is to keep one's
banker good-natured.

For a long time the federal government made
no attempt to check these ravages in its forests.
The first step in the right direction was taken under
the presidency of Mr. Hayes, when Carl Schurz,
as Secretary of the Interior, vigorously prosecuted
some of the trespassers. For this display of in-
tegrity and energy he was bitterly attacked in Con-
gress, no less a person than James G. Blaine
leadings the onslauofht. That distinofuished states-
man showed on this occasion a narrowness and
shortsightedness little to his credit by trying to
ridicule the Secretary as one unable to appreciate
the greatness of this country and attempting to
apply to its inexhaustible resources the methods
of little Prussia. Since that time the supervision
of the government has gradually been improved
until now comparatively little trespassing is com-
mitted. Those States also which are possessed
of timber-lands have mostly established a timber
police of greater or less efficiency ; but the agents

Fiohtinor Fires and Thieves 195

'Js"'-""^

intrusted with these duties are usually concerned
more about recovering the value of timber already
cut than to prevent trespasses. As the scattered
system of ownership practically prevents an effec-
tive fire police by private holders of timber-land,
it is necessary that this duty be undertaken by
government. This position may be maintained on
two grounds : that the owners of forest property
are entitled to protection against a common danger
from which they cannot protect themselves ; and
that the entire people are interested in having this
kind of property preserved from destruction. On
whichever ground you put it, the duty of govern-
ment in this matter is admitted practically by every-
body. The question is, how can this duty be best
performed ?

The easiest, but also the least effective, way of
doing so is the passage of penal statutes. Proba-
bly every State, as well as the United States, has
had laws of this kind for a long time. Their pro-
visions differ as to details in the various jurisdic-
tions, but usually they threaten with fine and
imprisonment any person convicted of setting fire
on any land not his own and failing to extinguish it
before leaving. This refers, of course, to fires
kindled for purposes in themselves legitimate.
Malicious incendiarism is dealt with in a more
severe manner. The difficulty with laws of this
kind lies in their enforcement. Fires In the woods
are so common as not in themselves to attract
much notice or apprehension. They may be left

196 North American Forests and Forestry-
burning by campers miles away from any human
habitation, and how can evidence against the per-
petrators possibly be obtained ? Even where direct
or circumstantial evidence could be had, if the peo-
ple of the vicinity were willing to testify, witnesses
are extremely reluctant to go on the witness stand
for fear of incurring the enmity of their neighbors.
Then, also, who is there to begin the prosecution ?
The state's attorney is at the county seat, perhaps
many miles away, and cannot act unless a complaint
is made to him ; and who will go out of his way
to make such complaint, purely for the public good
and with much inconvenience and possible injury
to himself ? To cause people to make complaints
the statutes often promise to the informer a portion
of the fine collected from the offender. But the
very fact that the complaining witness is pecuniarily
interested in the success of the prosecution discred-
its him in the eyes of court and jury and makes a
conviction more difficult. So it may be said that
penal statutes against negligence in the handling of
fire are of themselves ineffectual and usually mere
dead letters.

A step forward is taken where it is made the
express duty of constables and other rural officials
to enforce the fire laws. Although the compensa-
tion of such officers is usually derived from the fees
and costs collected with the fine imposed on offen-
ders, yet as the constable is merely doing his offi-
cial duty there is no such stigma attaching to his acts
as keeps private parties from becoming informers

Fiorhtino^ Fires and Thieves 197

'&"*■'"&

for a reward. The constables are often fairly
zealous in enforcing the law against tramps and non-
residents, but rarely so against the settlers, who
may be the worst offenders, but on whom, as voters,
the constable is dependent for re-election. Besides,
the constable will be able to obtain evidence in but
a very few cases of negligent firing, especially as in
the thinly settled forest regions his district often
embraces a very large territory. Some States have
within the last few years authorized the local au-
thorities in their discretion to prohibit the setting
of fires for clearing and other purposes during the
driest and most dangerous season of the year. If
the local officials took care to avail themselves of
such authority it ought to help materially to reduce
the number of destructive fires, but, unfortunately,
such prohibitory measures are rarely adopted. The
local authorities are often either too unintellio^ent
to appreciate their necessity or afraid of running
counter to the wishes of influential voters. Some-
times the setting of fires for " burning brush " is not
permitted at all except with the license and under
the supervision of some official. This is an excel-
lent plan, but suffers from the same danger of not
being enforced in a community where public opin-
ion is apathetic or hostile with regard to such
precautions.

While all these legal provisions are good as far
as they go, the only effective means of forest-fire
police lies In the direction of a system of specially
appointed fire wardens, subject to due supervision

198 North American Forests and Forestry

by some central authority. Such a system is now
in fairly successful operation in the States of New
York and Minnesota, and to a certain extent in
Wisconsin and a few other States.

The principle of this system is simply to have,
throughout the forest districts, as large a number
of persons as expedient chosen from among the
residents of each locality, whose special duty is to
see that the fire laws are enforced, and especially
that every fire burning unguarded in the woods is
at once detected and put out before it attains peril-
ous dimensions. For this purpose these fire war-
dens are empowered to call upon the people of their
districts to assist in putting out fires, and provision
is made for the compensation of the wardens and
their helpers for work actually done by them. The
local fire wardens ought to be appointed and be
subject to the supervision of a central authority at
the seat of the state grovernment, in order to render
them, at least in some degree, independent of the
voters In their own locality. For efficient service need
never be expected, where the warden Is dependent
on a local public opinion that is apt to consider
his work as officious interference and extravaofant
burdening of the taxpayers. Being appointed by
a superior officer removed from such influences,
the local warden will also be more amenable to con-
trol and can be removed If he turns out incompetent
or Inefficient. The superintendent ought to be en-
abled to become personally acquainted with each
warden, and visit each from time to time, and at.

Fighting Fires and Thieves 199

unexpected periods, to learn the manner in which
he performs his duties.

With a system of this kind there is, of course,
some expense connected, and this is usually urged
as a principal reason against its adoption. Penny-
wisdom and pound-foolishness is the rule with the
" taxpayer " in this as in most other things, while
nothing is more popular with politicians anxious to
capture votes than to cry out against alleged waste-
fulness in public expenditure. This obstacle, like
all others growing out of ignorance, selfishness, and
laziness, can be overcome by persistence and the
logic of facts. In those States where the plan has
been tried it has done incalculable good ; it must
gradually be perfected in its details, and I doubt not
will, within a reasonable time, be introduced in all
States to the conditions of which it is applicable.
The question of who is to bear the expense will
probably be solved by making both the localities in
which the work is done and the State as a whole
participate in the burden. This seems obviously
just, for the localities where life and property are in
immediate dangfer derive the most benefit, while
the entire State is likewise deeply interested in for-
est protection. To make the localities bear the
entire burden would also be impracticable for the
further reason that the financial capacity of these
remote and thinly populated districts is apt to be
very small.

It ought to be stated here that in the Dominion
of Canada a different system of fire protection has

200 North American Forests and Forestry-
been introduced which promises to bear good re-
sults, but which is made possible by the different
policy pursued by our northern neighbors with
regard to their public lands. In the province of
Ontario, where the most valuable forests of Canada
are found, the pine lands belonging to the crown are
not sold, as they are in the States, but lumbermen
are given the privilege of cutting the merchant-
able timber under the supervision of government
officials. They are bound by their contracts, among
other things, to employ guards on the lands turned
over to them, and to take various other precautions
against fire.

A provision which has been enacted by law in
some States, and which some lumbermen follow vol-
untarily, is to burn up, under proper precautions, the
debris left on the around after fellino-. It is uni-

o o

versally admitted that these piles of tree tops and
branches, lying loosely and quickly drying, are
among the most dangerous places in the woods.
Not a few destructive fires are traced to them annu-
ally. It has been demonstrated that the expense of
properly burning these remnants is so low that even
where the margin of profit is very small, a lumber-
man can well afford to take this precaution, and any
failure to do so must be ascribed to wanton disre-
gard of the rights of others.

The various laws designed to lessen the dan-
ger of forest fires, and which we have briefly out-
lined above, cannot fail, if faithfully enforced, to
do considerable good. But under our form of

Fighting Fires and Thieves 201

government there is no chance of their being faith-
fully executed unless public opinion upholds them.
The whole problem, therefore, resolves itself at last,
like all similar problems in the United States, into
the question : how can the public be brought to
demand, persistently and emphatically, due care in
the handling of fire in the woods by all parties con-
cerned, and the punishment of all persons guilty of
negligence ?

The enforcement of the law itself undoubtedly
exerts a very great educational influence on the
people. A single conviction for negligent handling
of fire, or even a prosecution that fails for insufifi-
cient evidence, will make all the people of the
neiofhborhood more careful for a while at least.
Not only will they be afraid of punishment, but the
arrest and trial of an offender will forcibly call at-
tention to the necessity of care in a manner which
no amount of writing and speaking can accomplish.
Yet writing and speaking will do much in this
direction. The local and agricultural press, which
reaches the persons here concerned far more often
than the city daily or the literary magazine, has a
duty here to which it pays far too little attention.
The rural preachers also ought to make this vice
of negligent fire setting a frequent topic of their
sermons. For here certainly is a question of
morals, and a sin of which their parishioners in the
forest districts are guilty much oftener than of some
others, which are favorite topics of the ministers.
At the bottom of the whole matter is a lack of the

202 North American Forests and Forestry

sense of obligation not to injure others ; an absence
of a feehng of responsibiHty for one's own acts.
A man who allows a fire kindled on his own land
to destroy the property of another certainly does
as great a wronaf to his neio;hbor as if he broke
open his money-drawer and stole its contents. Or
again, one w^ho by his negligence causes forest fires
which he knows, or ought to know, are one of the
gravest sources of injury to the nation, is as little a
patriot as one who would refuse to stand by his
country's flag in times of foreign aggression.

It might be said that great reforms in this coun-
try require a generation to become perfectly estab-
lished. For the people who are too old to change
their intellectual habits must be replaced by a
younger element who from childhood have been
trained in the risfht direction. This is true of
forest fires and the forest problem in general, as
well as of any other great national question. It
is essential, therefore, that right moral principles
reofardinof this matter and a correct mental attitude
in reference to the forest be instilled in our youth.
Much well-intentioned nonsense has been spoken
and written about the duty of our schools in con-
nection with the forestry problem. Some enthusi-
asts have even advocated that the children in the
common schools be taught to plant and care for
trees, as a means of helping to solve the question.
It is certainly desirable that every farmer's boy
should learn the elements of arboriculture, but why
should the lesson be taught in the public school,

Fighting Fires and Thieves 203

any more than how to plow or milk the cows ? As
for forestry, readers of this book I trust realize by
this time that planting shade trees along roads or
ornamental trees on lawns is something entirely
different from forestry. Farmers ought to learn
how to treat their timber-lots, better than they now
usually do, and on the western plains, where there
are no natural timber-lots, they should be encour-
aged to plant them. This they must learn as they
learn other agricultural operations, but no good
can come from talking to the children at the dis-
trict school about such things instead of teaching
them the " three Rs." I am sure that every sane
forester will agree to this. But on the other hand
it is eminently proper for rural teachers, in the
localities where forest fires are a constant menace,
to impress on their pupils by precept, instruction,
and example the duty of being careful about fire in
the woods. This is not instruction in forestry, but
simply a part of that moral influence a good teacher
is expected to exert upon the children under his or
her care. It is natural in such places to dwell par-
ticularly on the matter of negligence with fires,
because that is one of the most prevalent vices
there, just as in cities a teacher would naturally lay
most stress on the moral offences to which children
in such localities are likely to be most given.

Not a little educational influence is likewise ex-
erted, I have no doubt, by the practice adopted
in many localities of late of placing sign-boards
in exposed places warning people to be careful.

