e fire laws. The private warden cannot successfully arrest
or prosecute offenders, and everybody knows it. Most fires start
through violation of law. To prevent them the law must be respected,
and to accomplish this there must be state officers who can and
will apprehend offenders without fear or favor.

Any western state can well afford to spend $100,000 a year for
a forest fire service which will prevent a loss of fifty times
that sum. The cost is imperceptible by the citizen, his benefit
immediate. _Forest protection is the cheapest form of prosperity
insurance a timbered state can buy._

REFORESTATION

Although it does not pay to burn up our forests, it does pay to use
them. _The faster we can replace them with new ones, the quicker
this profit can be made with safety._ Forest land is community
capital. To let it lie idle is as wasteful as destruction. And
we must also remember that the day is coming when our forested
streams must do a hundred times their present duty, and when the
lumber consumer's question may not be "What must I pay for a board?"
but "Can I get a board at all?" We must have new forests coming
as the old ones go.

The Federal Government is practicing forestry in the lands controlled
by the Forest Service. _Why should the states not do the same thing
with their school and tax deed lands? Intelligent care of timbered
school land, selling the timber only under regulations which will
insure reforestation, would realize as much today and in the long
run pay a thousand per cent in dividends for the education of our
children and our children's children._

Further than this, there should be legislation to permit the state
to solidify its forest lands by exchange, when advisable, and to
authorize the purchase of cut-over lands. The eventual profit in
this is certain to be great, and nothing will do more to interest
the public and private owners in reforestation. It is the history or
all countries that forests are peculiarly profitable state property,
especially when, as is the case with us, it can be acquired cheaply.
It is a sound and well-proved policy that it is well for the state to
own lands which are not adapted for permanent individual development.
Forest lands constitute the ideal class, not only because the state
is in the best position to keep up their usefulness to the community,
but also because they will earn perpetual revenue far greater than
they could bring through taxation. They wil