supplies. The fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of
forests by use. Forest protection is not an end in itself; it is
a means to increase and sustain the resources of our country and
the industries which depend upon them. The preservation of our
forests is an imperative business necessity. We have come to see
clearly that whatever destroys the forest, except to make way for
agriculture, threatens our wellbeing."

Nevertheless it was four years before Congress could be brought
to the common-sense policy of administering the forest lands
still belonging to the Government. Pinchot and his associates in
the Bureau of Forestry spent the interval profitably, however, in
investigating and studying the whole problem of national forest
resources and in drawing up enlightened and effective plans for
their protection and development. Accordingly, when the act
transferring the National Forests to the charge of the newly
created United States Forest Service in the Department of
Agriculture was passed early in 1905, they were ready for the
responsibility.

The principles which they had formulated and which they now began
to apply had been summed up by Roosevelt in the statement "that
the rights of the public to the natural resources outweigh
private rights and must be given the first consideration." Until
the establishment of the Forest Service, private rights had
almost always been allowed to overbalance public rights in
matters that concerned not only the National Forests, but the
public lands generally. It was the necessity of having this new
principle recognized and adopted that made the way of the newly
created Forest Service and of the whole Conservation movement so