204 North American Forests and Forestry

Anything which tends to keep constantly before the
people of the forest districts the necessity of the
greatest care in the setting and guarding of fires in
the woods is desirable as a means of creating such
a change of public opinion that negligence will
cease to be considered as something: venial, but be
looked upon universally as what it really is, — a
heinous crime deservinaf the abhorrence of all de-
cent people. As soon as such a condition of public
opinion has been gained there will be no further
difficulty in enforcing the fire-police laws of all
kinds, and the very success of such laws will gradu-
ally make them unnecessary and permit the light-
ening of the burden which for a time must be
imposed upon the taxpayers. The disappearance of
forest fires as the regular and ordinary occurrence
wherever lumbering has been carried on will mark
the time when lumbermen will be ready to shape
their business with a view to reforestinof the de-
nuded tracts. It will not be necessary to wait until
fires have become as rare as they are in Germany.
The lumbermen will be ready to take some chances,
but the probability that the young timber will reach
maturity must at least be greater than that it will
be killed by fire before it becomes merchantable.
With the restocking of cut-over areas by silvicul-
tural operations will come a more conservative man-
ner of lumbering in the remnants of the natural
forest. We have had several occasions to refer to
the fact that lumbermen often cut the trees long
before they have reached the size when their taking

Fighting Fires and Thieves 205

would be most profitable. This is especially true
of recent years. Formerly, when competition was
less sharp and the margin of profits wider, while on
the other hand the abundance of material made it
possible to log in those places only where the cost
of transportation was lowest, it was common to
cull only the largest and best trees. The rest were
left standing, to be taken twenty or thirty years
later, when the quantity of lumber harvested from
them was, of course, much greater. But nowadays
logging has been carried to localities that are com-
paratively inaccessible, and in order to overcome
the greater cost it is necessary to take the greatest
possible amount of material from each tract. So
trees are cut of all sizes, down to the mere pole of
seven inches In diameter. Moreover, the lumber-
man knows by experience that If he lets the young
tree grow, he runs the chance that It will he de-
stroyed by the fire long before he comes around a
second time to cut It. With the latter danger
lessened, he will much oftener prefer to leave the
sapling till it has Increased and Improved the char-
acter of Its wood. It Is not rarely proposed to
prohibit by law the cutting of pine trees less than
twelve inches In diameter or the sale of loofs of
such size. A law of this kind, even If it were con-
stitutional and enforceable, would be unwise. For
as long as the young trees left on the slashings will
probably be destroyed by fire, it is better to make
use of them such as they are. In Ontario, where
lumbermen buy the privilege of logging on crown

2o6 North American Forests and Forestry-
lands, they must leave the saplings ; but there at
least an effort is made to prevent the fires.

Another step towards conservative lumbering,
which is likely to be taken when the fires diminish
in frequency, is that of preserving the young
growth from injury in felling. At present nothing
is further from the minds of logging crews. Where
a tree standing in the midst of a number of young
ones is cut a certain amount of injury to the latter
is rarely avoidable. But it is not necessary', as is
done now, to let the oxen and horses trample down
the seedlings, to roll logs upon them, to let skids
and sleds run over them, and where a sapling is an
inch in the way to chop it down. All this is the
every-day practice of American lumber crews every-
where. In the few places in the United States
where silviculture has been attempted, as in Bilt-
more forest, one of the first things the forester has
had to teach his men has been to take heed of the
young trees. But as soon as lumbermen generally
discover that the fire is likely to keep out of their
slashings, this lesson will be speedily learned.

All this, and much more in the future of Ameri-
can forests, depends upon the restriction of fires.
We have seen in this chapter that a proper fire
police cannot, as a rule, be kept up by the own-
ers of timber-lands themselves, owing to the scat-
tered manner in which their holdings are ordinarily
situated. We have learned that government must
intervene by proper legislation to protect the for-
ests, just as governmental agencies protect city

Fighting Fires and Thieves 207

property against fire. We have discussed some of
the means by which the various States have at-
tempted to perform this duty, and the manner in
which such laws are working ; and finally we have
come to the conclusion that after all the best hope
for us lies in education and the creating of a pub-
lic opinion that will emphatically condemn the
reckless incendiary. But we have intimated above
that there is another factor depending on legisla-
tion which must be adjusted before forestry based
on silviculture can pay in the United States. This
matter of taxation will be the subject of the next
chapter.

CHAPTER X

FORESTRY AND TAXATION

THE problem of raising taxes in such manner as
to make every citizen bear his just share of
the public expense and at the same time be as little
as possible a burden on the industries of the peo-
ple Is admittedly one of the most difficult ones
confronting modern statesmanship. It might be
said that taxes are always paid grudgingly, little
credit though this fact may reflect upon our peo-
ple. The chronic grumbler, the tax-fighter and
perjured tax-dodger, is a well-known nuisance in
every community, and usually belongs to that sec-
tion of the people arrogating to itself the name of
" the better class." With all this dissatisfaction
created by tax laws in every State, it is remarkable
that comparatively little study has been devoted in
this country to this subject, and that most of our
taxes, especially those for local expenditures, are
still levied by a system which is almost barbarous
in its crudeness, inefficiency, and injustice.

As everybody knows, most of the taxes raised in
the United States for municipal and local expendi-
ture of all kinds, and to a considerable extent
for the cost of the state governments, is laid upon

208

Forestry and Taxation 209

property, real and personal, at a more or less arbi-
trary valuation. The defects of this system are
pretty well understood. No regard is paid to the
question whether the property does or does not
produce a revenue, so as to often make it impossi-
ble to hold property which for one reason or the
other does not furnish an annual income. In other
cases, again, the whole revenue is eaten up by the
taxes, making it as undesirable to hold such prop-
erty as it is to own such as produces no income
whatever. The fact that practically the greater
portion of personal property is exempt from taxa-
tion altogether, because the assessors cannot dis-
cover it, makes the injustice of the burden on the
real property still more glaring.

No species of property is hit more hardly by the
crudities of the tax laws than timber-lands. This
circumstance is brought about by a number of con-
ditions, and it exists as well in regard to lands
stocked with merchantable timber as to lands cov-
ered with young growth. The question of making
the forest industries of all kinds bear their just
share of public expenditures is, of course, intimately
bound up with the whole problem of taxation, and
cannot be fully discussed in this book. So much
only we will try to present here as is necessary to
show how a faulty method of taxation is one of the
chief obstacles to the introduction of better sys-
tems of forest exploitation, and especially to the
restocking of denuded timber areas by silvicultural
treatment.

2IO North American Forests and Forestry-
It must be clear from the outset that the neces-
sity of paying annually a certain percentage of the
value of a piece of forest land during the long
period when the young trees slowly grow towards
maturity must be a heavy burden upon the own-
ers. Still, if this annual payment were kept within
reasonable limits, it might be borne. It would be
simply one of the items of expenditure which are
required during this interval, just like those for
interest, labor, supervision, and other things. If
there is a fair expectation that the final harvest
will net an amount of money sufficient to reim-
burse the proprietor for all these expenses with
compound interest, the owner of timber-lands has
no particular grievance. But, unfortunately, the
amount so payable every year is usually far too
high to permit a hope that it could ever be made
up by the final return, even if the danger from fire
did not make the raisinor of a new forest to ma-
turity precarious. The reason why the annual pay-
ment is so hio-h must be souo-ht on the one hand
in faulty assessment, on the other in extravagant
expenditures.

The author ought to state in this place that in
the discussion of the taxing problem he has in view
primarily the laws and practice prevailing in the
State of Wisconsin, with which he is most familiar.
But the differences existin^f in the various other
States are small and do not radically affect the un-
derstanding of the question how taxes affect the
conduct of forestry in the United States.

Forestry and Taxation 211

The assessment of timber-lands, like all other
property, Is usually left to an officer or board selected
from among the residents of the town or other civil
subdivision in which the property is situated. In
the cities these officials are sometimes real experts
in matters of taxation, but far oftener, and always
in the rural districts where forests are found, they
have no special knowledge of the subject and are
guided merely by such practical information as they
possess in common with all other farmers and busi-
ness men of the neicfhborhood. Like most of our
laws and their execution, assessments are based on
the assumption that all lands are held by their
owners either as city lots or as farms, present or
prospective. When the assessor finds a tract of
land stocked with growing timber, he proceeds to
assess its value as he would that of a piece of farm
land. He ascertains the price at which a piece of
similar land would likely be bought by an intend-
ing agricultural settler. Let us say that the usual
price paid in the neighborhood for an acre of wild
land fitted for agriculture is five dollars ; probably
the assessor, intending to be fair, and recognizing
that the land in question is inferior in soil and re-
mote as to location, reduces the price to three dol-
lars. The assessment is usually made at about
two thirds of the real value, so that the tract eoes
down in the assessment roll at two dollars. Let us
say that the tax levied, for all purposes, amounts
to five per cent, of the assessed valuation. This
may seem exorbitant, but is rather low as levies are

212 North American Forests and Forestry

made in the forest counties of Wisconsin. It is
evident that, in a case Hke this, the taxes would in
thirty years equal the value of the property, not
counting the interest. This is assuming that the
assessment is a fair one according to the standard
employed. But it rarely is ; and there is another
feature of the problem.

Timber-lands are usually owned by non-residents,
often by corporations, the stockholders of which
are non-residents. This means that their owners
have no direct influence on the election of assessors,
and cannot defend themselves against over-valua-
tion by defeating the re-election of an unjust offi-
cer. On the other hand the residents are directly
benefited by unjust treatment of the non-residents,
and therefore not likely to be particularly put out
by such injustice. The result of this is naturally
that timber-lands are often over-assessed, even ac-
cording to the standard used for agricultural lands,
which is of itself unfair. If such over-assessment
is glaringly conspicuous, the courts will, of course,
afford relief. But where it is moderate, though in
the aggregate it may amount to a great sum, the
victims would rather pay than go to the expense
and annoyance of litigation. All this is assuming
that the assessor is honest. But, unfortunately,
that assumption does not always hold true. Not
rarely the assessor simply blackmails the timber
owner by threatening to put an outrageous valua-
tion on his land, in the hope of being bought off.
Too often that hope is realized, although the owner

Forestry and Taxation 213

must know that if he pays once he will surely be
fleeced again the next year. The result of all these
abuses is that a very large proportion of forest
lands all over the country are abandoned by their
owners after the merchantable timber has been re-
moved. The taxes are no longer paid ; at the tax
sales no bidders are found, and after due time the
title vests in the county or State, according to the
statutes in force in the different jurisdictions.
These abandoned woodlands might form the nu-
cleus of a fine system of state forests, if the govern-
ments were ready to undertake their care. In fact,
a few States are beginning to avail themselves of
the opportunity. But at the same time, it cannot
be denied that the whole procedure is nothing but
confiscation under the guise of taxation. In most
cases the counties or other governmental agencies
which obtain the tax titles are anxious to sell the
lands again, and now it becomes apparent how
utterly unjust the assessment was, for lands that
were taxed on the basis of one or two dollars as-
sessed valuation an acre are often sold to specula-
tors at the rate of ten or twelve dollars a " forty."

This may be a convenient place to indicate roughly
how the value of woodlands is computed in Europe,
althougrh it must be understood that this method is
not applicable to our country under present condi-
tions, and is not suggested as a substitute for pre-
vailing standards of assessment. In this country
a person buying timber-lands considers the value
of the merchantable timber only. The young

2 14 North American Forests and Forestry-
trees, seedlings and saplings, are disregarded alto-
gether. It stands to reason, however, that if a for-
est ripe for the axe has a certain value, a forest
that will become merchantable thirty or fifty years
from now must have a value likewise. It can be
found by taking the value the forest will have at
maturity and deduct therefrom what it will cost in
interest and running expenses to bring it to that
stacre. In the technical lancruasfe of foresters, the
amount so computed is called by the rather cumber-
some term " expectation value." To make this cal-
culation it is necessary, of course, to have the means
of telling how much lumber the forest will yield at
maturity. This the European forester can approxi-
mately ascertain by means of those yield tables
mentioned in a former chapter. But the American
timber buyer has no means of computing the amount
of timber his young forest will yield many years
hence, because yield tables have never been con-
structed nor the observations made on which they
could be based. Moreover, the ever-present factor
of fire renders a computation of expectation values
impossible with us. In Europe the possibility that
young timber will be destroyed before it becomes
merchantable is so small that it may be disregarded.
In the United States more or less injury from fire
is almost certain, and the probability of total de-
struction, with coniferous forests at least, is greater
than that it will escape.

