In the United States, forestry is passing out of the pioneer phase of agitation and the education of public opinion, and into the permanent phase of the practice of the profession. The first steps in forestry in this country, as in any other where the development and destruction of natural resources has been rapid, were necessarily directed mainly to informing the public mind upon the importance of forestry, and to building up national and State laws and organizations for the protection of timberlands set aside for the public benefit. The right to be heard with respect by the men who were already in control of the larger part of our total forest wealth had to be won, and has been won. What is more, in the teeth of the bitterest opposition of private special interests, the right of the public to first consideration in the protection and development of the forest and of all the resources it contains had to be asserted and established. That has now been done.

In the United States these steps in the movement for the wise use of the forest have been taken mainly in the last dozen or fifteen years, during which the Federal forest organization has grown from an insignificant division of less than a dozen men to the present United States Forest Service, of more than three thousand members. During this period, also, forestry, both as a profession and as a public necessity, has won enduring public recognition, and at the same time more public timberland has been set aside for the public use and to remain in the public hands than during all the rest of our history put together. To-day the National Forests are reasonably safe in the protection of public opinion, not against all attack, it is true, but against any successful attempt to dismember and turn them over to the special interests who already control the bulk and the best of our forests. The public has accepted forestry as necessary to the public welfare, both in the present and in the future; State forest organizations are springing up; forestry has won the right to be heard in the business offices as well as in the conventions of the private owners of forest land; and the time for the practice of the profession has fully come.