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

by Harold Morse Dunphy

Forestry is primarily an out-of-door occupation. Some indoor work in the formulation of plans, writing of reports, handling of correspondence, and other office routine, is of course necessary, particularly in the case of those charged with the administration of large areas. But the average forester must spend the bulk of his time in the open, in the forests for which he is caring. Sometimes his headquarters may be in a small town or sometimes in a more or less isolated situation in the woods themselves. In either case his daily work will ordinarily take him into the open in sunshine and in rain. Occasionally he may be absent from home for several weeks at a time carrying his bed and provisions on his back, or, if he is fortunate, on a pack animal.

So far as geographical location is concerned, opportunities for foresters have heretofore been mainly in the mountain regions of the West where the National Forests are located. As forestry comes to be practiced more and more on State Forests and on private lands, however, similar opportunities will develop in the East. There is no reason why large numbers of foresters should not eventually be employed wherever forests occur, and this means practically throughout the country except in the Great Plains and in the farming regions of the Central States and Middle West.

What Handicaps Are Serious

Generally speaking, a forester must be able-bodied and in good physical health. He must have a strong heart, sound lungs, and a constitution able to stand exposure to all kinds of wind and weather. Heart disease, tuberculosis, and other serious organic troubles are handicaps that point to the choice of another occupation.

On the other hand, there are certain disabilities, and particularly injuries of various sorts, that do not constitute any serious drawback. Injuries to the mouth, nose, ears, scalp, and other parts of the head, for example, do not disqualify unless they interfere to a dangerous extent with one’s eyesight or hearing. Some deafness is allowable provided it has not gone so far as to prevent communication or to endanger one from falling trees or other accidents. Even blindness in one eye is not a real handicap if the other eye is still sound. The loss of an arm or a leg incapacitates a man for the physical work required of most foresters, but minor injuries to these limbs, such as loss of a finger or a toe, do not disqualify one.

For certain specialized duties one can have sustained even more serious injuries and still be able to give satisfactory service. One may be badly crippled and yet be successful in research work provided he is able to move about more or less freely, has some use of his arms, and can handle a microscope. Men at fire-lookout stations need little more than good eyes and sufficient hearing to use a telephone. On the other hand, one would hardly wish to take up fire-lookout work as a permanent occupation, and unless his condition can be improved sufficiently to enable him to resume active physical work his chances for advancement are poor. Special appliances for handling tools are not necessary, as is the case with many industrial workers. The average forester must be able to turn his hand to a wide variety of activities and to use such homely implements as the axe, the hammer, the shovel, and the mattock.

The danger of further injury is no greater in forestry than in most other outdoor occupations. Accidents due to forest fires, bucking horses, falling trees, and rolling stones are always possible, but the proportion of those seriously injured in such ways as these is not large. Those employed by the National Government receive compensation in case of injury incurred in line of duty.

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.