If cut-over timber-lands are to be assessed for
taxes in such a manner as to do no injustice to the

Forestry and Taxation 215

owner, the assessment must be based, not upon what
a man would be wilhng to pay who wanted the land
for agriculture, but on what timber producers would
pay for it. That this is not possible under present
conditions is plain. The only fair thing to do,
then, would be to assess such lands at what the
counties will get when they sell their tax titles, —
in other words, a few cents an acre. This, however,
the local assessors refuse to do, and the confiscation
goes merrily on.

So far we have spoken of the cases where lands
from which the merchantable timber has been taken
are assessed and taxed at an exorbitant rate. But
timber owners fare not a whit better when they are
taxed on land stocked with uncut merchantable
timber. It is remarkable how much sound, mer-
chantable pine or other timber the assessor is able
to find on a given tract of land. It must be said,
however, that it is equally wonderful how little of
it can be found by the estimator who looks at it in
the employ of a prospective purchaser. The fact
is that all information obtainable as to the amount
of merchantable timber now orrowin<£ on the forest
lands of the country is utterly unreliable. The es-
timates are based on guess-work at best, and the
guesses are affected by the purposes for which they
are made. It is probable that the information
really in the possession of the great lumbering con-
cerns and their woodsmen is much more accurate
than the statements that are made by them to
strangers, including takers of the census and other

2i6 North American Forests and Forestry

official inquirers. There are numerous reasons
why it is not for the interest of owners to let others
know too definitely the quantity of timber growing"
on their land. The fear of the tax collector is but
one of these reasons ; that of the business com-
petitor is equally strong. The upshot of it all is,
that woodsmen of equal skill and experience, and
equal degrees of acquaintance with the particular
locality, will differ widely in their estimates of the
available timber resources. Even aside from in-
tentional or unintentional bias, the methods of
making^ estimates of standing^ timber are so crude
and rough that nothing but a faint approximation
of the real facts is ever obtained by them. Un-
doubtedly these results are sufficiently accurate for
the business of lumberinof as now conducted. But
when lumbering shall be based in this country on a
system of silviculture, the present methods of meas-
uring and valuing wood crops will have to be re-
placed by others that give more accurate data.

The art of measuring wood crops, either felled
or standing, has been highly developed in Europe.
Foresters of a mathematical turn of mind have
delio^hted in inventing- various methods of men-
suration, and reduced even the simplest things to
mathematical formulas which make the handbooks
of this art exceedingly hard reading to those not
fond of dealing with equations. Various imple-
ments have been devised to assist in obtaining the
data required for computation. The aim with
Europeans invariably is to discover the volume of

Forestry and Taxation 217

wood contained in a forest as expressed in cubic
metres. There can be no doubt that this in itself
brings about much greater accuracy than our sys-
tem of expressing quantity in feet board measure,
althouorh it is not so convenient for the lumber-
man, because he must first make another calcula-
tion before he can tell how many boards he ought
to saw out of a given amount of logs. With the
development of American silvicultural forestry,
methods of mensuration adapted to American con-
ditions and approaching those of Europe in accu-
racy will undoubtedly be invented. In fact, a very
simple and convenient one has already been sug-
gested in a recent bulletin of the United States
Forestry Division. When such methods shall be
in universal use, even the rural assessor will prob-
ably be prevailed upon to apply them. But one
may hope that by that time a different way may
have been found to let the forest and lumber inter-
ests bear their fair portion of the public burden.

We have stated that the owners of timber-lands
are affected unjustly not only by the assessment
of taxes, but also by the expenditure of the pro-
ceeds. The way in which lavish expenditure is
more burdensome to them than to other taxpayers
is the following. In the districts where the forests
are situated, it very often happens that but a small
proportion of the taxes levied is paid by residents.
The timber-lands from which the greater portion
of taxes is derived belong mostly to the non-
resident lumbermen. The latter therefore have

2i8 North American Forests and Forestry

no voice either in the levy of the tax or the manner
of its expenditure. The report of the Wisconsin
tax commissioners for 1898 shows, among other
thines, that in the town of Georo-etown, Price
County, during the preceding ten years the resi-
dents paid but 4.8 per cent, of the taxes levied. In
many other towns a similar proportion prevailed.
This in itself would be an almost irresistible temp-
tation to extravagant expenditure on the part of
the local authorities. It should be observed that
in Wisconsin the township system prevails, and the
town and school-district taxes are levied by the
voters in town meeting assembled. But this is not
the worst of the predicament in which the land-
owners find themselves. Not only do they pay
the taxes which others impose, but practically not
a penny of the large sums they pay into the public
treasury is expended for their benefit, except per-
haps so much of it as goes towards the support of
the courts. The heaviest expenses in all these
newly settled districts are, on the one hand, the
establishing of schools, on the other, the building
of roads and bridgres. For the former the lumber-
men obviously have no use, and the latter they
do not get, for all improvements are made where
the settlers live, and for their benefit, but not in
the remote parts where the timber-lands lie. Of
late the State of Wisconsin has made a beginning
towards establishing a forest-fire police, but the
expense which may be incurred for this purpose in
every township of thirty-six sections is limited by

Forestry and Taxation 219

law to one hundred dollars a year, and as a matter
of fact most towns pay far less than that, or noth-
ing at all, towards this end. If it is true, as is
often stated, that taxes are paid in return for the
protection received from the government, then
timber-lands ought not to be taxed at all, for they
receive very little protection indeed against their
deadly enemies, the fire and the man who sets it.
That taxation in these new districts must be high
is unavoidable, for all the public improvements
which older regions need merely keep in repair
must here be created out of nothing. But in
justice the benefits ought to be extended to all
property which shares in the burden. Much of
the expense incurred is also due to mere want of
business skill, looseness of methods, and sometimes
to corruption. Money so squandered of course
goes into the pockets of the residents, as officials
and contractors, while most of it comes out of the
treasury of the non-resident lumbermen, who on
their part spend thousands of dollars in wages and
for supplies to the very people who so unfairly
bleed them.

The excessive burden of taxes resting upon the
woodlands, both stocked and denuded, cannot fail
to be a very serious hindrance to successful silvi-
cultural forestry in all those States where methods
similar to that described above prevail. But unfor-
tunately the problem how those methods of taxation
can be improved is very difficult of solution. A
radical relief can be obtained by the forest interests

2 20 North American Forests and Forestry

only in common with all other business interests of
the country through the total abolition of the inad-
equate and unfair tax on property and the introduc-
tion of a more equitable scheme. But a number of
plans have been proposed to remedy the evil where
timber-lands are particularly the sufferers.

It is often suororested that owners of orrowinof for-
ests should be exempted from taxes thereon until
the time of the final harvest. Usually the proposi-
tion includes the payment, at the time of the har-
vest, of a sum equal to what would ordinarily be
paid in annual instalments. In this form I cannot
see that the relief to the owner would be very great.
He would be excused from paying anything if the
crop should be destroyed before maturity. But
aside from that, none of the difficulties would be
removed. The unfair assessment and excessive
expenditures would still continue, and the large sum
to be paid at the harvest would probably doom the
enterprise to financial failure. On the other hand,
the local authorities would be seriously handicapped
from the large annual deficiency in their receipts — -
a difficulty which could hardly be made good by the
recovery of a very great lump sum in the distant
future.

In Pennsylvania there is a law under which own-
ers of not to exceed fifty acres, stocked with at least
fifty trees of eight inches in diameter or over to the
acre, may obtain a rebate of eighty per cent, of the
tax annually imposed on such land. This law is
clearly not designed to apply to forests managed

Forestry and Taxation 221

for lumber, but rather to timber-lots and parks where
the trees are preserved as a protection to the climate
and physiographic conditions. In fact, the preamble
to the law intimates such an intention. It does not
help us, therefore, to solve the difficulties we are
discussing in regard to forestr)^ as a business.

Sometimes it is proposed that persons planting
and maintaining trees on their lands shall be exempt
from taxes on them. This is, like the Pennsylvania
plan, applicable rather to cases where forests should
be preserved for reasons other than lumber produc-
tion. It is particularly useful on the treeless plains,
where farmers ought to be encouraged to plant
timber belts. In effect it is a bounty on tree plant-
ing and suffers from many of the faults of the
bounty system. It is difficult to prevent people
from making a mere pretence of maintaining a
growing forest, when in reality they are but trying
to escape taxation on their pasture lands. The
United States for a number of years offered a quar-
ter section of land in the treeless section to any one
who would undertake to plant a certain number of
acres with trees and care for them ; but the frauds
growing out of this " tree-claim " law were so glar-
ing, and the results in the way of establishing forests
on the western plains were so small, that the law
was repealed. There is danger that laws exempting
tree plantations from taxes may have similar bad
results. A total exemption of forest lands used for
lumber production would, of course, be a radical
cure of all evils growing out of taxation, and it is

22 2 North American Forests and Forestry

sometimes proposed on the plea that public welfare
demands such favors to the lumber interests. But
the plea is not well founded. If silvicultural for-
estry cannot be made to pay without a bounty,
whether in the shape of exemption from taxes or
cash payments, it is very doubtful whether it could
be made permanently profitable with such an arti-
ficial stimulus. In the meantime, the exemption
would be invidious and subject to constant attacks.
Forest owners would have to be " in politics " all
the time, to protect their interests, and would soon
rival the railways as intentional or unintentional
jDromoters of corruption. No true friend of im-
proved forestry ought to advocate such dangerous
measures as this.

To the author it would seem as if the solution of
the problem of taxing forests and lumber interests
would lie in the direction of taxing them on their
gross income instead of their property, in analogy to
the manner in which transportation companies are
taxed. Nearly all concerns which carry on lumber-
ing and other forms of forest exploitation on a large
scale in the United States are now legally organ-
ized as corporations. Very much of the timber-
lands of the country is owned by these same com-
panies or by others organized for the purpose. If
these corporations were relieved from property
taxes and instead contributed a percentage of their
gross receipts to the public expenses, it would be
comparatively easy to adjust the amount payable
with justice to all parties concerned. On the other

Forestry and Taxation 223

hand, the difficulties arising- out of the assessment
of lands by the local authorities would disappear.
It is true that not all timber-lands held for lumber-
ing on a large scale are owned by corporations.
But if individual holders wish to avail themselves
of the benefits of the law, they may easily organize
corporations to take the title, while they retain a
controllinof interest in the stock. To make the law
directly applicable to individuals would probably be
impracticable, for the reason that individuals would
ordinarily have other sources of income, and it might
be impossible to separate the income arising out of
their lumber interests from other revenues.

