(Witness: Pinchot.)

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes; somebody who represents the Secretary.

The CHAIRMAN. Then your idea is that it is not practicable to avoid what is an apparent duplication of work?

Mr. PINCHOT. But what is not really a duplication.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. PINCHOT. No; I do not think it is practicable. Each bureau must maintain for its own efficiency its own editorial corps.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have much material sent back to your Bureau by the editor in chief?

Mr. PINCHOT. Very little.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a library?

Mr. PINCHOT. We have a substation of the Department library. We keep the books on forestry for the use of our men, but ours is not a separate library.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a librarian?

Mr. PINCHOT. We have a librarian to take care of those books. But you see it would not be practicable—that is, the loss would be very much greater than the gain-if we kept those books a mile away, and every time a man wanted to get a book he had to go over and get it.

The CHAIRMAN. You have here Lumber Trade Statistics, which cost your Department something like $15,000. Is there any other Department of the Government, or any other bureau of the Government, that is collecting substantially that same material?

Mr. PINCHOT. No; we are doing this in cooperation with the Census. The CHAIRMAN. Does not Austin, with his Bureau of Statistics, come into that field?

Mr. PINCHOт. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Just explain in what way you cooperate with the Census Bureau.

Mr. PINCHOT. We are cooperating with the Census and with the lumber associations. There never had been a proper statement of the lumber cut and used until we took it up. The Census people, who have the machinery, send out the schedules which we have prepared beforehand in cooperation with their men and with the lumbertrade people. For instance, the secretary of the National Lumber Manufacturers' Association is a member of the Forest Service, at a salary of $25 a month, in order to help us prepare this material and get it out and to give the lumbermen the assurance that their organizations are as much interested as we are. The Census sends out the schedule that we have prepared in cooperation. We decide what we want to have calculated out of the returns, and we print it jointly. The CHAIRMAN. Who comes into direct contact with the industry, the Census or you?

Mr. PINCHOT. We come into direct contact with the industry, and the Census Bureau does the clerical end of it.

The CHAIRMAN. You send out the men?

Mr. PINCHOT. This is not a case of sending out men; it is a case of sending out circulars.

The CHAIRMAN. These salaries, then, are paid to people in Washington?

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes; in part.

(Witness: Pinchot.)

The CHAIRMAN. That is, when you segregate this here, it is simply an estimate of the amount of expenditure upon that particular branch?

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes. I do not say those men merely stay in Washington, but that the collection of these statistics is done by the Census through correspondence. Our men are in constant touch with the various lumber trade associations, going before them constantly, discussing these questions, and taking up with them economies in the uses of wood. So that our boys are traveling over the country constantly.

The CHAIRMAN. That is where you get such large traveling and station expenses?

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. The actual collection of the statistics is done by these circulars sent out by the Census Bureau?

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes; that is done by the Census.

The CHAIRMAN. You avail yourselves of their machinery?

Mr. PINCHOT. Precisely. It would be a loss to double that machinery.

The CHAIRMAN. Part of this sum expended for salaries under this head covers the time and expenses of the men who travel about in the way you have described?

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. They are not literally collecting statistics, but they are simply rubbing up against that particular business?

Mr. PINCHOT. They are laying the foundations which make the collection of good statistics possible.

The CHAIRMAN. They are awakening an interest on the part of these people?

Mr. PINCHOT. Exactly.

The CHAIRMAN. It leads them to furnish voluntarily to the Census Bureau the information you need?

Mr. PINCHOT. Of course it is of the greatest possible interest to us to know what the cut of lumber is in the United States every year. The CHAIRMAN. That bears upon the question of the depletion of the forests?

Mr. PINCHOT. Precisely; and as it was not being ascertained we had to take it up, and that is the way we handle it.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you collect any other statistics in the work of your bureau than these?

Mr. PINCHOT. No; just the lumber trade statistics. We are making what might be called statistics on a very large scale; that is, we are collecting the results of our measurement of forests, the production of timber per acre, etc. But these we get by original measurements in the woods.

The committee thereupon (at 1 o'clock p. m.) took a recess until 2 o'clock p. m.

(Witness: Pinchot.)

FEBRUARY 2, 1907.

(Part of testimony, given on above date, before Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Agriculture.)

STATEMENT OF GIFFORD PINCHOT, ESQ.-Continued.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Pinchot, you have been pretty thoroughly over what might be termed, perhaps, the business and executive features of your Bureau, as distinguished from its general operations and the results that it accomplishes?

Mr. PINCHOт. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. What we would like to have you do now is to make as full a statement as you are prepared to make, showing to us the concrete utility of the Bureau of which you are the head-what it proposes to do, what it is doing, the practical methods it is using for the purpose of doing it, and what the effect of those results is going to be to the people of this country from the material point of view. Do I make that clear?

Mr. PINCHOT. Perfectly.

The forests of the United States cover about one-third of the area of the country. The people of the United States use more wood per capita than any other nation on earth. Wood enters more vitally into our civilization than into any other civilization. For instance, the proportion of wooden houses is larger here; the use of wood in all directions is much larger in the United States than anywhere else. Furthermore, the forests, aside from merely furnishing wood, maintain and control the water supply, and therefore form a foundation, not merely for protection from flood, but for the maintenance of the water supply for power, for the use of cities, and especially for irrigation in the West.

The CHAIRMAN. To what do you attribute that larger use of wood in these various avenues by the people of this country? Is it due to the cheapness of the material and the convenience of its use?

