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.