A Brief History of Forestry.

A further strong support came into the field, when Mr. Roosevelt became President of the United States, in 1901, and unreservedly threw his overpowering influence into the balance, to advance forest policies.

Owing to his interest, the withdrawal of public timberlands from entry proceeded at a rapid rate: by 1902, the reservations had grown to 65 million acres; in 1905, there were over 100 million acres included; and by the end of his administration, 175 million acres had been placed in reservation.

The anomalous condition, which placed the survey of the forest reserves in the Geological Survey, their administration in the Land Office, and the scientific or technical development of forestry in the Department of Agriculture, was finally ended in 1904, when, on February 1st, the whole matter was placed in the hands of the Department of Agriculture, with its Forestry Division, which had been changed into a Bureau of Forestry, and then changed its name again to Forest Service.

With this transfer, it may be said, the federal forest policy was fully established, at least for its own lands, and all that remains to be done is the perfection of details in their administration and the development of silvicultural methods.

With appropriations which now (1907) exceed $950,000 for investigating work alone, limitless opportunity seems to be open to extend the many directions of inquiry and solve the silvicultural problems, and satisfy the educational function of this government agency.

But, besides the administration of the federal timberlands and the educational and other assistance of private owners, a further expansion of the Forest Service is developing under the paternalistic and socialistic tendencies referred to before, which may ultimately lead to the purchase and federal control of forest reserves in the Eastern States. Such expansion, was, indeed, proposed in the establishment of reserves in the White Mountains and the Southern Appalachians, propositions which have been resisted by Congress for the last seven years, but with ever weakening resistance. Finally in 1910, success was attained, and the federal government placed in position to acquire these forest areas, to the amount of $10,000,000.

Meanwhile the single states have begun to develop their own policies.

Outside of legislation aiming at protection against forest fires – which nearly every State possessed from early times, ineffective for lack of machinery to carry it into effect – and outside of the futile attempts to encourage timber planting referred to, no interest in timberlands was evinced by State authorities for the first two-thirds of the century, since practically all these lands had been disposed of to private owners, and the authorities did not see any further duties regarding them.

The first State to institute a commission of inquiry was Wisconsin, in 1867; but with the rendering of the report, prepared by I. A. Lapham, one of the active early propagandists – the matter was allowed to mature for thirty years.

The next State to move, in a feeble way, in 1876, was Minnesota, the legislature making an annual grant of money to its forestry association.

The appointment of commissions of inquiry then became fashionable.

New Hampshire appointed such a commission in 1881, which reported in 1885, without result, and another commission in 1889, whose report, in 1893, led to the establishment of a permanent commission of inquiry and advice, with a partial supervision of forest fire laws. Vermont followed suit with a commission of inquiry, in 1882, whose report made in 1884, remained without consequences.

In Michigan the expedient was resorted to of constituting the State Board of Agriculture a commission of inquiry, whose report, published in 1888, had also no consequences except those of an educational character.

Similarly, the State of Massachusetts ordered the State Board of Agriculture in 1890, to inquire “into the consideration of the forests of the State, the need and methods of their protection,” with similar results, or lack of result.

In New Jersey, the matter was referred to the State Geologist, who, since 1894, has made reports on forest conditions and needs. Similar reference of the subject was made in the State of North Carolina, in 1891, and in West Virginia.

The first more permanent State institution deliberately established as an educational and advisory agent was the Forestry Bureau of Ohio, in 1885, which published a number of annual reports, but eventually collapsed for lack of support.

In the same year, three important States, New York in the East, Colorado in the Middle States, and California in the West, seemed simultaneously to have awakened to their duty, largely as a result of the propaganda of the American Forestry Association.

In California, a State Board of Forestry was instituted, with considerable power and ample appropriations, which, however, eventually fell into the hands of unscrupulous politicians and grafters, the resulting scandals leading to its abolishment in 1889.

In Colorado, which when admitted to Statehood in 1876, had, in its Constitution, directed the general assembly to legislate on behalf of the forestry interests of the State, these interests were rather tardily committed to a forest commissioner, who was charged to organize county commissioners and road overseers throughout the State as forest officers in their respective localities, to act as a police force in preventing depredations on timbered school lands and in enforcing the fire laws. Col. E.T. Ensign, who had been most instrumental in bringing about this legislation, was appointed commissioner, and, with singular devotion, in spite of the enmity aroused by his activity, which eventually led to a discontinuance of appropriations, tried, for a number of years to execute this law. With his resignation from the office, this legislation also fell into innocuous desuetude.