Mr. PINCHOT. In the first place, to the larger supply and the greater convenience of use. In the second place, to the fact that our people are not in the habit of building for the future as much as other people are. We put up a wooden house that will last a little while, where very many other nations would put up a stone house that would last nearly forever.

The CHAIRMAN. That is to say, our structures are temporary rather than permanent?

Mr. PINCHOT. Our structures are temporary rather than permanent, taking the nation as a whole. And then it is because, in the eastern United States, when the settlers first came here, we had an enormous supply of timber, and the forest was rather an enemy than otherwise. Everybody had all the wood they wanted to use. As our people have moved West, into the region where wood has been less plentiful, they have carried with them their wasteful habits of use. Another reason is the enormous extension of our railroads, which require about 100,000,000 ties a year merely for maintenance, and to keep one tie on the track you must keep two trees growing in the forest, if I make that plain.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

(Witness: Pinchot.)

Mr. PINCHOT. Furthermore (and then to return), in addition to the enormous value of the forests in the West for irrigation and power, the forests of the United States control the grazing industry on the public lands, because the forest reserves contain nearly all of the summer range. Of course if you can not keep the cattle through the summer on the summer range, you can not use the winter range and the spring and fall range. So that in the western part of the country the preservation of the forest means the preservation of wood, water, and grass. In the eastern part of the country it means the preservation of wood and water. There is no other nation on earth whose dependence on the forest is as striking and as vital as ours, because of the configuration of our country and the manner in which its problems arise.

The CHAIRMAN. The extent of its area, also, I suppose?

Mr. PINCHOT. The extent of its area and the whole physical condition makes the forest more important to the United States than to any other part of the world of equal area.

By far the larger part of the forests of the United States is and will remain in private hands. While in the national forest reserves there are something over 120,000,000 acres, there is in wood lots alone a much larger area than that; and in addition there are the enormous areas of forest controlled by lumber companies, by a few of the States, and by large owners generally.

We are trying to do, in the Forest Service, two things

The CHAIRMAN. Can you give, right there, any approximation of the percentage of the one-third of the area that is devoted to forests that the Government now holds?

Mr. PINCHOT. Yes; the Government now holds, say, 150,000,000 acres. It holds about a fifth of the forest area of the country, roughly between a fifth and a sixth.

What we are trying to do in the Forest Service is mainly along two lines: We are trying to educate the private owner to the fact that it will pay him to take care of his forest, and thus get the four-fifths of the forests of the United States preserved by the good-will and the intelligent understanding of the men who own them.

The CHAIRMAN. And the self-interest?

Mr. PINCHOT. And the self-interest-we base that on self-interest absolutely. We appeal to them purely on the ground that it is the best business policy for them to save their forests; and a large part of the work of the Forest Service hitherto has consisted in gathering statistics, by measurements in the forest, to show that forests grow fast enough to make it pay to treat them decently. We have been able to show to business men what their lands will produce after a certain time if they are handled in certain ways; and it has been an easy matter to balance that product, using present lumber prices, against taxes and expense of maintenance and interest, and so on, so as to show definitely that it was a paying proposition to take care of their woods.

On that side, then, we are charged with the general progress of forestry.

The CHAIRMAN. Right there, is there much of what you would call

(Witness: Pinchot.)

current expense involved in the application of proper forestry methods?

Mr. PINCHOT. No; there is very little.

The CHAIRMAN. Perhaps it would be well to explain, right here, why and how that is.

Mr. PINCHOT. There is very little current expense, because all you have to do is to let the trees alone and allow them to grow. There is a certain amount of taxes, a certain amount of protection against fire, in some cases an expense for fencing, and there is the capital, the interest account running against the capital value. But the expense of maintenance is small. There is nothing more involved than simply letting the forest grow.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it not a question of cutting out from time to time by proper and intelligent methods?.

Mr. PINCHOT. We recommend no cutting out that does not pay for itself. That is all profitable in addition.

The CHAIRMAN. What method do they use in cutting if they are preserving the land? That is to say, in what way do they cut?

Mr. PINCHOT. That depends entirely on the condition of the forest. There are as many different treatments for forests as there are different treatments for a man who is sick, depending on the nature of his disease.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes.

Mr. PINCHOT. We simply examine the forest land, find out what its condition is, what it needs, how it can best produce what the owner wants from it, and then make recommendations as to the best method to get that.

The CHAIRMAN. To get that particular

Mr. PINCHOт. That particular service, and at the same time serve the forest and insure its continuance.

The CHAIRMAN. Those investigations are conducted without expense to the property owner?

Mr. PINCHOT. No.

The CHAIRMAN. They are not?

Mr. PINCHOT. We make the property owner pay the expense of those investigations.

The CHAIRMAN. How expensive are they?

Mr. PINCHOT. At first the property owner paid us but a very small proportion of the expense. Gradually we have increased the proportion we have required from the property owner, as the value of the work that we were doing became recognized, until much of the work that we now do for forest owners pays all the expense involved. And we have almost reached that point where we shall be able to charge the cost, plus 10 per cent. for every piece of work we do for a private owner.

The CHAIRMAN. The cost involves mainly the salaries and expenses of the men engaged in examining the forest?

Mr. PINCHOT. Precisely; and often the elaboration of the measurements which they have taken.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Have you reached such a system in connection with that that you have a unit of cost? For instance, what does it cost to examine and prepare the data for a forest of 100 acres or 500 acres, as the case may be?