A system such as this would, in the author's
opinion, solve the taxation question in a manner
satisfactory to everybody. Until it has been intro-
duced only palliatives are available, which must look
principally in the direction of a fairer method of
assessing woodlands, especially those from which
the merchantable timber has been removed. These
means lie partly with the courts. After a somewhat
careful study of the authorities the author has come
to the conclusion that it will be held, if the matter
is brought before a court in proper shape, that an
assessment of such lands based upon what agricul-
tural lands will sell for, is of itself unfair and will be
reduced. The leofal reasons for this conclusion can-
not, of course, be set forth in a volume like this.
There is another feature of the taxation of forest
products which, on account of the frequency with
which it is discussed, deserves notice. That is the

2 24 North American Forests and Forestry

question of import duties upon lumber. Nothing
is heard more frequently than the contention that
lumber ought to be admitted free, in order that the
forests of the country might be protected from
destruction by the lumbermen. With the general
question of the wisdom of protective duties we
have nothing to do in this book. But every
forester will protest against the means of " pro-
tecting " the forests by destroying the lumber
industry. That free admission of lumber would
work a total or practical destruction of the lumber
business is evidently assumed by those urging
this argument, for otherwise the expected pres-
ervation of the forests could not result. We may
therefore accept their conclusion that free trade in
lumber would keep the axe away from the remain-
ing merchantable timber. . It must be plain to atten-
tive readers that people who prefer this argument
have not grasped the very first principle of forestry,
which is the utilization of the forests while preserv-
ing their existence. Not to destroy the lumber in-
dustry', but to insure its continuation during the
whole future life of the nation is the aim of forestry
reform. To let forests lie idle, a useless wilderness,
would not even preserve them, for fire, windfall,
insects, and fungi would gradually destroy them.
The conditions under which the primeval forests
were created, flourished, and preserved themselves
have gone forever. The forests of the future, if
they are to exist at all, in the midst of dense
population and a civilization in a great measure

Forestry and Taxation 225

depending on their products, must be skilfully and
lovingly cared for by man. In return they will supply
him with what he needs of their stock, and they will
protect his hillsides and watercourses, and beckon
him to their shades for rest and recreation more
beneficently than ever the primeval wilderness did.
It may or may not be true that sound policy de-
mands free trade in lumber. But that is a question
to be answered on general grounds of national
economy. As a means of preserving the forests it
m.ust be repudiated by the advocates of forestry
reform.

The forest and lumber interests must not and do
not demand to be exempt from their due share in
carrying the burden of taxation necessary to support
our government, national, state, or local. What
they do demand and are entitled to is such an ad-
justment of the manner and amount of taxation
that on the one hand these forms of industry are
made to pay no greater proportion of the taxes than
other interests, and on the other hand the tax regu-
lations do not make a rational conduct of the for-
estry business impossible. It is for the interest of
the whole nation that this question be settled right.
If the people only understood how seriously their
interests are injured by the faulty manner of forest
taxation, they would be far more clamorous than
the lumbermen themselves to have these abuses
rectified. For the lumbermen have paid their ex-
orbitant taxes in the past and have made money,
even built up great fortunes ; and they do so now,

2 26 North American Forests and Forestry

and may continue to do so until all the original
stock of timber is exhausted. But they are doing
this at the expense of the nation. While on the
one hand the people fail to protect them against
fire, on the other hand they extort excessive taxes.
Thereby they make it impossible for lumbermen to
cut their timber conservatively, with due attention
to reforestation, and to carry on proper silviculture.
The people alone are the losers.

On the treatment of the questions of fire and
taxes depends the future of American forest in-
dustries. Their solution can be reached by nothing
but legislation ; legislation depends upon the will of
the people in a commonwealth where all political
action is ultimately decided by public opinion. In
other countries, the judgment of a few enlight-
ened men may sometimes introduce wise reforms,
even against the will of those who are to reap the
ultimate benefit. But this incidental advantage of
monarchy and aristocracy we gave up when we
chose the greater benefits of a democratic form of
national life. Having made the many their own
masters, we must persuade them to do what will be
for their own good, and point out to them the way
they cannot find by themselves. This necessity of
teaching not a few, but the many, makes reforms,
in our governmental affairs plants of slow growth,
and the time which is spent in agitation and instruc-
tion is usually much longer with us than with other
nations. The forestry problem is but just emerging
from this preliminary stage. While it is not the

Forestry and Taxation 227

purpose of this book to furnish a history of the
moveraent for forestry reform in this country, our
survey of the subject would be incomplete if we
did not devote a chapter to the various phases
through which the movement has passed. At the
same time we ought to consider some of the work
which is done by various governmental and educa-
tional institutions, and the matter of agitation and
instruction. Finally we must show how within quite
recent years the movement has begun to have some
results, both in legislation and actual silviculture.

I

CHAPTER XI

REFORM IN FORESTRY METHODS

T would be impossible to fix the year when the
apfitation for better methods of treating- forest
resources in the United States began. In the writ-
ings of scientific men, as well as of travellers and
lovers of scenery and outdoor life, of more than fifty
years ago, one occasionally finds expressions of re-
gret that our forests are being wasted. Gradually
the number of such expressions increases. Writers
begin to call attention to the evil effects deforesta-
tion must exercise on climate, waterflow, and fer-
tility of soil. But for a very long time no practical
remedies are suggested, nor is the question ap-
proached in a systematic and business-like manner.
It is a peculiar feature of the history of American
forestry that the impetus towards reform began
with botanists and other scientific men on the one
hand, horticulturists and landscape gardeners on
the other. It was far different in Europe, and
especially Germany, when about the middle of the
eighteenth century the need of a more rational
treatment of forests first attracted wide-spread
attention. There it was from an economic and
financial standpoint that the question was first

22S

Reform in Forestry Methods 229

approached. Many of the rulers of the multitude of
small communities into which Germany was divided,
and who treated their dominions very much as a
man would his private estates, had rather expensive
tastes, and found that they must either retrench or
increase their revenues. When the ability of their
subjects to pay taxes was exhausted, they turned to
the large forests, which most of them possessed, in
order to replenish their coffers, and their advisers
usually had sense enough to see that one could
increase the productivity of the forests without
destroying them. When fifty years later most of
these princelings were mediatized, the larger por-
tion of their forests became the property of the
greater states of which their territories were made
parts, and formed the nucleus of the magnificent
system of state forests Germany enjoys to-day.
On the other hand, the abler statesmen of the
eighteenth century saw that there was danger of
the supply of lumber and fire-wood, — which latter
was then of much more importance than now, — fall-
ing behind the demand and prices rising excessively.
So they thought of ways to increase the productiv-
ity of forests and prevent their destruction. Thus
both the greed of the bad rulers and the foresight
of good ones caused the adoption of rational
forestry methods.

The fact that in the United States the first im-
pulse towards forestry reform has not come from
the owners and exploiters, nor from economists or
statesmen, but from people who had a scientific or

230 North American Forests and Forestry

generally patriotic interest in the subject, has given
the movement a ver}^' peculiar course. On the one
hand, the circumstance was a fortunate one, for it
enlisted in favor of reform a body of men, of highly
trained intelligence, who had no personal and pecu-
niary interests at stake and therefore could not fall
under the suspicion of having private ends to serve
whenever they urged upon the public the adoption
of any particular policy. But there were serious
drawbacks to this advantage. The public, who
heard the subject discussed principally by botanists
and writers on allied subjects, soon conceived the
notion that forestry is primarily a question concern-
ing scientists only, and not of general importance.
This notion is not yet eradicated from the popular
mind, any more than its sister error, that forestry is
identical with tree planting, and that its practice is
therefore promoted by getting people interested in
setting out shade trees along roadsides or in the
school grounds. Yet the botanists and horticul-
turists at least knew what they were about, so far as
they went. True, they neglected almost entirely
the business side of the problem, and devoted them-
selves exclusively to the question of preserving
forests on account of the climatic and physiograph-
ical dangers accompanying their removal. But
within this limited field they were serious and intel-
ligent, and great praise is due to their efforts in
promoting a more general understanding of these
matters. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said
of the horde of purveyors of light literature who

Reform in Forestry Methods 231

soon took up forestry as the latest fad. These
people had no knowledge of their subject except
what they might chance to remember from a super-
ficial perusal of the writings of the botanists. But
they presumed to speak in the name of forestry,
and filled the newspapers and magazines with their
productions, while a host of well-meaning preachers
and popular lecturers seconded their efforts from
the platform, with equal zeal and equal lack of in-
formation. The chancres were runor ad nauseam
on the fearful effects of forest destruction in the
Mediterranean countries, while the lumberman was
painted in the blackest colors as one who seeks a
fiendish pleasure in destroying the primeval woods.
The necessary consequence of this flood of misin-
formation was soon apparent. Forestry soon came
to be looked upon as a fantastical idea of enthusi-
asts, a pretty subject to write verses about, a thing
that had nothing to do with the practical, every-day
affairs of life. Lumbermen and woodland owners,
the very people who should have felt the greatest
interest in the movement, because their pockets
were most directly concerned, held aloof from it, and
were kept from active opposition only by the con-
tempt they felt for the whole agitation. This un-
fortunate result works its mischief to the present
day, for even now there are large numbers of intel-
ligent people who fail to understand the nature of
forestry, even in the limited sense of the botanists,
and certainly so in the true and comprehensive
sense which for years a few energetic workers in

232 North American Forests and Forestry

various parts of the country have tried to impress
upon them.

When the work of the scientific men first began
to bear fruit, it took the direction of simply setting
aside tracts of forest land as reserves, with the idea
of keeping them forever in a state of nature. The
tracts selected for this purpose were chosen with a
view to protect especially the headwaters of rivers,
although other considerations also frequently influ-
enced the choice. Both the federal and several state
governments took steps in this direction. As to
the federal ofovernment, the first reserves of this
kind were the great national parks of the Yellow-
stone and the Yosemite. In these, the protection
of the forests was but an incident to the object of
making the many natural wonders and the beautiful
scenery of these regions more accessible to the peo-
ple, and keep them from being destroyed or at least
monopolized by private greed. During the last
few years, however, a large number of forest tracts
in the Black Hills of Dakota, various parts of the
Rocky Mountain system, and the ranges of the
Pacific coast were similarly set aside, this time with
the express double purpose of protecting the timber
and the water supply needed for the irrigation
works in the valleys and on the arid plains. A dis-
tinction must therefore be made between the na-
tional parks and the government forest reserves.
Each class is governed by regulations differing in
details according to the object in view and also ac-
cording to differences in the local circumstances.

Reform in Forestry Methods 2:^^

But both are aHke in this, that at last effective steps
are taken to guard against fires and timber thieves.
The reservations set aside by various States Hke-
wise differ, inasmuch as their principal purpose is
the preservation of forests or the reserving to the
use of the people of districts conspicuous for their
scenery or other natural beauties. For instance,
the Adirondack forest reserve of the State of New-
York is a forest reserve proper, while the interstate
reserve recently established by Minnesota and Wis-
consin about the dells of the St. Croix River is
analogous to the Yosemite Park.

The orovernment forest reserves were estab-
lished under the provisions of an act of Congress,
approved on March 3, 1891, which authorizes the
President to withdraw from entry and sale portions
of the public domain which in his opinion are
required for the protection of the waterflow and
forest growth. Under this law over thirty such
reservations have now been created, aggregating
almost 50,000,000 acres, of which a portion, how-
ever, lies above the timber-line in the regions of
eternal snow. It is likely that several more reserva-
tions will be established ere long. No appreciable
opposition to this policy was at first encountered.
But when by a proclamation of President Cleveland,
dated February 22, 1897, the aggregate extent of
the reservations theretofore created was increased
very much by the addition of several more very
large tracts, a determined opposition arose on the
part of several interests which believed themselves

234 North American Forests and Forestry

injured by the act of the government. Mine owners
claimed that they were prevented by the order
from developing valuable mineral lands ; lumber-
men grumbled that their timber supply was being
cut short. It was stated that the tracts set aside
included agfricultural lands, and even village sites,
and that numerous settlers were cut off from com-
munication with the outside world. But the loudest
clamor came from the sheepmen, who had been in
the habit of driving their immense flocks over the
public lands without let or hindrance, leaving de-
struction in their paths. The opposition succeeded
in getting the Senate to insert in the Sundry Civil
Bill, during the session of 1898, a clause suspending
the operation of the orders indefinitely, and restor-
ing the tracts covered by them to that part of the
public domain open to private entry. Fortunately,
this aroused the friends of the policy. It was
shown that most of the arguments of the opposition
were based on an intentional or unintentional mis-
representation of the facts. The House of Repre-
sentatives refused to accept the amendment of the
Senate, and in conference the latter receded from
its position. Since that time, President McKinley
has established several more forest reservations,
mostly in compliance with requests from the people
of the surrounding regions themselves. The oppo-
sition has almost entirely collapsed, and even some
of the sheepmen have seen the error of their ways.
The government had laid itself open to attack
from the business interests of the territorv affected

Reform in Forestry Methods 235

by the orders, because the plan, as originally con-
ceived, was based on the old idea that preserving a
forest means refraining from utilizing it. No pro-
vision whatever was made in the original law for
the proper management of the forests so reserved.
In this the United States followed the policy
adopted by the States that had theretofore set
aside forest reserves. With no little show of rea-
son it could be said that the withdrawal of these
immense compact areas of land from settlement
interfered with the development of the States and
Territories in which they were situated. Large
portions of these States were thereby doomed to
remain in the condition of useless wilds. At first
no provision was made even for a proper policing
of the reservations ao-ainst fire and thieves. But
this defect was remedied in 1898 by the appropria-
tion of a moderate sum for the organization of a
police service. The land office, under the control
of which these reservations are placed, at once
established a service of fire rangers, and in the
very first season it was reported that the number
and destructiveness of fires in the reservations had
been greatly diminished, although the organization
was still admittedly imperfect.

