general safety in the locality than to have guarded tracts alternating
with fire traps. Moreover attention to individual tracts does not
improve surrounding conditions, and the latter may easily become
so bad as to make the cost of individual patrol, as well as the
risk, far overbalance any financial disadvantage at present through
co-operation.

Again, the public is far more likely to take kindly to the enforcement
of fire laws by an association than to the action of an individual
owner against whom some prejudice may exist. Associations greatly
simplify co-operation with State and Government in fire work and
tend to bring about appropriations for the purpose. They enable
uniform and concentrated effort to improve sentiment and legislation.
This booklet and the other work done by the Western Forestry &
Conservation Association was made possible by the existence of
the local organizations it represents. Their independent local and
State effect has been marked.

The bad fire season of 1910 was a supreme test of the associations
of the Pacific Northwest. They kept the bad fires in their immense
territory down to a number which can be counted on the fingers
and their losses were comparatively insignificant. Yet under the
weather conditions which existed the thousands of fires they
extinguished would certainly otherwise have swept the country and
caused a disaster probably unparalleled in American history.

REFORESTATION AS A FIRE PREVENTATIVE

However progressive the preventive policies adopted, the race between
them and the increasing sources of hazard resembles that between