alliance suddenly became a triple alliance private, state, and Federal.

When these three hitherto mutually distrustful agencies got together and got acquainted, all suspicions among themselves fell away. Each found that the others were not only sincere but were competent to add practical wisdom on the subjects they all had at heart. And the alliance precluded any danger that the organization's influence might be diverted at times from forest preservation into less publicly beneficial activities of interest to lumbermen. To insure this desirable condition still further, public conservation associations were admitted to full membership and vote.

The remaining step followed logically. The officials of all three agencies have extended their friendly relations to actual coöperation in the field. Joint patrols, joint telephone lines, and joint agreements to share emergencies are welding all three into a system of immense efficiency for public good. And jointly they use association facilities to educate the public to reciprocate.

The result is an organization of such standing that upon a telegraphic appeal from its president, President Taft ordered out the Federal troops to assist the Forest Service during the fires of 1910.

There are sixteen private coöperative fire associations in the Pacific Northwest, extending from northern California to northern Montana. They patrol approximately 20 million acres, containing perhaps 500 billion feet of timber. The number of men employed varies with the hazard of the season, but in 1912 they included about 450 regular patrolmen besides the shifting fire-fighters used when needed. In 1910, one Idaho association alone had 850 of these in the field.

The private expenditure varies correspondingly, being about $200,000 in 1912, one of the wettest — and therefore one of the easiest years yet experienced; and $700,000 in 1910, the worst year. Even at the minimum of $200,000, this expenditure means a cost of about a cent an acre for the entire area guarded, although, since by no means all owners contribute, the average minimum cost to members

on their holdings is usually two cents or more. The hazard also varies greatly with forest types, so that though one association may get off with half a cent an acre, others may need three, five, or eight cents an acre. Assessments are always uniform on all members of any one patrol; a Weyerhaeuser or railroad holding of 100,000 acres pays the same rate that a settler does upon his 160-acre claim. Each has equal vote in association affairs.

The efficiency of the plan has been remarkable. Last year the area of merchantable timber burned over was only 14,000 acres, or one sixteenth of one per cent. of the area protected; and the timber actually destroyed beyond use was only about 76 million feet, or a seventieth of one per cent. In 1910, the worst fire year in American history, when reports of losses of life and property filled the papers for weeks, the private patrolmen extinguished nearly six thousand fires and kept the entire private loss in the three hardest-hit states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon down to less than a quarter of one per cent. Once a serious deterrent to forest investment or settlement, and said to destroy as much western timber as was utilized, fire is now regarded as dangerous only when ignored, and it is practically avoidable at an expenditure that is insignificant when compared with the values insured.

Such demonstration makes converts. When the Western Forestry and Conservation Association, in 1910, organized the first coöperative association in Oregon, that state had a fifth of all the Nation's timber but no state protection and practically no coöperation among owners. It now has one of the best forest codes in the country, a state forester with an appropriation, a chain of coöperative associations from the Columbia River to the California line, and a law compelling timber owners to patrol.

The unit in any protective system is the patrolman, sometimes called firewarden or forest ranger as in the Federal service. He must be himself a captain of men at large fires and deal unadvised with many great emergencies.

Particularly in the private systems,

where his land-owning employer must avert prejudice or resentment, the patrolman must be a diplomat. The settler with a clearing to burn, the logger with an unguarded engine, the camper who may leave his fire burning, must all be cautioned tactfully by a man they like and respect. And, because he has no other administrative duties like those of Federal rangers to divide his attention, and because official restrictions do not limit his devices and methods, he is making the most rapid advance in the evolution of the new American vocation that of the trained forest fireman. His work includes the handling of backfires; the use of dynamite in trenching; the building of expensive telephone lines, trails, and bridges; the judging of the behavior of fire under different conditions and directing the fight accordingly when error may cost tremendous loss of property or life; the purposeful burning of fire traps safely; the transporting, feeding, and directing of large crews in almost inaccessible localities and perhaps in the face of extreme peril; and the collection of evidence against fire law violators.

