THE FOREST RANGERS

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tive not only in suggesting in his report, which I will ask to have inserted in my remarks, but in every other way, that that thing which he himself characterized as a wrong should be undone and that the impossibility of a repetition of that wrong should be absolutely assured. Mr. President, I have examined briefly the policy upon which this forest-reserve system rests. Now, as to the question of administration, by which we mean the management of the reserves. After the reserves have been located in the painstaking way they are, as I have shown here by these maps and by the instructions to the locators of reserves, they are remapped. Then they are classified as to trees. There is now under the actual practical administration of this Bureau 128,000,000 acres, I believe. The Senator from Montana will correct me. if I am wrong.

Mr. Carter: One hundred and twenty-seven million

acres.

Mr. Beveridge: One hundred and twenty-seven million acres. Now, through that runs a great system of forest patrol. It is policed by a network of forest rangers. One Senator yesterday referred to the fact that the examination of the land could not have been thorough, because one man had gone over 4,000,000 acres in two weeks. What does that mean? Merely that instead of cutting down the appropriation for the proper care of the reserves it ought to be increased. As a matter of fact, the forest policing is very thorough. If any man thinks that a forest police is not valuable, I shall show in a moment that there is no individual service in this Government that is more valuable or difficult.

This policing is done by the rangers-900 of them

employed last year to parti 100.000.000 acres of land

one ranger to 110,000 acres, or 12 square miles. In the highly profitable forests of Prussia there is one forest guard on the average to every 1.7 square miles. Sma vonder that the cost of administration in the United States in spite of the higher scale of wages has Seen kept below that of any other European country except Russia. The cost of administration has been officially reported for various countries as follows:

The Forest Service is now expending annually, in administering the reserves, 1.6 cents per acre. Doubtless it should spend more, and must spend more as use of the reserves increases, for wise use means supervision and supervision means expense. Every live tree that is cut on the reserves is first marked by the forest ranger's ax: every log that is sold is scaled: and this is but one of their many duties, which include guarding the range against trespass and the forests against fire. And all this with one ranger to 172 square miles! It needs

or

WORK OF THE RANGERS

391 no further evidence to show that these are not invalids, Eastern tender feet, or college-bred impractical theorists. They are men of the West, woodsmen, cowboys, lumberjacks - men who can ride the mountain. trails and live a frontiersman's life. As to their efficiency, the record of forest fires throws some illumination on that point. I shall have something to say on that subject presently.

The next thing that the Forest Service does in the actual administration, after the test of the trees, after the marking of the "ripe" or mature timber, after arranging for the sale of that and the "down" timber, is to make trails and build roads, so that it is possible to communicate with one part of the reservation from another, and, further, so that if any agricultural lands are taken up by homesteaders there is a system of communication.

Then along this road there are built telephone lines, so that if in one portion of the forest a fire starts a ranger who finds himself unable to put it out may instantly telephone for help, so that men may be sent there and extinguish the fire while it is still young. Also, they build bridges, so that instead of a wild, ruinous, and rotting tangle of forest land you have a forest land which is woven together by trails, by a network of roads, by bridges, and by telephones. You have the "ripe" timber cut and taken off so as to increase the growth of that which is left. You have the "down" timber disposed of by selling it instead of permitting it to rot. You create a natural and healthy and perpetual forest, and therefore a profitable forest.

Mr. President, about the question of fires. In debate

yesterday I said that one of the most valuable services the Forest Service does is to preserve the forests from fires. I myself have had a little experience with forest fires and considerable observation of them, and there are Senators here from the West who have had a great deal more. It was suggested to me that the men who put out the fires are not the foresters, but the farmers. But that shows that there is still not so much knowledge in the Senate or the country as there ought to be as to what this Bureau is doing in the way of practical administration; because nearly all the fires that are now started in these mighty western forests are extinguished before they are old fires.

When a forest fire gets under way hardly all the farmers in a state could stop it; and I, in common with other Senators, have seen great areas of forest land, where millions - and I might also be accurate in saying tens of millions of dollars' worth of Government property has been destroyed in less than two weeks' time. Then this is another part of its administration, and so excellent has it been that the entire West has been practically clear of smoke during the summer time for the last two years.

Mr. President, that last circumstance is something which, to those who live near great forest districts, is of incalculable consequence. I myself have seen in the forests of the Northwest mighty conflagrations raging which swept away villages and towns; and in one such fire, I remember, more than a hundred human beings lost their lives. I have seen, and the Senator from Montana has seen much more than I, the whole atmosphere clouded for weeks with smoke from these criminal acts

EFFICIENCY OF FIRE PROTECTION

because that is what they are.

393

When

of negligence the Forest Service of the United States stops one of these fires it has saved more money to the Government than ten appropriations like this. We speak of economy, but we mean economy of resources, and trees are resources as much as actual dollars.

The Forest Service keeps careful records of all fires on the reserve. These include even the smallest fires, which are put out before they have covered more than a few square rods fires which, but for the vigilance of the forest officers, might become great conflagrations, but which are extinguished without cost beyond the salary of the rangers who patrol these forests as a part of their regular duties. During the year 1906, out of a total of 97,000,000 acres under administration, one-eighth of I per cent. was burned over, and three one-hundredths of I per cent. of the estimated standing timber was destroyed. Out of over 1,100 fires reported, 450 were extinguished without one cent of extra cost to the Government. Nearly 700 large fires were fought, at a total cost of less than $9,000 for extra labor and supplies. That is pretty good evidence of the efficiency of the protection which the Forest Service gives, at a lower cost per acre, as I have already shown, than any European country except Russia and Russia's figure is so low because the greater part of her forests are not under administration at all.

The next thing which shows how completely the Service is practical and results in a definite and tangible benefit to the people is the increase of the waterflow in the streams. If we can show that it has kept the West, that mighty area of imperial forests, clear of smoke for two