By the rules promulgated for the government of
the federal reservations all business interests estab-
lished within their limits are duly protected. Set-
tlers who had acquired possession of lands before
the tract was withdrawn from entry are allowed to
build roads and cut timber for domestic and farm

236 North American Forests and Forestry

use. Mines may be worked and timber cut for
their operation, under proper regulations. Even
the sheep are admitted, to the northern reserves
at least, where the humidity of the climate is
greater and the danger of soil destruction by
trampling less imminent. But the number of ani-
mals that may be pastured on a given area is limited,
and the owners must take satisfactory precautions
against fire, on pain of being excluded from the
reservation. All these measures are desirable as
far as they go. But the policy of our federal gov-
ernment with regard to its forests cannot be called
a truly rational one until the beginning has been
made to exploit them with due regard to reproduc-
tion and improvement of the stock. To introduce
silvicultural forestry on such large areas must, of
course, be the gradual progress of many years.
But there is no reason why the first steps should
not be taken at once. When such operations are
fairly under way, the people of those western
States will discover that far from being a drawback
to the development of the country these mountain
forests will be one of the greatest sources of wealth
at their command.

Nowhere has the fact been more emphatically
shown, that the great body of the public has not
yet grasped the idea of combining forest utiliza-
tion and preservation, than in the attitude of the
State of New York. When in 1894 the constitu-
tional convention met, a clamorous demand was
made upon it to take steps for the protection of

Reform in Forestry Methods 237

forests. The demand came almost exclusively
from persons who had no business interests con-
nected with forest exploitation, and many of the
most enthusiastic friends of the forests, in the
newspapers and elsewhere, had but very slender
information on the subject. All they knew was
that forests were being destroyed, that such de-
struction was detrimental to the climate, waterflow,
and fertility of the soil, and that the forests were
the great recreation grounds of the people. They
were determined that this destruction of forests
must stop, and the convention did what the peo-
ple demanded. A clause was inserted in the con-
stitution prohibiting entirely the cutting of timber
on public lands. Consequently, the magnificent
state forests of New York, comprising over half a
million of acres, are doomed to lie idle and useless
until this well-meant but ill-advised provision has
been repealed. The State of New York, however,
has given other States a good example in not only
appropriating large sums of money for the acquisi-
tion of additional forest lands, but also establish-
ing a fairly efficient system of fire police. As a
result of this. New York suffers less from forest
fires at the present day than probably any other
State of the Union.

It. would swell this chapter to unreasonable
lencrth were we to insert an enumeration of all
that has been done by the legislative and admin-
istrative action of the various state governments
towards a solution of the forestry question. Some

238 North American Forests and Forestry

of the States, notably, in addition to New York,.
Penns}dvania and Minnesota, are somewhat in
advance of the rest, while others, whose forest
interests are among the greatest, like Michigan
and Wisconsin, lag far behind, and still others,
like most of the southern States, have done noth-
ing at all. A number of States have established
forestry commissions, whose duties, however, are
merely of an advisory nature, without administra-
tive functions. Where forest reservations have
been set apart, the idea of a mere park or unused
wilderness is everywhere prevalent, and nowhere
has silvicultural forestry been begun by public au-
thority, except in connection with the new State
College of Forestry at Cornell University. Of
this we will have more to say anon. In several
States, geological surveys and agricultural experi-
ment stations have done valuable work in making
inquiries into the forest conditions existing in their
respective localities. This is especially true of
North Carolina and Minnesota. In California, an
experiment station has been established which has
devoted itself with success to the acclimatization
of trees from Australia and Asia.

More important than the forest inquiries con-
ducted by the several States is the similar work
carried on under the auspices of the federal gov-
ernment by the Forestry Division of the Agricul-
tural Department. It dates back to the year 1878,
but did not become of very much importance until
about eight years later, when Dr. B. E. Fernow, a

Reform in Forestry Methods 239

forester who had received his training in the woods
and schools of Germany, was placed at its head.
He continued in this position until 1898, when he
was called to the head of the Forestry College at
Ithaca, N. Y. Under his management it became
one of the special aims of the Division to gain the
good will of the lumbermen and other forestal
business interests by collecting information of im-
mediate practical importance to them. In addition,
the chief and his assistants sought by writing and
lectures to spread among the people correct infor-
mation on forestry subjects, and to their efforts it is
due in no small degree that the attitude towards
forestry both of the business interests and the pub-
lic at large has begun to change very rapidly during
the last few years. Dr. Fernow's successor in office
is Mr. Gifford Pinchot, also a man of European
training, as well as large practical experience in
forestry matters in this country. Mr. Pinchot has
added to the other work of the Division a system
by which owners of woodlands may call upon the
officials to advise them in the institution of plans
for silvicultural treatment of their properties. The
new departure has met with unexpected success
and marks the first step towards general introduc-
tion of silvicultural forestry in this country.

It should not be supposed that no silviculture at
all had been practised before this time in the
United States. Aside from the planting of tree
belts on the plains, which has repeatedly been
referred to, and what tree planting approaching the

240 North American Forests and Forestry

dimensions of forests may have been done in vari-
ous pubhc or private parks, numerous groves have
been planted in various parts of the country with a
direct view to their prospective money value, prin-
cipally of black walnut and other high-priced hard
woods. Again, where the owner of timber-lots of
more or less extent happened to have some slight
knowledge of its proper treatment, or had an op-
portunity to take the advice of some one who had
such information, he has managed his little forest
according to something like rational principles.
Althouo-h wood-lots so treated are few and far
between, as compared with the number of such
holdings in the country, yet their aggregate acreage,
if it could be ascertained, would show a respectable
figure. In Southern California, considerable tracts
have been planted with eucalyptus and other trees
imported from Australia. Still, all these forestal
operations were of small proportions. But silvi-
cultural forestry on a large scale was successfully
introduced, seven or eight years ago, on the famous
Biltmore estate in North Carolina belonging to
Mr. Geo. W. Vanderbilt. The work was begun
under the direction of Mr. Gifford Pinchot, and
since his retirement has been carried on by Dr. C.
A. Schenck, another forester of German training.
The operations in this forest were begun under
rather unfavorable circumstances. Most of the
valuable timber had been culled by lumbermen, and
the farmers who had been the former owners had
done untold mischief by fire, cattle, injudicious cut-

Reform in Forestry Methods 241

ting-, and other bad practices. Under these circum-
stances, it will take a great many years, during which
large expenses are necessary, to bring the forest
gradually to something like what is called a normal
condition. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, it is
understood that the enterprise has so far been a
financial success. Other estates of considerable
size, which were managed according to true fores-
try principles before the above mentioned offer of
the Forestry Division, are those at Ne-Ha-Sa-Ne
Park, in the Adirondacks, belonging to Wm. C.
Whitney and W. S. Webb. Since the government
has begun to assist directly in this work, in the fall
of 1898, the extent of woodland in behalf of which
applications for working plans and supervision have
been made is nearly two millions of acres in vari-
ous parts of the country. The most cheering
feature of the matter is that the majority of the
applicants are no longer rich men whose motives,
like Mr. Vanderbilt's, are as much to set a good
example as to make money. Most of them look
at the plan strictly from a business standpoint. Of
the large concerns which have availed themselves
of the offer, the most conspicuous one is the Inter-
national Paper Company, commonly known as the
paper trust, which is said to control more than a
hundred million acres of woodlands, mostly covered
with spruce.

While these forward steps mark the beginning
of a new epoch in the history of American forestry,
the time when agitation and the dissemination

242 North American Forests and Forestry

of instruction was of the first necessity has not yet
entirely passed by. Much still remains to be done,
for while the light may be slowly breaking through
the clouds, a large part of the nation still remains
in ignorance of the true nature of forestry and the
needs of the people in regard to it. Legislation of
the kind indicated in previous chapters is still to be
brought about in those States which have so far
entirely neglected it, and existing laws must be im-
proved and their scope extended. As yet, while
public opinion has very generally become favorable
to forestry reform instead of ridiculing it as for-
merly, this favorable attitude has not crystallized
into anything more than a vague sentiment. In
most States all practical efforts are left to a few
individuals, on whom falls the duty of piloting
proposed measures through the devious channels
along which legislative bodies do their work. It is
encouraging that in such attempts ordinarily little
opposition based on arguments, however fallacious,
in encountered. But everybody at all acquainted
with the manner in which legislation is brought
about, in Congress as well as in the State leo-isla-
tures, knows that the mere absence of active op-
position is not sufficient to insure the passage of a
bill. It is necessary to arouse an active interest
among the members, otherwise the mere dead-
weight of indifference is enough to keep it from
becoming a law. Even where such active interest
within the legislative bodies exists, the fate of
forestry bills is apt to become entangled with that

Reform in Forestry Methods 243

of others in no wise crermane to them, accordinsf to
the exigencies of the interests and ambitions of
members.

One of the most efficient agencies of agitation in
behalf of forestry reform is the American Forestry-
Association, with its affihated societies in several
of the States. The American Forestry ^Association
was founded in 1882. From small beginnings it
has grown to be a very influential body, as is
perhaps best shown by the abuse occasionally
heaped upon it by western sheepmen and other
parties, whose real or imagined interests conflict
with its aims. It numbers among its members
prominent men in all walks of life, including lumber-
men, manufacturers, statesmen, and scientists. The
association holds meetings, from time to time, in
various parts of the country, at which papers are
read, questions of general interest discussed, and
other business transacted. The meetinof of the asso-
ciation in any given community usually results in a
great quickening of local interest in forestry matters,
with consequent good results in practice and legis-
lation. The association also publishes a monthly
periodical, called The Forestei\ which is doing ex-
cellent service in spreading information, affording
a medium of discussion and collecting news in
forestry matters. This magazine was originally
founded by Mr. John Gifford, of New Jersey, one
of the pioneers in the forestry-reform movement.
He transferred it to the association, to be its offi-
cial organ. Another similar publication is Forest

244 North American Forests and Forestry

Leaves, appearing under the auspices of the Penn
sylvania Forestry Association. The excellent
periodical called Garden a7id Forest, which had
forestry for one of its fields of work, has unfortu-
nately been obliged to suspend. In this connection
it should be stated that the lumbering and other
trade papers representing industries dependent on
forests are now mostly among the stanchest sup-
porters of improved methods. At first these
people were very contemptuous of the entire
movement. But gradually they discovered that
forestry reform was not a fad of theorists, dreamers,
and impracticables, but a very business-like prop-
osition, of the utmost importance to their branches
of trade, as well as to the whole nation.