In New York, concern in the water supply for the Erie Canal, had led such a far sighted statesman as Horatio Seymour, twice Governor of the State and once running for the Presidency, to conceive the need of preserving the Adirondack watershed in State hands. Accordingly a law was passed, in 1872, naming seven citizens, with Horatio Seymour chairman, as State park commission, instructed to make inquiries with the view of reserving or appropriating the wild lands lying northward of the Mohawk, or so much thereof as might be deemed expedient, for a State park. The commission, finding that the State then owned only 40,000 acres in that region, and that there was a tendency on the part of the owners of the rest to combine for the enhancement of values should the State want to buy, recommended a law forbidding further sales of State lands, and their retention when forfeited for the non-payment of taxes.

It was not until eleven years later, in 1883, that this recommendation was acted upon, when the State through the non-payment of taxes by the owners of cut-over lands had become possessed of 600,000 acres.

In 1884, the comptroller was authorized to employ “such experts as he may deem necessary to investigate and report a system of forest preservation.” The report of a commission of four members was made in 1885, but the legislation proposed was antagonized by the lumbermen’s interests. The legislature finally passed a compromise bill, which the writer had drafted at the request of Senator Lowe, entitled “An act establishing a forest commission, and to define its powers, and for the preservation of forests,” the most comprehensive legislation at that time.

The original forest commission, appointed under the act of 1885, was superseded in 1895, by the commission of fisheries, game, and forests, which brought allied interests under the control of a single board of five members appointed by the Governor for a term of five years. In 1903, the commission was changed to a single commissioner, and another backward step was taken in 1911 by handing over the work of this commissioner to the newly created State Conservation Commission, consolidating with it several other commissions.

Here, then, for the first time on the American continent, had the idea of State forestry, management of State lands on forestry principles, taken shape; a new doctrine of State functions had gained the day. Not only was the commission charged to organize a service, with a “chief forester” and “underforesters,” to administer the existing reserve according to forestry principles, but also from the incomes to lay aside a fund for the purchase of more lands to constitute the State forest preserve. Unfortunately, instability of purpose, the characteristic of democracy, spoiled the dream of the forester. Both, commission and chief forester were, of course, political appointees, and, rightly or wrongly, fell under the suspicion, when proposing the sale of stumpage, that they were working into the hands of lumbermen. A set of well-meaning but ill-advised civic reformers succeeded, in 1893, in securing the insertion into the Constitution, then being revised, of a clause preventing the cutting of trees, dead or alive, on State lands, declaring that they shall forever be kept as “wild lands.” Later, this constitutional provision was deliberately set aside by the commission, which began to plant up some of the fire-wasted areas, the legislature appropriating money for this breach of the Constitution because it was popular: and lately permission has also been granted by the legislature to remove trees from burnt areas in order to reduce the fire danger – the foolish objection of a Constitution notwithstanding.

In 1897, new legislation was passed to authorize the State to purchase additional forest lands within a prescribed limit, to round off the State’s holdings, a special agency, the Forest Preserve Board, being constituted for that purpose. Under this law, some $3,500,000 have been spent, and by 1907, over one and a half million acres had been added to the State Forest Preserve. This large area is withdrawn from rational economic use, reserved for a pleasure ground of wealthy New Yorkers, who have located their camps in the “wilderness” under the avowed assumption that the State can be forced to maintain forever this anomalous condition.

In later years, private planting has been encouraged by the Commission selling plant material from the State nurseries at low rates.

The most important administrative function of the Commission has been the reduction of forest fires, in which, also owing to political conditions, only partial success has been attained. The legislation of 1885 for the first time attacked this problem in a more thorough manner, providing for the organization of a service, and this served as an example to other States who copied and improved on it. Notably the forest fire legislation of Maine (1891), of Wisconsin (1895), and of Minnesota (1895) was based on this model.

Another of the large States to start upon and, differently from New York, to develop consistently a proper forest policy, was the State of Pennsylvania. As a result of a persistent propaganda by the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, formed in 1886, and especially by its active secretary, Dr. J. T. Rothrock, a commission of inquiry was instituted in 1893. Before its report was established, the legislature of 1895 provided for an executive Department of Agriculture, and included in its organization a provision for a Division of Forestry, the botanist member of the previous commission, Dr. Rothrock, being appointed Commissioner of Forestry at the head of the Division. Two years later, the final legislation, which firmly established a forest policy for the State, was passed namely for the purchase of State forest reservations. All later legislation was simply an expansion of these propositions. By 1910, the State had acquired by purchase, wild, mostly culled lands to the extent of over 900,000 acres, and the Commission had progressed far towards providing for their management and recuperation.

