CRYING NEED FOR DEFINITE STATE POLICY

To accomplish these reforms will take law-making and law-enforcing.
However well we study existing conditions and legislate upon the
premises they furnish, success depends upon competent application
of the laws and their improvement as conditions change. It is a
bitter reproof to us of the West that Eastern states, with forest
and water resources insignificant compared to ours, have gone so
much farther in securing the services of trained men to study these
questions and to guard both private and public interests. The very
first step should be to get competent trained state foresters who
will devise wise measures, protect us from unwise ones, and educate
lumbermen and public alike to the common need of action. We pay
cheerfully for every other kind of public service, for geologists,
veterinarians, insurance commissioners, barber examiners, and what
not. But the two things we must have--wood and water--we leave
pretty much to take care of themselves, and they aren't doing it
and never will.

_The essentials of a wise state forest policy, based not on theory
but on successful experience elsewhere, are as cheap as they are
simple._ Where tried they have never been abandoned. If they pay
elsewhere, can we afford not to try? Following is the framework
of a code demanded by the situation in every Western state. Some
already approach it, but none goes far enough:

ESSENTIALS OF EFFECTIVE STATE FOREST CODE

1. A State Board of Forestry selected with the single view of insuring
the most competent expert judgment on the matters with which it