The above partial enumeration of what is being
done in the United States for the promotion of
better treatment and utilization of our forest re-
sources must suffice for the purposes of this little
volume. We are nearing the end of our cursory
survey of the vast subject. One thing remains to
be discussed : The work of introducing into this
country a better system of managing forests requires
the best powers of a multitude of trained men.
How can such men be found? How can they be
prepared for their work ? What are the qualifi-
cations they should possess, and what are the
rewards that may be held out to them ?

CHAPTER XII

FORESTRY AS A PROFESSION

THE profession of forestry is distinguished for
this, that it brings one into touch with more
branches of knowledge and more fields of work
than any other, excepting only the profession of
law. When we speak of a professional forester we
are apt to think mostly of the man who manages a
given tract of woodland, superintends the proper
silvicultural labors, and markets the products. Yet
that is but a branch of forestry. He also is a for-
ester who administers the various laws regulating
the treatment of forest lands in the interest of the
national life ; and the name should not be withheld
from men whose life-work consists of investigations
into the physical and economic conditions on which
the forestry of the nation is based.

On its silvicultural and technical side, forestry
must be based on a sound comprehension of the
physical and biological sciences. Geology, to un-
derstand the relations of soils and topographical
conditions ; botany, in all its branches, to compre-
hend the life of the material he has to deal with ;
zoology, to learn how the animal world affects his
trees ; meteorology, to get an insight into the

245

246 North American Forests and Forestry

climatic requirements of his forest ; all of these must
be assiduously studied by the forester. Mathe-
matics is evidently a fundamental part of his equip-
ment, for without its aid an accurate mensuration
of his property is impossible, and all calculations
regarding its value would hang in the air. More-
over, a certain knowledge of mathematics is re-
quired for road building and similar operations,
for which the aid of an engineer is not always
available.

Leaving the technical branch of forestry, we find
that on the economic side a comprehension of the
laws which regulate the production, distribution, and
consumption of wealth is needed, in order that the
financial results of forestal operations may not be
left to chance. The administrative side, at last,
requires an understanding of the whole complex life
of the nation and even of the whole human world,
so that the work may be properly adapted to its
place as but one wheel in the gigantic machinery of
society. To this end the social and political rela-
tions of the nation, — history, law, and govern-
ment — must not be unknown to the forester who
wishes to be a master in his chosen field.

It stands to reason that no man can be equally
proficient In all these branches of his art, even theo-
retically, not to speak of their practical application.
But a knowledge of their fundamental principles is
necessary to all members of the profession. After
that has been acquired each man will become a
specialist in some chosen field, according to his taste

Forestry as a Profession 247

or opportunities. It is sometimes stated as the
ideal of a well-informed man, — to know something
about everything and all about something. This is
peculiarly applicable to the well-trained forester.

To some readers, men who pride themselves
upon their practical sense, all this may seem some-
what extravagant. They may think that for each
particular kind of work a far less comprehensive
training is entirely sufficient. From one point of
view they are right. To learn the silvicultural op-
erations demanded in a given locality requires no
university training. Any fairly intelligent woods-
man would learn them in a short time, provided
somebody taught him. But suppose that this
woodsman were transferred to another district
w^here forestal conditions were different. Would
he be able to conduct the operations required under
the altered circumstances without first beine taueht
again ? Clearly not. The difference is the same
as that in a large factory or foundry, where an in-
telligent man with practical training at the work-
bench may make an excellent foreman ; but the
general superintendent of the works, the man who
plans and devises, must be an instructed and trained
engineer. It is the distinction between the artisan
and the professional man.

Of course, it is emphatically true that mere scho-
lastic training, however thorough and broad, does
not make the forester, any more than it makes the
lawyer or the physician. To native gifts and scho-
lastic instruction must be added the training received

248 North American Forests and Forestry

nowhere but in the actual life of the world, In the in-
tercourse with men. The forester is not a man of
science — not primarily a scholar. This should be
urged continually in the United States, because
the contrary view is still so prevalent and prevents
a just appreciation of the forester's work. He is a
man of business. More important than his knowl-
edge of trees and lumber and lands, more impor-
tant than his mathematical or economic lore, is his
knowledge of men. With men he has to deal,
whether he is in the woods superintending a gang
of workmen, or Sfoino- into the market to drive
shrewd bargains and sell his wares ; or whether he
sits in an office at the state capital directing his
subordinates and consulting with politicians.

This necessity of dealing with men is another
reason why the forester should be a professional
man rather than an artisan. The craft of the lat-
ter works upon dead matter ; a profession influ-
ences living men. It is a reason, also, why the
training of a forester at collesfe should not be a
narrowly technical one. For a broad, liberal cul-
ture is the best basis for a deep and comprehensive
insight into the ways of men of all classes.

Having thus fixed the standard for a forester's
training, let us see what means there are in the
United States for obtaininof it.

The methods of giving forestry instruction in
Germany, the classical land both of universities
and forestry, cannot be closely copied in the United
States for many reasons. One of these is that the

Forestry as a Profession 249

only object of German instruction is to create a
body of men capable of filling places in the elabo-
rate forestry service of that countr)-. Our aims
must be different. Undoubtedly, as the introduc-
tion of silvicultural forestry progresses, an increas-
ing demand for expert managers of woodlands will
arise. These our colleges and universities oueht
to supply. But they ought to do more. For a
long time to come there will be many men who,
without being professional foresters, will find it de-
sirable in their business of lumbering, or other
industries, dependent on forest products, to have
a comprehensive insight into forestry in all its
branches. Moreover, it is certain that the ques-
tion of proper treatment of our forest resources
will soon play, for a time, a very important part in
the public life of our nation. For this reason,
many students in all departments will wish to have
a proper understanding of the relations the forests
and forest industries bear to the national life. To
these non-professional students the purely techni-
cal branches, like silviculture and mensuration, will
be of minor importance. But forestry, on its eco-
nomic, administrative, and political side, will be
very attractive.

The needs of both the professional and non-pro-
fessional class of students have been admirably
provided for in the New York State College of
Forestry, which In the year 1898 was opened as
an Integral part of Cornell University, at Ithaca.
Far from considering his department a mere

250 North American Forests and Forestry

training-school, where young men are given the rudi-
ments of forestry in the shortest possible time, the
dean of this institution, Dr. B. E. Fernow, believes
that a forester should first of all be a man of lib-
eral education. He therefore provides a curricu-
lum, the first two years of which are spent in
acquiring fundamental and general training and
information. While the sciences, as is proper,
take the first rank In the student's tasks, languages
and literature are not neglected. Not until the
third college year do technical forestry studies
begin. In the fourth year, the future forester's
work becomes Intensely practical. The university
possesses a large tract of forest land in the Adlron-
dacks, the gift of the State. Here the senior
students will learn, under the supervision of Pro-
fessors Flllbert Roth and John GIfford, the various
technical operations required In forestry, from seed-
ing and planting trees to sawing the logs into lum-
ber. It is the intention of the university to make
its forest a shining example of how a forest should
be managed, and the aim will therefore be, not only
to afford Instruction to the students, but to make
the manaofement a financial success.

At Blltmore, the North Carolina forest estate
which has frequently been mentioned, Doctor
Schenck has opened a school where students of
sufficient preliminary training may become pro-
fessional foresters. The Forestry Division of the
United States Agricultural Department also has a
limited number of places for student-employees,

Forestry as a Profession 251

where young men of suitable preparation may get
a professional training as assistants in actual for-
estry work, both in the field and in the office. For
a good many years to come, every forester trained
in America will find it quite an essential part of
his education to spend some time in the forests of
Central Europe ; for in this country he may see
beginnings of silvicultural operations, but not their
later progress and final results. The various agri-
cultural colleges, as well as some other similar in-
stitutions throughout the country, sometimes offer
courses in forestry, and a few even have professors
of that subject. These courses are not designed
to train professional foresters, nor even to give
that broad and comprehensive insight into forestry
which is striven for at Cornell for non-professional
students. They simply aim to teach the young
farmers, dairymen, and followers of similar occupa-
tions who attend these schools, the elements of
arboriculture, the relations of forests to climate
and waterflow, and the importance of forests in the
economy of the nation. Within these limits, courses
of this kind do a great deal of good, both by teach-
ing the students many things of advantage to them
in their agricultural work, and by spreading among
broad masses of the people juster notions about
the value of our forest resources. Many of the
teachers engaged in this work are men of consid-
erable ability, and some are doing excellent service
by original investigations and by their influence on
public opinion. The main criticism to make is

252 North American Forests and Forestry

that not rarely the designating as forestry what is
really a branch of horticulture tends to perpetuate
a confusion which has already done much mischief.

It is very probable that within a few years some
of these colleges, and especially those connected
with the greater universities, will extend their for-
estry courses and perhaps attempt to give instruc-
tion similar to that at Cornell. If that is done, and
unless a separate College of Forestry is established,
the instruction in this branch ought to be severed
from the agricultural department. Forestry as a
profession and the pursuit of agriculture have
but little in common. Nor does forestry belong
properly with the Department of Science. Its
true relations are with economics or civics. To
the professional student the correlation of forestry
with other departments of the university will per-
haps make little difference. But it will be of great
importance in attracting to its comprehensive
courses those students from whose number will
come the future leaders In public affairs, and who
are not ordinarily found In the scientific depart-
ment. The scientific men, botanists and others,
have heretofore taken so prominent a part in the
American forestry movement that It may seem
natural to some university men to make forestry
instruction a branch of physical and biological sci-
ence teaching. To me this would appear to be a
mistake that might prove a serious hindrance in
the work.

What opportunities to engage in their chosen

Forestry as a Profession 253

profession will there be for young men trained as
is here indicated ? A few years ago, the answer
would have had to be : There are practically none
in the United States. But circumstances are
changing very rapidly indeed, and the demand for
trained foresters will probably soon outrun the sup-
ply and continue to do so for some time. In the
first place there will be opportunities for remunera-
tive work in the service of both the United States
and several of the States. More desirable, from a
pecuniary standpoint, will probably be positions in
the service of large corporations owning timber
lands. There will also be a field for private prac-
tice as consulting foresters and appraisers, just as
there are now consulting engineers and men who
make a business of estimating the value of manu-
facturing plants. Then there will be opportunities
afforded by the universities and experiment stations
for men to devote themselves to original investi-
gation and teaching of forestry. This profession,
like all others worthy of the name, will never be a
ready means for acquiring great wealth. That
must be left to speculation and trade. But forestry
will afford a respectable livelihood, and, for the rest,
it carries with it certain intrinsic rewards which
ought to make it attractive to a good many young
men of ability. The many-sidedness of the work
is one of these attractions. Forestry engages the
whole man, not merely a particular side of his na-
ture. The work in the field is often arduous in
the extreme, and a rugged bodily constitution is

254 North American Forests and Forestry-
required of the forester ; soon, indeed, the novice
will discover the difference between camping in
the woods for recreation and working- in them.
But then, the outdoor life and intimacy with na-
ture, of which this work requires so much, will in
itself be a pleasure to not a few. One chief ad-
vantage which the American forester will have for
some time to come over the members of other pro-
fessions, as well as his brethren in Europe, is that
his is pioneer work. He is called upon to lay the
foundations on which future generations will build.
That is a fearful responsibility, for the way in
which each forester of the next twenty-five years
will do his duty is bound to be of immeasurable
influence upon the future destiny of the American
people. But it is also an opportunity such as does
not often come to a body of workers. Grave re-
sponsibilities are of themselves powerful attrac-
tions to strong men.

