Precedent is the backbone of existence. Where in all the world is there another country which presents a parallel example, horrible or otherwise-an Anglo-Saxon democracy in the transitional phase between pioneering and waste, and Conservation and Efficiency?

Peculiarly enough, it is the United States of America from which already Australia has borrowed a constitution. There is no other example.

This discovery-and others-sent me to America to investigate American forestry.

CHAPTER III.

DEVELOPMENT OF U.S.A. FORESTRY.

In the essentials, America is the elder sister of Australia.

Both are self-governing Anglo-Saxon democracies, with similar laws and institutions and similar prejudices and sentiments. The differences are of detail and of age.

In forestry, America has only fifteen years' start of us.

At the beginning, America had nearly 1,000,000,000 acres of woodland. Australia, slightly larger in area, had less than 100,000,000 acres― one-tenth the forest of United States of America.

To-day, four-fifths of the American timber lands are privately owned; the same proportion in Australia is publicly owned.

There are 164,000,000 acres of national forest in the United States of America, each forest averaging 1,000,000 acres in extent.

There will be in Australia, when classification is complete, something like 16,000,000 acres of public forest, each averaging, perhaps, 10,000 acresten times the number of American forests, yet only one-tenth the area.

If America's forest position has been precarious, how much more so Australia's?

Youth and profligacy! Pioneering days are wasteful days. The first stage in developing a forest policy is deforestation.

In 1849, an American patent office report referred to the waste of valuable timber" and denounced "the folly and short-sightedness of the age." In 1865, came the prophecy in a lengthy article by Rev. Frederick Stair, on American Forestry (Fernow's History of Forestry):

"The nation has slept because the gnawing of want has not awakened her. She has had plenty and to spare, but within thirty years she will be conscious that not only individual want is present, but that it comes to each from permanent national famine of wood." Thereafter came the opening up of the West, and the tapping of the great forests of the Inland Timber Region; and famine was staved off. At which stage the Australian parallel fails-for want of an inland timber region.

But the fear and expectation were not abated, and in 1872 arbor days became the fashion. A year later, the American Association for the Advancement of Science became concerned, and secured, in 1876, the establishment of a forest agency in the Department of Agriculture.

From that forest agency developed the present Forest Service.

Nothing further evolved until 1882, when, following upon the visit of Baron von Steuben, a Prussian forest official, a forestry congress was held in Cincinnatti, and the American Forestry Association was born.

After which, for some years, the forestry movement became the "playball of political wire-pullers" and fell into disrepute.

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Arbor day sentimentalism discredited and clouded the issue before the business world; antagonism of the lumber world was aroused by the false idea of what the reform contemplated, and in the absence of technically-trained foresters to instruct the public and amateur reformers, &c., and to convince legislators of the absolute need for discontinuing the established habits, progress was naturally slow, and experienced many setbacks."

Nevertheless, the forestry movement was progressing, and in 1891 Congress let pass a "rider" to an Act, which authorised the President to set aside forest reservations from the public domain. Some 17,000,000 acres were speedily proclaimed.

Meanwhile, no provision had been made for administration, and a subse quent act to repair the omission failed to become law, "for lack of time to secure a conference report."

Some years later, in 1896, the Forestry Association prevailed upon the Secretary of the Interior to request the National Academy of Sciences to investigate and report upon the inauguration of a national forest policy.

A committee of investigation picnicked in the woods for a period, and a report followed. On Washington's birthday, in 1897, President Cleveland adopted the report, and heroically proclaimed the 20,000,000 of additional reservation recommended, without the usual preliminary ascertainment of local interests."

An outcry followed, and being recalled in extra session to pass the Annual Civil Appropriation Bill, Congress tacked another "rider" to the Bill, suspending the reservations so proclaimed, " until they could be more definitely delimited, private claims adjusted, and agricultural lands excluded." Administration provisions for the remaining reservations were hung on to this rider.

By this time, the forestry agency, established in 1876, had become the Division of Forestry, and in 1898 fell into the capable hands of Gifford Pinchot, who had acquired some knowledge of European forestry, and who, being ambitious, aggressive, and, at the same time, wealthy and influential, was able to secure such appropriations for its work as to bring the division into much greater prominence.

In 1901, this division controlled the scientific development of forestry, while the survey of the forest reserves was vested in the Geological Survey, and their administration in the General Land Office!

The history of forestry in Australia has been strangely like that of the United States of America, and in 1901 the forestry position in the States was, in many respects, comparable to that now existing with us, following upon, and possibly preceding, a very similar development.

The year 1901 marked the beginning of a new era for American forestry. In that year Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States of America; and within twelve months the forest reservations had increased to 65,000,000 acres, and the Division of Forestry had grown into the Bureau of Forestry.

Within another three years, the same bureau had become the United States of America Forest Service, with full and undivided control over 162,000,000 acres of national forest, and the federal forest policy was firmly established.

CHAPTER IV.

FEDERAL OR STATE FORESTRY-WHICH ?

American forestry is Federal: Australian forestry is State controlled.

It is argued that forestry is a national, not a provincial function, and that State control tends to the subordination of the national interest to purely local considerations. Conservation of the timber supply and maintenance of stream flow are matters of nation-wide importance. Many of the problems to be faced are interstate in character. Forest fires are not limited by State boundaries. The water supply of one State may be affected seriously by forest destruction in an adjoining one.

The most damning argument against State control is the land history of the States themselves.

