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Soldiers of the Common Good: August

Of course, in a vast and populous country like ours, no amount of devotion or skill on the part of the Federal and State forest services, the American Forestry Association, and other organizations can accomplish much without the co-operation of the rest of us. Our national forests, what is left of them, are as well protected and managed, considering the immense territory to be covered, and the limited funds so far appropriated for the work, as those of any nation. (1 Some of the city-owned forests of Europe, to be sure, are so well looked after that their earnings pay a large part of the taxes, and serious fires are almost unknown; but they have one employee to every 300 acres, while we average one to every 100,000 acres!) And, so far as skill and system in dealing with the fires we are constantly starting is concerned, our fire-fighters, as I said in the previous chapter, are acknowledged to be the best in the world.

But we have a good long way to travel before we can show such records as those of European countries and communities, either in the proportion of fire losses or general forest protection and development, simply because our nation as a whole still lags behind its own splendid National Forest Service and the forest service of the more progressive States, corporations, and public-spirited organizations, not the least important of which are some of the schools, the Boy Scouts, and the Boys' Reforestation Clubs. And if I knew such things as we have seen and learned in the last chapter I'd be ashamed not to do everything I could to help along the good work. Of the need of enlisting more and more young people in this great movement, Dean Moon, of the New York State College of Forestry, says: "Special attention should be paid to instructing school-children concerning the importance of a forestry programme."

But don't let us make the mistake of thinking that changing habits for the better is an easy job. If you knew some of the things that have been gone through with in getting where we are, where we can now begin to see daylight, you would wonder that we have made any progress at all. But, both because of what we can do to help at the present time and from the standpoint of our future citizenship, we ought to have some understanding of these things. Moreover, the most encouraging part of the progress we have already made is just that -- the history of the difficulties and discouragements through which it has been reached; the long pulls and the rocky roads in order to get anywhere at all; and you'll see why.

I. THE LONG PULLS AND THE ROCKY ROADS Speaking of long pulls and rocky roads, we'll begin with a couple of locomotives, hoarsely grunting their winding, way through the mountains, on a steep grade, in one of the forested regions of the West, with a long string of loaded freight-cars behind them.