of the already existing fish commission to include game protection (in 8 States), (b) establishment of a separate game agency (in 9 States), and (c) establishment of a joint fish and game agency (in 31 States), with a decided tendency for the third pattern eventually to subsume the other two.33 In only one State (Pennsylvania), and despite the fact that the State was reorganized in 1923, are separate game and fish agencies maintained. In some seven other States, moreover, independent agencies are maintained for the management of commercial fisheries. The last State to establish a fish and game commission was Mississippi in 1932 after an abortive attempt in 1917. Even during this early period some States placed the management of wildlife and forests in the same administrative agency, as in the case of New York in 1895. Substantial integration of State wildlife functions with the governmental management of other natural resources, however, did not take place till the rise of "conservation," as related in chapter VI.34

The activities of the State game agencies differed materially from those of the fish commissions in placing relatively less emphasis upon science, and contenting themselves with enforcing (to various degrees of completeness) the game legis lation whose broad outlines were already on the statute books.

Leopold in his study of Game Management has suggested that the develop mental pattern of State game administration tends to pass through the following sequence: (1) Hunting restrictions, (2) predatory control, (3) reservation of game lands, (4) artificial replenishment, and (5) a variety of environmental controls (as over food, cover, disease, and special factors), to which might be added (6) the encouragement, and eventual regulation, of private management. Very few States (if any) have passed through all the phases.35

In remarkable contrast to forestry personnel, wildlife officials have been much more closely interallied with politics. When Leopold speaks of "game as a profession," his examples come almost exclusively from the foresters, but this is a situation that is gradually changing under the leadership of such men as Leopold, of Wisconsin, and Pirnie, of Michigan, to cite only a few.36

Among the newer techniques of wildlife management that distinctly partake of a planning character are the game census, the establishment of systems of distribution of wildlife refuges, and comprehensive programs for the leasing or acquisition of fishing-and-hunting rights.

Forestry. It is altogether too easy to assume that forest conservation is essentially a twentieth century phenomenon-a new activity of State govern ment. But, in the words of one historian of American forestry, the problems of timber and forestry "claimed the attention of colonial legislative bodies on many occasions during the seventeenth century, and hundreds of such laws [i. e., for forest conservation] had been enacted previous to the establishment of the National Government." 38 This vast mass of legislation is worthy of attention not only because of its remarkable continuity but also because it affords many examples of management techniques which are today regarded as un-American, when, in fact, their counterparts are to be found at some time or other during the whole period of American development. This emphasis upon early forest legislation, however, should not overlook the importance of the eventual (at the turn "The eight States extending the powers of the fish commission were Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Texas, and Wyoming, while the nine States establishing a game agency included Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin. This statement is based upon an extensive examination of State session laws specially made for this study. (See appendix A.) 34 Infra., pp. 97-100.

"A. Leopold, Game Management (1933), pp. 4-5, 407.

36 Leopold, op. cit., especially ch. 18, and M. O. Pirnie, Michig in Waterfowl Management (1935). See also The University and Conservation of Wisconsin Wildlife (University of Wisconsin Bulletin No. 2241, 1937). The only elective game official, paradoxically, held his office (in Alabama) continuously from its establishment in 1907 till the time of his death in 1922. U.S. Department of Agriculture Circular 242 (1922), p. 2. See also F. E. Jorgensen, Twenty-five Years a Game Warden (1937).

37 Cf. Connecticut Board of Fisheries and Game, Report for 1924-26, 60 et seq. (including a map).

38 J. P. Kinney, "Forest Legislation in America Prior to March 4, 1789," Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 370 (1916), p. 361.

of the twentieth century) recognition of forestry as a regular administrative function of State government.

Mercantilist theory explains the earliest legislative reference to forestry, such as the Virginia requirement of the planting of mulberry trees, the Plymouth prohibition of the sale or transport of timber out of the Colony without the approval of the Governor, and miscellaneous statutory price fixing and inspection of timber products.

More direct interest in conserving the forest resources appears in the legislation regulating or forbidding the setting of fires, primarily to protect life and buildings, but also to conserve growing timber. A quite remarkable example of the degree to which colonial administration attempted to control natural resources is a Massachusetts act of 1739, which forbade tree cutting on Cape Cod, in order to protect the area from drifting sand and prevent the destruction of the balance between land and sea which nature had established. Forest preserves were also recognized during the colonial period, one of the most famous of which was Penn's Woods., Perhaps more interesting than this example of Quakerism was the introduction of the idea of cooperative forestry by a Massachusetts Bay act of 1744 which authorized the establishment of common woods."

