A Brief History of Forestry. / In Europe, the United States and Other Countries

by B. E. Fernow

Usually as a result of this associated private effort, the States appointed forestry commissions or commissioners. These commissions were at first for the most part instituted for inquiry and to make reports, upon which a forest policy for the State might be framed. Others have become permanent parts of the State organization, with executive, or merely educational functions. Such commissioners of inquiry were appointed at various times, in Connecticut (1877), New Hampshire (1881 and 1889), Vermont (1882), New York (1884), Maine (1891), New Jersey (in Geological Survey 1894), Pennsylvania (1893), North Carolina (in Geological Survey 1891), Ohio (1885), Michigan (1899), Wisconsin (1897), Minnesota (1899), North Dakota (1891), Colorado (1885), California (1885).

It was but natural in a democratic country that these movements sometimes became the play balls of self-seeking men, political wire pullers, and grafters, or more often of ignorant amateurs and shallow sentimentalists, aided by half-informed newspaper writers. Infinite patience was required to steer through these rocks the ship of true economic reform, and to educate legislators and constituents to its true needs. The very first forestry congress was really conceived with a view of advancing political preferment of one of its organizers, and many another “forestry” meeting was utilized for a similar purpose, the new, catchy title attracting the gullible.

One of the first State forest commissions, well endowed to do its work, soon fell into the hands of grafters, and created such scandals that they led to its abolishment, and to a set-back in the movement everywhere. Arbor day sentimentalism discredited and clouded the issue before the business world; the movement was in constant danger at the hands of its friends. Antagonism of the lumber world was aroused by the false idea of what the reform contemplated, and, in the absence of technically trained foresters to instruct the public and the amateur reformers, and to convince legislators of the absolute need of discontinuing old established habits, progress was naturally slow, and experienced many setbacks.

It was a hard field to plow, grown up with the weed growth of prejudice and custom, and means and tools for the work were inadequate.

The federal government was naturally looked to to take the lead. The first two agents, employed in the Department of Agriculture to “report on forestry”, unfortunately lacked all technical knowledge of the subject, the first, a most assiduous worker, being a writer of local histories and gatherer of statistics, the second a preacher. The third, the writer himself, had at least the advantage of this technical training, but, at the same time, the disadvantage of being a foreigner, who had first to learn the limitations of democratic government. Only the paltry sum of $8,000 was at his disposal for plowing the ground, and even after the agency had been raised to the dignity of a Division in 1886, for years no adequate appropriations could be secured, and hence the scope and usefulness of the work of the Division was hampered.

The Forestry Association, inaugurated with such a flourish of trumpets and with such a large membership at the start, had in the first two years dwindled to a small number of faithful ones, and was without funds when the writer became its secretary.

In spite of these drawbacks, the propaganda had progressed so far in 1891, that, through the earnest insistence of the then Secretary of the Interior, John W. Noble, who had been won over to the views for which the Division and the Association stood, a clause was enacted by Congress in “An act to repeal timber-culture laws and for other purposes,” giving authority to the President to set aside forest reservations from the public domain. Again, this important legislation, which changed the entire land policy and all previous notions of the government’s functions concerning the Public Domain, was not deliberately enacted, but slipped in as a “rider”, at the last hour, in Conference Committee. In this connection the name of Edward A. Bowers, in 1887 Special Agent in the Department of the Interior, and later Assistant Commissioner of the General Land Office, deserves mention as most active in securing this reservation policy.

Acting under this authority, Presidents Harrison and Cleveland proclaimed, previous to 1894, seventeen forest reservations, with a total estimated area of 17,500,000 acres.

The reservations were established usually upon the petition of citizens residing in the respective States and after due examination, the Forestry Association acting both as instigator and as intermediary.

Meanwhile no provision for the administration of the reserves existed, and the comprehensive legislation devised by the Chief of the Division of Forestry, which included withdrawal and administration of all public timberlands, failed to be enacted, although in the Fifty-third Congress it was passed by both Houses, but failed to become a law merely for lack of time to secure a conference report. But the purpose of the advocates of forestry was to create such a condition as would compel Congress to act, by continually withdrawing forested lands that would lie useless until authority was given for their proper use and administration.