Congressional appropriations being fixed for the fiscal year, the Forest Service maintains a nearly uniform force regardless of the seasonal hazard. But the association policy is to maintain a "skeleton" patrol in spring, supposed to be adequate for an average season, and to increase it as needed by additional assessments. The territory assigned to a patrolman varies, with accessibility and hazard, from 15,000 to 50,000 acres. Systems of instruction and report have been devised, including daily service reports by patrolmen which also show weather conditions in detail to enable the officers to judge the dryness of the forest. Fires are reported by classes, and their location and effect are recorded.

Progress has been rapid, however, toward facilities to increase and save man power. Trail and telephone building is now one of the chief activities. Lookout stations on commanding peaks are connected by telephone and furnished with protractor dials and maps to enable observers to locate fires with precision.

Barometric readings are utilized to forecast threatening wind and dryness. Tool and supply depots, cabins, and horse pastures are maintained at strategic points. Arrangements are made in camps and towns for emergency help upon call; and commissary and transportation facilities are standardized and prearranged as far as possible so that large crews can be handled promptly. be handled promptly. Motor boats, automobiles, motorcycles, and track speeders

are

used where practicable, although saddle and pack horses remain standard conveyances in the inaccessible mountains. Collapsible waterbags, portable telephones, chemical extinguishers, special fire fighting tools, and other similar devices are used. No discussion at the last fire conference of the Western Forestry and Conservation Association brought out more interest than that of the possibilities of "wireless" in forest protection, and experiments in its use are proposed for this coming year.

Leadership in this trade of fire-fighting has also evolved its types and, curiously, very different ones. One successful association manager, modestly satisfied with the title of chief warden, is a rich timber owner's son who, rather than make more money or play golf, devotes himself and his automobile to the work and, as daring a fire fighter as he was driver, has built up one of the strongest systems in the West. It was he who first used dynamite instead of men to trench in front of a sweeping fire. Another is a young man who rose from the ranks through the grades of patrolman and inspector and is now responsible for the safeguarding of three million acres. Another was an old river driver and "whitewater man" accustomed to handling men in emergencies, who worked and fed 850 fire fighters in the fearful Cœur d'Alene fires, that cost so many lives, and did not lose a man.

The sixteen associations patrol an area about as great as that of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined, mountainous and inaccessible, and extending as far as from Bangor to Charleston. They protect - besides homes, property, and stream flow timber worth a billion dollars t

its owners and, if saved for manufacture, many times that to the community. Their example is spreading eastward, for within a year or two similar associations, modeled after the western by-laws, have been formed in Michigan, New England, and Quebec.

The Western Forestry and Conservation Association is an allied organization, whose functions are everything in connection with forest preservation except field work. It organizes new patrols; keeps all its constituents advised of new methods and developments; fosters the use of oil-burning and sparkless engines; helps to frame and to pass forest legislation; studies the operation of such legislation and advises how to make the most of it; watches the courts to learn what criminal sections are weak and what evidence is effective; represents the locals at conventions and elsewhere; improves opportunities to bring private, state, and Federal agencies together; and, above all, carries on a systematic educative campaign directed at lumbermen and the public alike.

It employs every feasible modern publicity device. Schools, newspapers, hotels and depots, churches, women's clubs, telephone directories, store counters, and public officials' desks - these are but some of the mediums through which it reaches the public with bulletins, circulars, gummed stickers, and cartoons dealing with forest ills and their remedies. It distributes match-boxes that caution users that matches cannot think, folding paper cups that develop the growth of a fire with each fold, and check-book mottoes that remind recipients that timber makes payrolls. It publishes a fiction story, called "The Ambitious Tree" - carrying a tree through all its struggles from seed to maturity, like Hans Christian Andersen's "Tin Soldier" that has been read by 300,000 school children.