Let us hope, in behalf of the welfare of our
country and nation, that, as the initial decades of
the new century shall make more and more appar-
ent the crying need for improvement in the treat-
ment of this great natural foundation of our life as
a people, there will arise a class of men able to
perform the tasks that will be thrust upon them.
Those tasks will call for the services of the highest
type of American manhood. We will need men
capable of attending to the smallest detail as well
as grasping the vast relations of their work with
the highest interests of mankind. No pygmy men

Forestry as a Profession 255

are sufficient to cope with the subject, no pedants
of the school or of the workshop, nor men with the
day laborer's mind, counting their wages. Nor
have we room to spare for the dealer in words, — the
boaster, the flighty hero of the mass meeting or
the political convention. Men are needed of quiet
enthusiasm, courage, strength, and knowledge, men
who have a sense of the dignity of their task, who
deem their work far greater than themselves, who
take rewards gladly when they come, but do not
shape their course for them. Never yet has the
American nation failed to find such men when
they were needed. Here they are needed to do
work that is not picturesque like that of the soldier
or sailor, nor done in the sight of all like the
orator's and statesman's, but work that is drudgery,
— not a little of it — and will never earn the ac-
claims of the multitude. Shall America be de-
serted in this need of hers ?

Our survey of American forests and forestry has
come to its end. Imperfect though the work
undoubtedly is, the author trusts that it may ac-
complish some of the purposes for which it was
written. It is not intended to serve as a manual
of forestry or any branch of it. But it has been
our aim to give a comprehensive insight into one
of the most important of the phases of our na-
tional life to the large number of Americans who
feel that they must understand these phases in
order to become true citizens.

It is not necessary to impress upon Americans.

256 North American Forests and Forestry

the truth that the higher Hfe of a nation, — its moral
development, the life of the spirit, intellectual and
aesthetic aspirations, — must rest upon a solid founda-
tion of material achievement. We are but too prone
to consider that foundation of more importance
than the superstructure. Attending to the mate-
rial needs with all too exclusive absorption, many of
us lose touch with immaterial things, and the mind
becomes degraded to what it works in, as the dyer's
hand assumes the color of his cauldron. The for-
ester's work is primarily concerned with material
things. He is exploiting the gifts of nature to sup-
ply the material wants and luxuries of man, and in
doing so aims to get his portion of personal benefit.
But if he has truly grasped the significance of his
profession, he realizes that his work is not done for
himself alone, nor merely in order that the lower
desires of others may be gratified. He knows that
he is an integral, necessary part of the grand organ-
ism of the American nation, taking his appointed
place to do his appointed work. Compared to the
life of that sublime organism, the life of the individ-
ual, his personal successes, his sufferings and joys,
are nothing. His work is everything. Let him be
steadfast and do it.

And because the work of forestry is but a part of
a grander and more important whole, a part that
cannot be dispensed with any more than the plough-
ing and reaping of the farmer, the hammering and
riveting of tlie mechanic, as well as the labors of
those who are leaders of men in all divisions of life ;

Forestry as a Profession 257

because forestry is one of the great foundation-
stones of the nation, it behooves every American to
have a just conception of its meaning. Such a con-
ception the author has tried to give. It is not nec-
essary, for this purpose, to know much about the
technical details of the forester's labors. The mys-
teries of silviculture and mensuration, let them re-
main mysteries to all but those whose business it is
to apply these arts. The complicated lore of the
lumber camp and the sawmill, the jargon of the
market, would be a useless burden to the memories
of all but those whose business requires such knowl-
edge. But how can one intelligently participate in
the great social and political life of our people ; how
especially dare one aspire to take a leader's part on
any of the multifarious roads along which travels
the nation's progress, unless he sees the relation
which this vast subject of forestry bears to the other
great interests of our people ? Therefore this book
hopes to impart to some educated and Intelligent
Americans a kind of knowledge on this subject,
which as yet many of them utterly lack. Therefore
we have tried to unroll a picture, inadequate though
it must naturally be, of the American forests as
they grew and flourished under the guidance of
nature alone. We endeavored to show how the
primeval woods were not the product of accident, a
vast assemblage of trees growing where they did
without order and reason, and having no relation or
interdependence with each other and the rest of the
natural life of the world. On the contrary, we

258 North American Forests and Forestry

attempted to make clear that the forest was a com-
plicated organism in which every part sustained
definite relations to every other part, a natural
community, which had its history, its internal strug-
gles and outward battles, like the communities of
men. To trace the processes of this organic life,
to learn its determining factors, and discover the
causal connections of the multitude of phenomena,
is the first duty and one of the most important of
the forester. It is a task full of difficulty but also
of charm, a task to which only the deep and wide
knowledge, the quick observation, the patient care
of the trained intellect is equal, but which bears in
itself its greatest reward.

Next we proceeded to show how the life of the
white man on American soil was from the first de-
termined in no small degree by the existence of the
forest. To that ever-present fact the whole life of
the nascent American people had to accommodate
itself. We had to resist the temptation to dwell
too long on the heroic age of American history,
which in the dark shades of the eastern forest un-
rolled the spectacle of civilized man being thrown
back on primeval conditions, having to fight for his
life with the uncontrolled forces of nature, while
struggling for mastery against the red Indian, the
Frenchman, and the Spaniard. Upon the age of
the backwoodsman and the fur-trader followed the
age of the lumberman. While in the preceding
period the small host of white invaders came under
the influence of the forest in which they dwelt so

Forestry as a Profession 259

completely that an entirely new type of man was
created thereby, things were reversed in the new
days. Re-enforced by the railroad and the mani-
fold machinery of an industrial civilization, man
now conquered the forest. He made it subject to
himself and took of its treasures what pleased him.
But in the zeal and haste of the victory the Amer-
ican people were in danger of destroying that which,
lovingly and understandingly cared for, would be-
come their best friend. So we approached the sec-
ond part of our subject, and began to consider how
the interests of the nation could best be served with
regard to treating this immense natural source of
wealth which had become ours. First we found in
our path all manner of misconceptions and erroneous
impressions regarding forestry. Having cleared
these out of our way, we came to the conclusion
that forests are indeed necessary to our country, as
great regulators of meteorological processes miti-
gating the evil effects of storm and flood, keeping
erosion down to a moderate degree, and influencing
climatic conditions. For these reasons alone we
found that it would be wise to save the remnants of
the natural forest from destruction. But we were
able to go a step farther and say that it is not nec-
essary, in order to so preserve them, to refrain from
utilizing the products of the forest for the hundreds
of uses to which man's ingenuity has put them. On
the contrary, we found that a wise treatment would
enable us to gain even more of these products than
the natural forest would furnish, and yet not only

26o North American Forests and Forestry

leave its permanency assured, but even increase its
vigor and value.

Thus we were led to consider the reasons why
the methods of silvicultural forestry had not yet
been more widely adopted in this country. There
we concluded that conditions dependent on the ac-
tion of legislation and government arose as obstacles
in the way of private enterprise in this direction.
Here we arrived at one of the most obvious reasons
why such a book as this has a right to exist and a
work to perform : Legislation depends upon pub-
lic opinion, and public opinion must be created and
instructed by just such means as this.

May this little book do its share in creating this
necessary instrument for the solution of the forestry
problem. Democracy, which was born in America
and was the first great contribution of the western
hemisphere to civilization, is entering upon a new
epoch, in which it will be subjected to new and tre-
mendous tests before it can be definitely upheld as
a practicable scheme for the organization of a great
nation. Until now the test has not been a fair one,
for the environment of the American people offered
too many adventitious advantages. We were a
people comparatively homogeneous, without deep
and wide divisions based upon racial, religious, eco-
nomic, or social distinctions. With the one excep-
tion of the conflict about slavery, all our political
and social contentions touched little more than the
surface of our body politic. That one struggle, to
be sure, came but too near to prove Democracy a

Forestry as a Profession 261

failure. But far severer tests may be in store for
us. Within a short time our social ororanization
has become infinitely more complex than formerly,
and the dividing lines between the different classes
have become more difficult to cross. It is growing
harder and harder for the eastern man to under-
stand the mental and moral attitude of his western
compatriot, and for both to understand the Califor-
nian. The multitudes of our citizens whose ances-
try is other than British do not think and feel
in every way as the British descendant does, and in
the sections where they predominate a new type of
American is gradually evolving, different in many
ways from the type the world used to know. We
are no longer a Protestant people ; and who will say
that we always comprehend how our Catholic fellow-
citizen looks at thincrs. Worse than all, we now
have what we used to boast of not having : a pro-
letariat, a class of men sunk into a kind of poverty
that is not merely a temporary condition from which
ability and self-control can raise the poor man or
his children, but a poverty which constitutes a
hopeless, helpless limbo, a social cesspool of igno-
rance, vice, and degeneracy. Surely, here are many
causes for social and political struggles that may in
the future shake nation and society to their deepest
foundations.

To those who see the hope of mankind in a per-
fected and purified Democracy, the right solution,
by our democratic society, of such a problem as
that of forestry reform would be of particularly

262 North American Forests and Forestry-
cheerful omen. That Democracy can repulse for-
eign aggression and even aggressively exert its
masterfulness, we know. That it is able to cope
with problems which arouse the depths of all men's
emotions and bring to white heat the fire of patriotic
and moral fervor, the solving of the slavery ques-
tion has taught us. But this question of forestry
cannot be solved by sudden bursts of enthusiasm,
and does not appeal to man's emotional nature. It
must be solved by seventy millions of men and
women, each of whom has his own particular in-
terests to make him indifferent to what concerns
him little individually. This must be done by sim-
ple, cold-blooded, calculating reason, in the face of
all the opposition which can be generated by habits
contracted during seven generations, conflicting in-
terests of private parties, and the dead-weight of
unreasoning conservatism. If Democracy is able
to perform such a feat as this, it need not shrink
from the more exciting tasks which the future may
have in store for it.

It looks as if American Democracy were going
to perform the feat. Let every lover of his country
do his part in the work.

INDEX

Agricultural colleges, forestry in, 251

— lands, forest and, 190
American Forestry Association, 243

Backwoods transportation in, 48
Backwoodsman, and plainsman, 43

— type of the, 41
Backwoodsmen, attitude of, towards

forest, 56

— influence of, on American history,

43

— last traces of, 53
Barren Grounds, 15
Biltmore, 64, 129, 240
Booms, 78

Burnt areas, restocking of, 117

Cattle, injury by, 119

Climate, forests and, 166

College of Forestry, New York

State, 238, 249
Compartments, 151
Coppice, 138

Cornell University, forestry in, 238
Cruisers, 81

Denuded areas, 30, 96
Duty on lumber, 160, 224

Education in forestry, 248
Erosion, forests and, 169
Estimates of timber, 215
Excelsior, 62
Exhaustion of timber supply, 66,

74, 153
Expectation value, 214
Experiment stations, 238

Fencing material, 60
Femow, Dr. B. E., 238
Fire and education, 202

— and lumbering, 204

— and morals, 201

Fire and settlers, lOO

— and the press, 201

— burning litter, 200

— causes of, 98, 183

— destructive, 104

— Hinckley, in

— injury done by, 105, 113, 116

— legitimate use of, 99

— Peshtigo, no

— police, 187, 197

— police in Canada, 199

— progress of a, 102

— protection in Europe, 187

— protective measures against, 186

— Saginaw, in

— set to improve pasture, 99

— wardens, 198

— warning signs, 203
Fires, classes of forest, 115

— laws regulating, 197

— penal statutes against, 195
Fire weeds, 117
Firewood, 63

Forest, an organism, 6

— Atlantic. 8

— disappearance of, and lumbermen,

96

— eastern. 8

— industries, 60

— Pacific coast, 10

— policy a cause of the Revolution,

31 .