Considerable lands were granted all the public land States, and, from beginning to end, their handling of them has been marked by carelessness, inefficiency, waste and "graft." In connection with their disposition scandals of great and small proportions have been so frequent as to be commonplace.

"Vast areas were donated by the States for roads that were never built; water fronts were given away without any consideration; tide and swamp lands were granted on promises that never materialised, and vast areas of the choicest timber lands sold for a song."

The American Union is a coalition of forty-nine small States; the Australian Commonwealth is a federation of seven countries.

In America, the State powers are limited; in Australia, the limitations are those of the federation.

In America the Government is wholly national. State rights are insignificant.

Federal forestry is a natural development of the situation in America, as State forestry is a natural corollary to the present Australian form of Government.

The mountainous configuration of the forest lands of America and the inflammable nature of the forests are strong factors in influencing federal forestry development in America, in view of the interstate influences they exert on water flow and forest fires.

CHAPTER V.

LAW AND POLICY.

Forestry is essentially a science of safeguarding the future consistently with the present. It is "paternalism."

And it is "undemocratic" in that it is opposed to the doctrine of noninterference with private rights; which may explain its flourishing development in Germany.

Yet, even in the American Democracy, the trend of the Federal Government of late years has been paternalistic- -even socialistic.

Two courts have ruled recently that owners of timberlands

may be

subjected to restriction without compensation, as regards the size of trees they may fell on their property, if the welfare of the State demands such interfer

ence.

Which is the old Roman doctrine of "Utere tuo ne alterum noceas," so often used by forestry propagandists.

This tendency towards paternalism and forestry may be ascribed in great measure to the educational and publicity work of the early Bureau of Forestry, and the American Forestry Association.

It has influenced the development of the forest laws of the United States of America.

In view of the fact that several of the Australian States project important forestry legislation, it may be interesting and profitable to review the succinct laws of the United States of America on the subject.

Like Topsy, they seem to have "growed."

"

The important Act creating National Forests, was just a "rider tacked on to an "Act to repeal timber culture laws and for other purposes." (Act of March 3, 1891.)

It reads

Section 24.-The President of the United States may, from time to time, set apart and reserve in any State or territory, having public land bearing forests, any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations, and the President shall, by public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and the limits thereof."

The administration of the National Forest so proclaimed was provided for six years later by another rider hung on to a hurried Sundry Civil Appropriations Act, passed in an extra session on June 4, 1897.

The tacked-on clauses enacted that

"(1.) No public forest reservation shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favourable conditions of water flow, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States; but it is not the purpose or intent of these provisions, or of the Act providing for such reservations, to authorise the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein or for agricultural purposes than for forest purposes.

(2.) The Secretary of the Interior shall make provisions for the protection against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests and forest reservations which may have been set aside under the said Act of March 3, 1891, and which may be continued: and he may make such rules and regulations, and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use, and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction, and any violation of the provisions of this Act or such rules and regulations shall be punished as is provided for in the Act of June 4, 1888 (repealed by the Criminal Code of 1909, which provide a maximum penalty of £200 or one year's imprisonment for forest offences).

(3.) For the purpose of preserving the living and growing timber and promoting the younger growth on forest reservations, the Secretary of the Interior, under such rules and regulations as he shall prescribe, may cause to be designated and appraised so much of the dead, matured, or large growth of trees found upon such forest reservations as may be compatible with the utilisation of the forests thereon and may sell the same for not less than the appraised value in such quantities to each purchaser as he shall prescribe, to be used in the State or Territory in which such timber reservation may be situated." (Export permitted by Act of March 4, 1915.)

There were several incidental clauses providing for due advertisement of timber sales, safeguarding the right of ingress and egress of settlers and miners, and enacting that the waters might be used for mining, domestic, milling, or irrigation purposes, subject in the last three cases to the water laws of the respective States governing their use and appropriation, while the laws of the United States of America controlled the mining.

An Act of February 6, 1905, gave power of arrest for violation of forest laws. The Forest Homestead Act of June 11, 1906 (as amended August 10, 1912)

"directed and required the Secretary of Agriculture to select, classify, and segregate as soon as practicable all lands chiefly valuable for agriculture, and which, in his opinion, may be occupied for agricultural purposes without injury to the forest reserves, and which are not needed for public purposes;"

and authorised him to

"list and describe the same by metes and bounds, or otherwise, and file the lists and descriptions with the Secretary of the Interior, with the request that the said lands be opened to entry in tracts not exceeding 160 acres in area."

An Act of May 23, 1908, provided that 25 per cent. of all money received from each forest reserve during any fiscal year shall be paid to the State for benefit of public schools and public roads.

The Weeks Laws of March 1, 1911, authorised co-operative agreements of States with the United States for the protection of the watersheds of navigable streams against fire and conserving of the forests and the water supply. It provided an annual appropriation not exceeding £420,000 for the examination, survey, and acquirement of lands located on the headwaters of navigable streams; appointed a National Forest Reservation Commission (parliamentary) to handle the matter, and authorised the Secretary of Agriculture to purchase lands approved by the commission and administer them as National Forests.

Such are the forest laws of America. They gave the Secretary of the Interior (afterwards Agriculture) virtual carte blanche to establish his own forest policy and laws in authorising him to "make provision for the protection against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests," and "to make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reservations," namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction."

So wide were the powers conferred that their validity was put to the test in the case of United States versus Grimand et al, 220 U.S. 506-in which the regulations framed to control grazing on the National forests, were contested.