The annual forest fire conferences held by the Western Forestry and Conservation Association are attended by experts from throughout the United States and Canada. The topics are restricted to technical phases of protective work, experts in each are chosen to present them,

and discussion is by practical men who are actually handling men and money extensively to solve the problems involved. The topics are such as safeguarding logging operations, slash disposal, railroad coöperation, use of oil fuel, trail and telephone building, wireless possibilities, handling men and supplies, patrol organization, forest legislation, and educational methods. It is notable that these conferences are attended by many prominent railroad officials; indeed, increasing care by railroads, including installation of oil-burning locomotives, clearing of rights of way, and coöperation in patrols, is one of the most gratifying results of this movement.

The five states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and California contain more than half the merchantable timber in the United States. They are now producing about a fifth of the lumber used and the proportion increases yearly. But greater distance from the chief markets will probably postpone exhaustion until after it is complete elsewhere.

Consequently we have two fairly safe premises: that these states will have the largest area of deforested land which by reason of its adaptability should be encouraged to reforest, and that they contain the mature timber which, because it will be the last, will require greatest effort to make it bridge the inevitable shortage before a new supply can be grown.

Saw timber can be grown in this region in from 40 to 75 years. In favorable localities, such as northern Idaho and the coast slopes of California, Oregon, and Washington, the prodigious yield of 40,000 board feet an acre may be attained in 60 years. Though 50 to 60 cubic feet a year is given as the average acre production of the carefully tended German forests, investigations by the Forest Service show that natural and uncared-for Douglas fir in the Cascade foothills is adding 115 cubic feet at only 20 years old and, after reaching the phenomenal accretion of 215 cubic feet at 50 years, is still adding 120 feet at 100 years.

This means that the fully 20 million acres of burned and cut-over land, public and private, on the Pacific Coast, which is not more valuable for other uses, can,

if encouraged, yield 500 billion feet of timber in sixty years and a considerable proportion in less time because much young growth is fairly well along. And there is more than a billion feet of virgin timber still to be used and occupying land which, if restocked as cut, can eventually reach a production sufficient to supply as much lumber as we now consume altogether in the United States.

Here, then, is the Nation's woodlot if we take care of it. The Western Forestry and Conservation Association believes that coöperation, if properly directed, can accomplish all things, and that in this lumbermen, state, Government, and public have each a great responsibility. It practices what it preaches. As its president, Mr. Flewelling, of Spokane, says: "We can't put out fires by talking; it takes money."

Τ

BY

HE great awakening of interest in social problems has brought us to the verge of a revolution in our views of the functions of government. The State is to be "socialized," we are told. So, naturally, the lure of the most socialized State in the world draws the attention of our students and zealots.

Is Germany a model for our democracy? What price is she paying for her well advertised efficiency? How is her paternalism affecting human nature?

The lure is a socialized Germany. The State owns railroads, canals, river transportation, harbors, telegraphs, and telephones. Banks, insurance, pawnshops, are conducted by the State. Municipalities are landlords of vast estates; they are capitalists owning street car lines, gas plants, electric light plants, theatres, markets, warehouses. The cities conduct hospitals for the sick, shelters for the homeless, soup-houses for the hungry, asylums for the weak and unfortunate, nurseries for the babies, homes for the aged, and cemeteries for the dead.

These are not exceptions; they are the rule. Every city engages in these social activities, some more, some less; but all, in their care of their inhabitants, are like a parent rather than like a government.

The key to the German paternal method is the well known system of industrial insurance, providing the workman against accident, old age, sickness, and invalidity. In 1908, there were 13,189,599 people insured against sickness, 23,674,000 against accidents, and 15,226,000 against invalidity and old age, all at an annual outlay of nearly $200,000,000.

When you stop to think that this vast sum is collected in driblets of pennies from the State and from 20 million individuals in weekly assessments; that separate accounts must be kept for every contributor and every beneficiary; that every insured person has a right to a hearing if he feels himself aggrieved, and the right of appeal in many cases if he is dissatisfied with the results of the hearing; then you can form some opinion of the magnitude and intricacy of the machinery that this pension plan alone demands.