— policy in colonial times, 34

— Puget Sound, 13

— regions, 5

— reserves, 23-*

— Rocky Mountain, 10

— warfare of the, 7, 16
Foresters, opportunities for, 252
Forestry and ^ajidscape gardening,

12S

— and lumber trade journals, 244

— and tree planting, 133

263

264

Index

Forestry Division, U. S., 238

— European methods of, 124

— financial considerations in, 142

— in the universities, 249

— legislation and, 180, 237

— meaning of, 121

— periodicals, 243

— profession or trade ? 247

— public interest in, 129

— reforms in Germany, 228

— scientists and, 228, 230

— should be profitable, 129

— various objects of, 125
Forests, advancing on prairies, 92

— and agricultural lands, 95

— and climate, 166

— and erosion, 169

— dependent on natural lav/s, 32

— deterioration of, 93

— disappearance of, 89

— distribution of, 13

— history of, 14

— natural and cultivated, 134

— natural extension of, 92

— owned by governments, 130

— waterflow and, 167

— wild animals in American, 51
Frame houses, advantages of, 73

Game preserves, 128
Geological surveys, 238
Giflord, John, 243
Glacial period, 14
Government, forestry and, 161

Improvement cuttings, 135
Information, collection of, 178
Irrigation, 171

Labor, price of, 155

Land tenure unsuitable, for fores-
try, 191

Legislation on forestry, 237

Lincoln, Abraham, influence of the
forest on, 46

Log-jams, 85

Logs, driving of, 79, 85

Lumber camps, work in, 82

— grades of, 80

— industry, 55, 64

— industry, fortunes made in, 75

— industry history of, 76

— substitutes for, 72

— supply of, 66, 74
Lumbermg and forestry, 153

Lumbering hard-wood, 70

— in South, 86

— on Pacific coast, 86

Management, intensive, 158
Market price, 145, 157
Measuring of logs, 87
Mensuration, 87, 216
Mining timber, 74
Moisture conditions, 16

National Parks, 232
Naval stores, 35
Ne-Ha-Sa-Ne Park, 241
New York, forestry in, 236
Normal forest, I38

Periodicals relating to forestry, 243
Pinchot, Giiiord, 239
Prairies, 9

— forests advancing on, 92
Private and public forests, 169
Protection forests, 131, 166
Public forests, 162

— lands, 161

— lands, disposal of, 189

Rafting, 77
Railroad, logging, 80
Railroads, 53, 54
Reforestation, natural, 133
Roads, 148
Rotation, 151
Roth, Filibert, 250

Sand barrens, 91

— barren, agriculture on, 191
Sawmills, early, 55

— first in America, 36
Schenck, Dr. C. A., 240
Second growth, 67
Seed years, 24
Selection forests, 138
Settlements in forest, 94
Sheep, injury by, 119
Silviculture, 7, 19, 21

— in U. S., 239

— systems of, 137
Stumpage, 81
Summer resorts, 173
Surveyor-General, 3?

Tan bark, 63

Tariff on lumber, 160, 224

Index

265

Tar making by Palatines, 39
Taxation, 20S

— reforms proposed, 220
Thinnings, 137

Timber belts on plains, 128

— lands forfeited for unpaid taxes,

213

— thieves, 193

— value of, 156, 158
Transportation, 147

Tree-claim laws, 221

Trees, diameter-growth of, 23

— height-growth of, 21

— light demands of, 17

— shade-enduring, 17

— succession of, on same areas, 2Q
Trespassers, 193

Trespassers, Carl Schurz, and 194

Valuation, 213
Vanderbilt, Geo. W., 240

Waterflow, forests and, 167

Webb, W. S., 241

White pine, reproduction of. 154

— pine substitutes for, 6g
Whitney, Wm. C., 241
Windfalls, 27

Wood lots, farmers', go

— pulp, 62
Woodsmen, 81
Working plans, 149

Yield tables, 142

Books for the Country

NATURE STUDIES IN BERKSHIRE. By John Coleman Adams.
With i6 illustrations in photogravure from original photographs
by Arthur Scott. 8", gilt top, I4.50. Popular edition, illus-
trated, 8', $2.50.

" The book on the whole is a sane and sympathetic tribute to nature, a tribute
that is much enhanced by the accompanying beautiful photogTaLphs.'—Chicag^o
Tribune.

LANDSCAPE GARDENING. Notes and Suggestions on Lawns
and Lawn-Planting, Laying out and Arrangement of Countrj*
Places, Large and Small Parks, etc. By Samuel Parsons, Jr.,
Ex-Superintendent of Parks, New York City. With nearly 200
illustrations. Large 8°, I3.50. Popular edition, $2.00.

" Mr. Parsons proves himself a master of his art as a landscape gardener, and
this superb book should be studied by all who are concerned in the making of
parks in other ciXi^s"— Philadelphia Bulletin.

LAWNS AND GARDENS. How to Beautify the Home Lot, the
Pleasure Ground, and Garden. By N. JoNSSON-RoSE, of the
Department of Public Parks, New York City. With 172 plans
and illustrations. Large 8°, gilt top, I3.50.
"Mr. Jonsson-Rose has prepared a treatise which will prove of genuine value to
the large and increasing number of those who take a personal interest in their
home grounds. It does not aim above the intelligence or aesthetic sense of the
ordinary .\merican citizen who has never given any thought to planting and to
whom some of the profounder principles of garden-art make no convincing ap-
peal. ' '—Garden and Forest.

ORNAMENTAL SHRUBS. For Garden, Lawn, and Park Planting.
By Lucius D. Davis. With over 100 illustrations. 8°, $3.50.

" Mr. Davis writes with authority upon his chosen theme. . . . The book is
fttll of information upon the subject of which it treats, and contains many sugges-
tions that will prove helpful." -N, Y. Times.

THE LEAF COLLECTOR'S HANDBOOK AND HERBARIUM.

An aid in the preservation and in the classification of specimen
leaves of the trees of Northeastern America. By Chari.ES S.
NEWH.4I.L. Illustrated. 8°, $2.00.

"The idea of the book is so good and so simple as to recommend itself at »
rfance to everybody who cares to know our trees or to make for any purpose a col-
lection of their leaves."— A'. Y. Critic.

THE WONDERS OF PLANT LIFE. By Mrs. S. B. Herrick.

Fully illustrated. 16°, I1.50.

" -A. dainty volume . . . opens up a whole world of fascination . . . full
of information." — Boston Advertiser.

THE HOME LIFE OF WILD BIRDS. A new method of the study

and photography of birds. By Francis H. Herrick. With 141

illustrations from life. A new edition entirely rewritten and

issued in a form suitable for use as a field book. 8, net, |2.oo.

Mr. Herrick has perfected an invention that brings the birds beneath his eye,

and beneath the eye of his camera, in a way hitherto unheard of. At an actual

distance of about 2 feet from the nest, the author and his camera stand. From that

point of vantage they watch and record every movement of the bird family.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 37 & ap West 33d St., New York

Books for the Country

OUR INSECT FRIENDS AND FOES. How to Collect, Preserve
and Study Them. By Belle S. Cragix. With over 250 illus-
trations. 8°, net, I1.75.

"Althoueh primarily intended for boys and girls, it can hardly fail to enlist the
aid of the older members of the family ; and for the amateur collector of all ages
who has all the requisite enthusiasm but lacks a practical knowledge of the art of
preserving specimens, it should receive a warm welcome." — Commercial Advertiser.

AMONG THE MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. By Jlxia P. Bai.-
LARD. Illustrated. 8°, net, I1.50.

"The book, which is handsomelj- illustrated, is designed for young readers,
relating some of the most curious facts of natural history in a singularly pleas-
ant and instructive manner." — N. V. Tribune

BIRD STUDIES. An account of the Land Birds of Eastern North
America. By William E. D. ScoTT. With 166 illustrations
from original photographs. Quarto, leather back, gilt top, in a
box, net, ^5.00.

" A book of first class importance. . . . Mr. Scott has been a field naturalist
for upwards of thirty years, and few persons have a more intimate acquaintance
than he with bird life. His work will take high rank for scientific accuracy wid
we trust it may prove successful." — London Speaker.

WILD FLOWERS OF THE NORTHEASTERN STATES. Drawn
and carefully described from life, without undue use of scientific
nomenclature, by Ellen MillER and IMargaret C. Whiting.

With 308 illustrations the size of life. S°, net, fe.oo.

" Anybody who can read English can use the work and make his identifica-
tions, and, in the case of some of the flowers, the drawings alone furnish all that
is necessary. . . . The descriptions are as good of their kind as the drawings
are of theirs."— A'. Y. Times.

THE TREES OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. By Charles S.

Newhall. With illustrations made from tracings of the leaves

of the various trees. 8°, net, I1.75.
" W'e believe this is the most complete and handsome volume of its kind, and
on account of its completeness and the readiness with which it imparts information
that everybody needs and few possess, it is invaluable. — Binghatnton Republican.

THE SHRUBS OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. By Charles

S. Newhall. Fully illustrated. 8°, net, ;^i.75.
"This volume is beautifully printed on beautiful paper, and has a list of 116
illustrations calculated to explain the text. It has a mine of precious information,
such as is seldom gathered within the covers of such a volume." — Baltimore
Farmer.

Popular Edition, the above two volumes in one, ^2.00.

THE VINES OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. By CharlES S.

NewhalL. Fully illustrated. 8°, net, j.1.75.
" The work is that of the true scientist, artistically presented in a popular form
to an appreciative class of readers." — The Churchman.

Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON

Books for the Country

FIELD BOOK OF AMERICAN WILD FLOWERS. Being a Short
Description of their Character and Habits, a Concise Definition
of their Colors, and incidental references to the Insects which
assist in their Fertilization. By F. Schuvi,p:r Mathews, author
of "Familiar Flowers of Field and Garden," etc. i6°, 525 pp.,
with 24 colored plates and 200 full-page illustrations in the text.
Net, I1.75. (By mail, $1.85.) Full leather, net, I2.25.

Any writing about nature from the pen of Mr. Mathews merits careful reading.
This book has the unique quality of being a Pocket Botany. Further, its illus-
trations are of extraordinary excellence, — probably the best ever printed in a
Botany.

FIELD BOOK OF WILD BIRDS AND THEIR MUSIC. By F.

Schuyler Mathews, author of " Field Book of American Wild
Flowers," etc. 16 , with 38 colored and 15 other full-page
illustrations, and numerous musical diagrams. QAoih, net, $2.00.
Full flexible leather, net, $2.50. (Postage, 15 cents.)

"A description of the songs and the coloring of wild birds which will enable
any one to identify the species common in tne Eastern United Stales. Mr.
Mathews has developed a new theorv' of mechanical rhj'thm in the music of
different species which is the all-important factor in an unerring identification of
a bird by ear alone. The book fills a place never before occupied by any volume
devoted to bird study.

BOQ=TROTTINQ FOR ORCHIDS. By Grace Greylock Niles.
Illustrated from Photographs by Katherixe Lewers and the
Author. 8", with 24 colored aud 48 other full-page illus-
trations. Net, $2.50. (By mail, $2.70.)

The work is profusely illustrated in color from photographs taken of the
orchids in their native haunts. Readers will be surprised at the number and rare
beauty of these native flowers, which are little known owing to the inaccessibility
of their habitat.

NORTH AMERICAN FORESTS AND FORESTRY. Their Re-
lations to the National Life of the American People. By ErnesT
Bruncken, Secretary of the late I'orestry Commission of
Wisconsin. 8', pp. 265, net, $2.00.

"I have read this book with deep interest, and find it exceedingly well suited
to minister to and to promote the interest in forestry' which is now happily so
■widely awakened. It is a work which will appeal strongly to the general public
and command attention beyond the limits attained by mere technical pub-
lications."—Prof. E. J. WiCKSON, of the University of California.

THE WAY OF THE WOODS. A Manual for Sportsmen in North-
eastern United States and Canada. By Edward Breck. 436
pages, 80 illustrations, compact form, $1.75 net.

The author is both a naturalist and a practised woodsman, an exponent of the
highest tjTse of sportsmanship, who strives to arouse interest rather in the study
of animals and birds than in their wanton slaughter.

The book is distinguished by its clear, terse, and practical style.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON

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