One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money

by Harold Morse Dunphy

What Training is Necessary

Forestry requires the services of three more or less distinct grades of workers—the professional forester, the forester ranger, and the forest guard. The professional forester handles the larger and more technical phases of forest management. He determines what the forest under his charge contains, how much it is worth, how fast it is growing, when and how it should be cut, what kinds of trees should be favored, and other questions of the same kind; and also exercises general supervision over the execution of whatever measures are decided upon. The forest ranger acts as a sort of semi-technical assistant to the professional forester. He does not need so thorough an education as the professional forester but must have sufficient technical knowledge to enable him to carry out intelligently the plans formulated by the latter. His work is to a large extent “practical” and involves the routine of fire protection and fire fighting, marking the trees to be removed in timber sales, scaling the felled logs, handling planting operations, surveying, building trails, running telephone lines, and doing other work connected with the administration of the forest. The forest guard is ordinarily a non-technical assistant who helps the forest ranger in those aspects of his work which require little or no knowledge of forestry. Forest guards are frequently appointed for short periods only to help the regular force during the busy season and particularly in the work of fire protection and fire fighting. Previous experience in the woods or in similar occupations such as lumbering and surveying constitutes a valuable, but not essential, preliminary training for foresters of all grades.

Twenty-five years ago the professional forester was almost unknown in this country and there was not a single educational institution at which he could secure the necessary training. To-day the profession is well recognized and there are more than 20 schools offering instruction of a grade similar to that required of civil engineers, doctors, lawyers, ministers, and other professional men. As a basis for the more technical phases of his education the man who desires to become a professional forester must have had courses of collegiate grade in botany, geology, organic chemistry, mathematics through trigonometry, plane surveying, mechanical drawing, economics, and either French or German, or preferably both. With these as a foundation he is ready to go ahead with the technical subjects such as dendrology, silvics, silviculture, forest mensuration, forest valuation, forest management, and forest regulation. Obviously a comprehensive training of this sort can not be obtained with less than four years of collegiate work, at least two of which must be devoted almost entirely to professional forestry subjects. If a man has already had a college education, however, he can readily prepare himself for the profession by two years of post-graduate work. The degree of bachelor of science in forestry is usually given on the completion of a four-year professional course, and of master of science in forestry, or master of forestry, on the completion of a five-year professional course or of two years of postgraduate work following four years of regular college work.

For the forest ranger no such intensive training is necessary. With a high school education as a background, one year of rather elementary training in such subjects as fire protection, surveying, timber estimating and scaling, nursery practice, methods of planting, range management, and report writing is sufficient to enable a man to qualify. In general, the course covers much the same ground as that taken by the professional forester, but in a much briefer and more elementary way. Those who have already had considerable practical experience along these lines can secure a sufficient foundation for their work in three or four months, although even for such men the longer course is preferable if time to take it can be found. Many of the forest schools of the country now offer courses of this sort and the opportunities for instruction are ample.

Since forest guards are engaged almost wholly on nontechnical work no particular course of training is necessary. No one with any ambition, however, would wish to remain a forest guard indefinitely when other opportunities are open to him merely by taking a free course of instruction. If one wishes to take up forestry, therefore, and is not in a position to take the professional course, he should by all means attempt to qualify as a forest ranger. Should lack of other openings then make it necessary for him to serve as a forest guard for the time being, he would be in a position to take advantage of the first opportunity for advancement.