Although these examples of the colonial contribution to forestry-tree planting, cutting restriction, prevention of forest fires and trespass, cooperative forestry, and forest preserves may seem quite remarkable in scope, yet no effective machinery of government was set up to investigate or adminster or enforce forestry conservation. Exactly a century passed before America, in 1876, grudgingly recognized, with the appearance of a Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, that the forest resources were entitled to some official position in the Government hirarchy, and another decade had to run before the States, in 1885, evinced similar interest.

To most laymen, even today, forestry means the planting of trees, and it was only slowly and against the greatest opposition that forestry could shift its point of attack based on the fond expectation that merely planting young trees would eventually produce new timberland, to the safeguarding of present timber. That afforestation rather than forest management or even reforestation appeared first was largely the result of the activities of the group of agricultural and horticul tural societies that dotted the country during the early and middle part of the nineteenth country, persuading many States and even the Federal Government to encourage free planting by means of bounties and premiums, tax exemptions, and outright grants of land.

As early as 1794 the New York Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Arts and Manufactures inquired whether "in parts of the country where wood grows scarce" tree planting might not be advisable. Nothing much seems to have come of this except a Shade Tree Act of 1802 which authorized the private owner of land abutting on a highway to plant a row of trees placed at least 6 feet apart, and armed him with an action of trespass against anyone injuring or dam aging them. The Massachusetts State Society for Promoting Agriculture, in 1804, offered premiums to persons producing from seed the best growth of speci fied kinds of trees. The next State concern with tree planting apparently is not to be found until the Nebraska Territorial Assembly in 1861 granted a tax exemption of $50 per acre for any tract of land in good state of cultivation where there were not less than 100 trees and also memorialized Congress for the grant of one section in each township"for the purpose of growing timber thereon." Other States immediately responded by granting similar tax exemptions or providing systems of bounties and premiums payable directly by the State, by the agricultural and horticultural societies, or by the local governments.

39

"Neb., Laws 1860–61, p. 259; and U. S. Forest Service, Forest Taxation in the United States (1935), pp. 345-346.

28

STATE CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES

The tree planting movement made a common-sense appeal to the great sections of the country where there was an immediate scarcity of wood for fuel, fences, and buildings, and the movement was aided and abetted in the West by droughts and in the East by floods. In Maine alone, it has been estimated that 7 to 10 million trees were planted in 1877, but the legislation began to meet with criticism, as from Fernow, the Federal forester, and soon appeared unduly op pressive to the States themselves in terms of the amount of taxes lost. Eventu ally most of the statutes were repealed. The failure of the tree-planting move ment as a permanent attack on the problem of forest planning and conservation has been explained in terms of the lack of scientific knowledge or facts about forests or the techniques of forestry, the neglect of existing forests, and the omis sion to invent any machinery of government to implement its purpose. How ever, it should not be forgotten that, whether incidentally or directly, the prairie landscape was revolutionarily changed from a treeless vast expanse to homestead clusters of trees.40

Despite the "legend of inexhaustibility," which so characterized the public attitude toward the American forests, there are found a series of counter-cur rents posing the question, What if "inexhaustibility" had indeed proven itself a legend? For example, Dewitt Clinton in his gubernatorial message to the New York Legislature of 1822 called attention to the fact that "No system of planta tion for the production of trees, and no system of economy for their preservation has been adopted," and cynically added, "Probably none will be until severe privations are experienced." Expressing real concern, especially when the region from which it emanated is considered, the Georgia Legislature in 1858 petitioned for the appointment of a Federal commission "to inquire into the limits, extent, and probable duration of the Southern Pine Belt." In 1866 the recently created Federal Department of Agriculture, in calling attention to the lack of adequate scientific knowledge about the forests of America, urged prompt adoption of a plan for systematic experimentation and research in forestry management. It is significant that the report proposed that this task be undertaken by a private research agency, supported by public funds, rather than as a direct undertaking of the Federal Government, because research demanded a continuity of tenure exceeding the 4-year cycle of presidential and other official terms of office.11

In 1867 Wisconsin struck a new note by forsaking mere protest and petition. and proposed a thorough going investigation of the forests of the State, the rate at which they were being destroyed, effect upon climate, State control of private management, and wood substitutes. The immediate result was not particularly significant tax exemptions and bounties for planting tree belts; but Wisconsin had made a point of departure by officially calling for broad investigations and focusing legislative attention on forests as a regular problem for Government. Other such investigations were ordered for Maine, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Nothing resulted in the cases of Vermont and New Hampshire, while both Maine and Connecticut passed tax-exemption laws.2 The most significant action was that of New York, whose commission reported in 1873, recommending the discontinuance of sales of State lands and the retention of all lands reverting to State ownership through tax delinquency. Nothing actually resulted for a decade in the way of legislation, but the State holdings increased from 40 thousand to 500 thousand acres through tax sales, and in 1885 the first permanent State agency in the field of forestry came into being, as shortly to be related.