The unusually disastrous conflagrations of 1894; the growing conviction that the pleaders of the exhaustibility of timber supplies were right, accentuated by a rapid decline in White Pine production and a rapid, and, indeed, almost sudden, rise in stumpage prices; the example which the federal government had set in withdrawing public timberlands from spoliation; together with an increasing number, not only of advocates of saner methods, but of technically educated men, who came from the schools lately organized – all these influences had worked as a leaven in all parts of the country so as to bring in the new century with a realization of the seriousness of the situation. And, within the first seven years of the century, the change of attitude, at least, was almost completed in all parts of the country, and among all classes, the lumbermen and others depending directly on wood supplies becoming especially prominent in recognizing the need and value of forestry.

State after State came into line in recognizing that it had a duty to perform, and in some way gave expression to this recognition, so that, by 1908, hardly a State was without at least a germ of a forest policy.

Two principles had been recognized as correct and were brought into practice, namely, that the forest interests of the State called for direct State activity, and that eventually the State must own and manage at least portions of the forest area. The first principle took shape in appointing single State foresters, [as in Maine (1891 and 1903); in Massachusetts (1904); in Connecticut (1903); in Vermont (1906); in Rhode Island (1906)]; or Commissions or Boards [as in New York (1885), changed to a single commissioner with Superintendent and State foresters in 1903; in Pennsylvania (1901); in New Hampshire (1893); Maryland with a State forester (1905); Wisconsin, with a State forester (1905); Indiana (1901-03); Louisiana, with a State forester (1904); Michigan (1899); Minnesota (1899); California (revived, with a State forester, in 1905); Washington, with a State forester (1905); Kentucky (1906); in New Jersey, with a State forester (1904); Alabama (1907).]

A very important feature in these appointments was the fact, that, more and more professional or technically educated men displaced the merely political appointees, or were at least added to the commissions.

The idea of State forests found expression, more or less definitely, in setting aside forest reservations or else in enabling the State to accept and administer donations of forest lands. Among the States recognizing this principle were New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, California.

Where neither of these two principles had as yet found application, at least some agency was established to give advice and investigate or experiment in matters of forest interests, and sometimes to offer assistance to private woodland owners or planters, as in Delaware, Ohio, North Carolina, etc.

Meanwhile, largely through the influence and with the co-operation of the federal Bureau of Forestry, private owners had begun, if not to apply, at least to study the possibility of the application of forestry to their holdings. The Bureau prepared “working plans” which were now and then followed in part, or at least led to attempts at a more conservative method of logging. Notably, various paper and pulp manufacturers realized the usefulness of more systematic attention and conservative methods in the use of their properties. In this connection the object lesson furnished by Mr. G. K. Vanderbilt on his Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, which was begun by Mr. Pinchot and conducted by Dr. C. A. Schenck, a German forester, requires special mention as the first, and for nearly 20 years continued experiment in applying forestry methods systematically in America. At present writing the continuance of this experiment is in doubt.

With the second decade of the century, we shall enter upon the flood tide of development, when no more need of argument for its necessity, and only the question of practicable methods, will occupy us.

So far, silviculturally, the selection forest, i.e., culling the best and the stoutest, practiced hitherto by the lumberman, without reference to reproduction, but carried on somewhat more conservatively, is still the method advocated in most cases by the Forest Service. This so-called conservative lumbering is, to be sure, the transition to better methods. According to reports of the federal Forest Service in 1907, some million acres of private timberland were under forest management or conservatively lumbered.

Planting of waste or logged lands, as distinguished from planting in the prairies, which had, sporadically and in a small way, been done by individuals here and there for many years, is practised in ever increasing amount, both by State administrations and by private owners; the New York State College of Forestry starting such planting in its College Forest on a larger scale and systematically, in 1899. At present writing, the forestry department of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company is perhaps the largest single planter in the country, having set out over four million trees (by 1910), with the avowed purpose of growing railroad ties.

By 1908, popular interest in forest conservation had become so keen, and at the same time paternalistic tendencies so fully developed by the Roosevelt administration – the federal government having entered upon extensive plans of reclaiming lands by irrigation, and preparing to develop water powers, and inland waterways, – that the time seemed ripe to bring all these conservative forces into unity.

The President called together in conference the governors of all the States with their advisers, together with the presidents of the various national societies interested, and others, to discuss the broad question of the conservation of natural resources.

As a consequence national and State Conservation Associations and Commissions were formed in all parts of the Union, and a new era of active interest in economic development seems to have arrived.