Add to this the vast and complex system of State education, a system of training that aims at livelihood. Nothing like the perfection, the drill, and the earnest, unsmiling efficiency of these elementary and trade schools exists anywhere else in the world. In 1907, there were 9,000,000 children in the elementary schools, taught by 150,000 teachers, nearly all masters, as the "school ma'am" does not flourish

in the Kaiser's realm. Every one of these pupils is headed for a bread-and-butter niche in this land of super-orderliness. And more than 300,000 persons are employed by the State in some form of educational work, training the youth into adeptness, in all sorts of schools.

Saxony, for example, has 360 vocational schools; one for every 13,000 of its inhabitants men, women, and children. These range from schools for training boatmen on the Elbe to the renowned Technical College in Dresden.

Whenever you see the legend, "Made in Germany," you must reflect that the hands that produced the article were trained in Germany, by the State.

The army, as well as the school, brings home to every German family the fact that the State is watchful and jealous. It demands that two full years of every young man be "socialized"; and the peasant woman and the artisan's wife must contribute her toil to the toll that the vast system of State discipline demands.

Even the Church, that form of organized social effort which is everywhere first to break away from the regimen of the State, remains "established."

So I might continue through almost every activity-the vast system of State railroads, mines, shipyards and include even art and music.

an

industrialized Germany. Everyone knows how cleverly advertised are German goods. But it is always well to remember that this race of traders and manufacturers has somehow, in one generation, come from a race of solid scholars, patient artisans, and frugal peasants. The old Germany has disappeared: the Germany of the spectacles, the shabby coat, and the book; the Germany of Heidelberg and Weimar. A new order has taken its place. As you ride in the great express, from Cologne to Berlin, you never are out of sight of clusters of tall, smoking chimneys. Symbolic of the new Germany are the Deutsche Bank, the trade of Hamburg, and the steel works of Essen.

Your fellow-traveler does not allow you to forget that Chemnitz is the stocking centre of the world, Nuremburg the toy

centre, Essen the armor-plate centre, Leipsic the book centre, Jena the lens centre; that Berlin is growing faster than Chicago (in 1871 it had 800,000; to-day, 4,000,000); that in these forty years, fifty cities have grown up to have more than 100,000 inhabitants each.

In 1871, Imperial Twins were born at Versailles: a German Political Empire and a German Industrial Empire. And it remains a question whether the ancient German Empire of frugality and learning can survive these stalwart youngsters.

Now, how has it been possible to make this transformation? To create out of a slow, plodding, peasant-artisan people an industrialized population, out of a race of scholars a race of manufacturers; to fill a land no larger than one half of Texas with 65,000,000 people who are breeding at the rate of nearly a million a year, and to engage the State in doing all sorts of things for these thriving families? It is the political miracle of the century, and its socialized efficiency is the talk of the hour. How has it been accomplished?

The Kaiser has adapted, line for line and point for point, the pattern of medieval feudalism to the exigencies of modern industrialism. There are, it is true, six centuries of habit back of this attempt; centuries in which Germany was the battle ground of Europe. The Thirty Years War alone was the test of the supreme power of recuperation which determines a nation's place in history. During the centuries of ravaging, the property owners were constantly compelled to seek the protection of the Crown. They never achieved a solidarity of their own, as the English middle class achieved it, and they never succeeded in carrying out a Liberal revolt against the aristocracy.

So, to begin with, the Kaiser has an obedient people, in whom the feudal notion of caste is second nature. As Prof. Herman Levy, of Heidelberg, has said: "It is the place one has in society which is the beginning of the ladder reaching to official position. . This state of affairs is feudal, medieval. It is at any rate opposed to the idea that everybody, whatever his place in society, may have equal rights as a citizen."