40 A significant factor contributing to this was undoubtedly the device of an annual Arbor Day. Nebraska in 1872 led the way by designating a certain day upon which the State inhabitants were urged to plant trees. The idea found immediate and ready acceptance and within 20 years Arbor Day had been recognized officially in a score of other States. 41 Cited in A National Plan for American Forestry (1933), pp. 747-748.

43 Ibid., pp. 742-743.

STATE CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES

29

At the 1873 meeting in Portland (Maine) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Franklin B. Hough had presented a paper on the Duty of Governments in the Preservation of Forests, strongly stressing the fact that the problems of forestry were "not limited to a particular State, but interest the Nation generally." To the modern mind, this language seemed to favor Federal activity, but Dr. Hough would only "venture to suggest that this association might properly take measures for bringing to the notice of our several State governments, and Congress with respect to the Territories, the subject of protection to forests, and their cultivation, regulation, and encour agement." When the special committee on forestry reported the following year, it recommended the creation of a forestry agency with powers analagous to those of the existent United States Fish Commission. Again it is interesting to note how narrowly the functions of government were conceived:

We should not expect that our general or State governments will ever directly undertake the planting and preservation of forests. They may by judicious reservation protect the timber on lands still owned by them, and they may by carefully devised laws, invite and protect the owners of the soil in undertaking this industry at their own expense, and by punishing trespass and en forcing precautions against running fires, may thus directly promote the growth of timbers. But mainly is this result to be sought through an intelligent, systematic, and well-considered series of statistical and scientific inquiries, tending to ascertain and make widely known whatever is most valuable for practical application, and with means to call into service the highest talent of the country in special points of investigation, as occasion may from time to time require.

In short, all that was contemplated was the setting up of a central clearing house of information with an exceedingly small staff to conduct statistical and other inquiries. This proposal involved little or no departure from past policy, nor committed the Federal Government in any way.

After the Federal Forestry Agency had been in existence almost a decade and had undertaken (in 1880) an inventory of the forest resources of the Nation, the States still lagged behind. Then in the year of 1885 four States became active, situated as diversely as New York with its Adirondacks, Ohio at the beginnings of the prairies, Colorado with its mountains and plains, and California on the Pacific coast. Out of the four, however, only one forestry agency survived, the others dying off within a few years. The States that failed were Colorado, California, and Ohio. The failure of the Colorado Forest Commis sioner has been explained in terms of the huge Federal areas removed from his authority and the opposition of the lumbering interests, across which California also ran afoul when "it sought to get the goods on timber thieves and fraudulent entrymen." The Ohio experiment was limited to research, and died a quiet death when the original leaders dropped off and interest waned. New York alone survived because it had a big job to do in the Adirondacks.43

Until the end of the nineteenth century State forestry had largely confined its activities to fact gathering and educational work, with the notable exceptions of the States of New York and Pennsylvania, where actual management of public forests was conducted with remarkable stability and continuity of policy. During the next decade (from 1900 to 1910), however, State forestry made very rapid strides, with 16 States establishing forestry agencies for the first time. The impetus came from a series of devastating fires in the Great Lakes States and the Northwest and also from the growing example of the Federal Government, to which many of the States were turning for advice on what and how to practice forestry as a regular function of Government. The States were told, in the words of the National Plan of the United States Forest Service:

(1) That their laws should provide for a technically trained State forester in charge of the work, and (2) that his position and entire organization must be nonpolitical. To assure an administration 43 Ibid., pp. 750-756.

responsible to a directive board made up of representatives of organizations and institutions within the State of a kind to promise a capable and disinterested governing agency concerned solely with serving the public as well as possible.44

44 Pp. 773. The trend has been distinctly away from this independent position, as shortly noted.

of the State forestry interests not dominated by political considerations, the States were advised to make their forestry departments independent of any existing department, such as departments of agriculture, land departments, and fish and game departments, and to make the State forester