gs, I said to the engineers present that in the name of
all good citizens I thanked them for their admirable work, as efficient
as it was honest, and conducted according to the highest standards of
public service. As I looked at the fine, strong, eager faces of those
of the force who were present, and thought of the similar men in the
service, in the higher positions, who were absent, and who were no less
responsible for the work done, I felt a foreboding that they would
never receive any real recognition for their achievement; and, only half
humorously, I warned them not to expect any credit, or any satisfaction,
except their own knowledge that they had done well a first-class job,
for that probably the only attention Congress would ever pay them would
be to investigate them. Well, a year later a Congressional Committee
actually did investigate them. The investigation was instigated by some
unscrupulous local politicians and by some settlers who wished to be
relieved from paying their just obligations; and the members of the
Committee joined in the attack on as fine and honorable a set of public
servants as the Government has ever had; an attack made on them solely
because they were honorable and efficient and loyal to the interests
both of the Government and the settlers.

When I became President, the Bureau of Forestry (since 1905 the United
States Forest Service) was a small but growing organization, under
Gifford Pinchot, occupied mainly with laying the foundation of American
forestry by scientific study of the forests, and with the promotion of
forestry on private lands. It contained all the trained foresters in the
Government service, but had charge of no public timberland whatsoever.
The Government forest reserves of that day were in the care of a
Division in the General Land Office, under the management of clerks
wholly without knowledge of forestry, few if any of whom had ever seen
a foot of the timberlands for which they were responsible. Thus the
reserves were neither well protected nor well used. There were no
foresters among the men who had charge of the National Forests, and no
Government forests in charge of the Government foresters.

In my first message to Congress I strongly recommended the consolidation
of the forest work in the hands of the trained men of the Bureau of
Forestry. This recommendation was repeated in other messages, but
Congress did not give effect to it until three years later. In the