4. Education and Literature

The primary education of the people at large and of their governments in particular, the propaganda for the economic reform contemplated by the forestry movement, was carried on, as stated, by the federal Division of Forestry and especially by the forestry associations, which sprang up in all parts of the country, by means of their annual and special meetings, aided by the general press and sometimes by special publications.

The first Journal of Forestry, a monthly publication, ventured into the world as a private enterprise, edited by Dr. Hough, soon after the Forestry Congress in Cincinnati, but it survived just one year, vanishing for lack of readers. This was followed by irregularly appearing Forestry Bulletins, of which the writer prepared four under the aegis of the American Forestry Association.

In 1886, the Pennsylvania Forestry Association began the publication of a bi-monthly journal, Forest Leaves, which has persisted to this day. In 1895, Dr. John Gifford launched another bi-monthly, the New Jersey Forester, soon to change its name to The Forester, and under that name, three years later, taken over by the American Forestry Association, continued as Forestry and Irrigation, changed to Conservation and now again changed to American Forestry. Now, half a dozen or more similar publications emanate from the various State Associations. In this connection there should not be forgotten the journal, Garden and Forest, edited by Professor C. S. Sargent, which for ten years, from 1888 to 1897, did much to enlighten the public on forestry matters.

Some provision for technical education was made long before opportunity for its application had arisen, and, indeed, before any professional foresters were in existence to do the teaching. The new doctrine attracted the attention of educational institutions, and the desire to assist in the popular movement led to the introduction of the subject, at least by name, into their curricula; the professor of botany or of horticulture, adding “forestry” to his title, and explaining in a few lectures the objects, and, as far as he knew them, the methods of forestry; or, at least some lectures on dendrology and forest geography were introduced in the botanical courses. By 1897, twenty institutions – land grant colleges – had in this way introduced the subject.

Perhaps the first attempt to present systematically a whole course of technical forestry matter to a class of students was a series of twelve lectures, delivered by the writer, at the Massachusetts College of Agriculture in 1887, and another to students of political economy at Wisconsin University in 1897.

The era of professional forest schools, however, was, inaugurated in 1898, when the writer organized the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University, and almost simultaneously Dr. Schenck opened a private school at Biltmore.

A year later, another Forest school was opened at Yale University, an endowment of the Pinchots, father and sons. In 1903, the University of Michigan added a professional department of forestry, and then followed a real flood of educational enthusiasm, one institution after another seeing the necessity for adding the subject as an integral part to its courses. Before there were enough competent men in the field, some twenty colleges or universities called for teachers, besides private institutions. An inevitable result of this over-production of forest schools and of foresters all at once must be an overcrowding of the profession with mediocre men before the profession is really fully established.

Brief reference to the history of the first school, established by the State of New York, may be of interest, as exemplifying in a striking manner the political troubles besetting reforms under republican conditions. But for a similar occurrence in France (see p. 242), this case might be unique in the history of educational institutions. Although the school thrived almost beyond expectation, having in its fourth year attained in numbers to 70, larger than any French or German forest school at the time, and readily finding employment for its graduates, it suddenly came to an end in 1903. Its appropriation, unanimously voted in the Legislature, was vetoed by the Governor, on the alleged ground that the silvicultural methods applied in the demonstration forest of the College “had been subjected to grave criticism.” It is true the only silvicultural method officially sanctioned (by the Forest Service), the selection forest, had not been applied, yet the war against the College being waged by two wealthy bankers of New York and the well-known character of the then Governor suggest that other “considerations” than mere criticism of professional judgment were at the bottom of his action.

As from the start, the federal Forestry Bureau naturally continued in ever increasing degree to be the educator of the nation, not only as regards popular conceptions and attitudes, but as regards technical matter. Its bulletins, circulars, and reports on the subjects which come under investigation form the bulk of the American literature on the technical side of the subject. During the first 20 years of its existence, some 20,000 pages of printed matter were produced, and the next decade increased the crop of information apace. At first intended for popular propaganda, the matter printed was naturally argumentative, statistical and descriptive, but gradually more and more technical matter filled the pages, and now most of the publications are of technical nature.

One of the first extensive and important lines of investigation undertaken by the Division was that into the characteristics and strength, the timber physics, of American woods, which in its comprehensiveness commanded the admiration of even the Germans, and gave rise to a series of reports. The biology of American species, more or less exhaustively studied, was also begun in the old Division, as well as forest surveys, etc.

By 1902, enough professional interest was in the country to make the publication of a professional journal possible and desirable, the Forestry Quarterly being launched by the writer, with a Board of Editors chosen mainly from the forest schools.

The first association of professional foresters was formed in 1900 – the Society of American Foresters– which issues from time to time proceedings containing technical discussions.