GIFFORD PINCHOT
And so when, a decade ago, the tall, pleasant-voiced young man from the far East, now known throughout the United States as Gifford Pinchot, the national forester, appeared in the West, and suggested to the stockmen that they were ruining the country by over-grazing, they laughed him to scorn.
He told the mining and sawmill men that through reckless and extravagant methods of lumbering they were bringing on a timber famine by great strides; he characterized their whole policy as one of utter disregard for the future of the country; and he demanded forcible and immediate action on the part of the Federal authorities. These pioneers had seen uncounted millions of buffalo melt away because no one took enough interest in the matter to stop the wanton waste. They had seen great billowy prairies, once knee-deep in the most splendid covering of grass and vegetation, grazed down until they were hardly more than dust heaps; and mountains that were clothed with magnificent forests swept bare—first by the woodsman's ax and later by forest fires that burned each year millions and millions of feet of the finest timber a country ever possessed, while no one raised a hand even to quench the fire because "it was only government land."