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Show ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUBLIC FOREST LANDS 565 Through their combined efforts an appropriation of $2,000 was made in 1876 to the Department of Agriculture for a study of the production and consumption of forest products, the probable supply, means of preserving and renewing the forests, and the influence of forests on climate. Franklin B. Hough who had been in charge of the New York State Censuses of 1855 and 1865 and was superintendent of the United States Census of 1870 was placed in charge of this task, out of which came his two detailed Reports on Forestry. Hough was kept on by the Department in 1881 in the Division of Forestry and in 1883 in the office of Investigation of Forestry. In this way was begun the Division of Forestry, of which Cleveland made Bernard Fernow head in 1885. A forester trained in the best German tradition, Fernow came to the United States in 1876. He was employed by a company concerned with the use of wood in industry and took a leading part in the organization of the American Forestry Congress and other meetings of those concerned with the welfare of the forests. His appointment to replace Hough in the Division of Forestry was in line with that department's policy of using professionals wherever possible. Between 1886 and 1898 Fernow wrote many articles and some notable books, and delivered numerous addresses before forestry and scientific agencies concerning the problems, needs, and objectives of professional forestry. His biographer shows that he had a part in influencing John W. Noble, Secretary of the Interior, to suggest the addition of Section 24 to the Act of 1891. This section provided for the creation of forest reserves and led to the Act of 1897, authorizing the establishment of an administrative organization to manage the reserves. Fernow ranks among the great figures of forestry, though he may have been more theoretical than practical. In accepting the directorship of the State School of Forestry at Cornell, Fernow made way for Gifford Pinchot who succeeded him in 1898 as head of the Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture.2 As a result of this ferment of discussion of forest practices Congress was persuaded to add to the General Revision Act of March 3, 1891, a section we may call the Forest Reservation Act. Among its other provisions the Revision Act repealed the Preemption and Timber Culture Acts but without cutting off any rights already established under them even if not yet either carried to patent or applied for. The act also allowed patent of timber culture entries after 4 years of compliance with the law instead of 8. In addition, Congress, still troubled about prosecutions for depredations upon the public timberlands, declared that persons against whom action was taken need only offer for defense that the timber so cut was for use in the state or territory of origin for "agricultural, mining, manufacturing or domestic purposes, and had not been removed therefrom. . . ." It is a commentary upon the way legislation was achieve^in the 19th century that in an act calculated either to forgive or to ease the defense of trespassers on government timberland Congress should add in the final Section 24, the Forest Reservation amendment, its first step in the conservation of the natural resources of the country. This part of the act authorized the President "to set apart and reserve, in any State or Territory having public land bearing forests, in [sic] any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial 21 have placed heavy reliance on Andrew Denny Rodgers III, Bernard Eduard Fernow; A Story of North American Forestry (Princeton, 1951), passim, without neglecting other accounts such as Ise, United States Forest Policy; Cameron, Development of Governmental Forest Control in the United Stales; Pinchot, Breaking New Ground; and Darrell H. Smith, The Forest Service. Its History, Activities and Organization (Washington, 1930). |