The Training of a Forester — A Closer Reading

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Authors: Pinchot, Gifford, 1865-1946 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2010 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Forests and forestry; Forestry schools and education -- United States; Forests and forestry -- Vocational guidance Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 23,846

Reading time 104 min

Text sections 4

This digital edition of The Training of a Forester — A Closer Reading is described by source-level measurements including 23,846 words, 1 hr 44 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

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Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Forests and forestry,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #31367

Gifford Pinchot's 1914 guide for young men considering forestry, detailing the profession's demands, rewards, and training, with a frank warning that it suits only those with a compelling love for the work.

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THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1914

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1914

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

OVERTON W. PRICE FRIEND AND FELLOW WORKER

TO WHOM IS DUE, MORE THAN TO ANY OTHER MAN, THE HIGH EFFICIENCY OF THE UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE

At one time or another, the largest question before every young man is, "What shall I do with my life?" Among the possible openings, which best suits his ambition, his tastes, and his capacities? Along what line shall he undertake to make a successful career? The search for a life work and the choice of one is surely as important business as can occupy a boy verging into manhood. It is to help in the decision of those who are considering forestry as a profession that this little book has been written.

To the young man who is attracted to forestry and begins to consider it as a possible profession, certain questions present themselves. What is forestry? If he takes it up, what will his work be, and where? Does it in fact offer the satisfying type of outdoor life which it appears to offer? What chance does it present for a successful career, for a career of genuine usefulness, and what is the chance to make a living? Is he fitted for it in character, mind, and body? If so, what training does he need? These questions deserve an answer.

To the men whom it really suits, forestry offers a career more attractive, it may be said in all fairness, than any other career whatsoever. I doubt if any other profession can show a membership so uniformly and enthusiastically in love with the work. The men who have taken it up, practised it, and left it for other work are few. But to the man not fully adapted for it, forestry must be punishment, pure and simple. Those who have begun the study of forestry, and then have learned that it was not for them, have doubtless been more in number than those who have followed it through.

I urge no man to make forestry his profession, but rather to keep away from it if he can. In forestry a man is either altogether at home or very much out of place. Unless he has a compelling love for the Forester's life and the Forester's work, let him keep out of it.

THE FORESTER'S KNOWLEDGE 18

THE FOREST AND THE NATION 19

THE FORESTER'S POINT OF VIEW 23

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FORESTRY 27

THE WORK OF A FORESTER 30

THE FOREST SERVICE 30

THE FOREST SUPERVISOR 46

THE TRAINED FORESTER 50

PERSONAL EQUIPMENT 63

THE FOREST SERVICE IN WASHINGTON 89

A FOREST RANGER LOOKING FOR FIRE FROM A NATIONAL FOREST LOOKOUT STATION _Frontispiece_

STRINGING A FOREST TELEPHONE LINE 32

FOREST RANGERS SCALING TIMBER 43

WESTERN YELLOW PINE SEED COLLECTED BY THE FOREST SERVICE FOR PLANTING UP DENUDED LANDS 47

A FOREST EXAMINER RUNNING A COMPASS LINE 59

BRUSH PILING IN A NATIONAL FOREST TIMBER SALE 95

FOREST RANGERS GETTING INSTRUCTION IN METHODS OF WORK FROM A DISTRICT FOREST OFFICER 105

FOREST SERVICE MEN MAKING FRESH MEASUREMENTS IN THE MISSOURI SWAMPS 136

THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER

First, What is forestry? Forestry is the knowledge of the forest. In particular, it is the art of handling the forest so that it will render whatever service is required of it without being impoverished or destroyed. For example, a forest may be handled so as to produce saw logs, telegraph poles, barrel hoops, firewood, tan bark, or turpentine. The main purpose of its treatment may be to prevent the washing of soil, to regulate the flow of streams, to support cattle or sheep, or it may be handled so as to supply a wide range and combination of uses. Forestry is the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man.

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Gifford Pinchot opens The Training of a Forester with a direct challenge: he urges no man to make forestry his profession, but rather to keep away from it if he can. This cautionary note, rare in career guides, sets the tone for a book that is as much a self-assessment tool as an introduction. Pinchot, the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, writes from experience, having shaped the very agency he describes. The text moves briskly from the Forester's daily tasks—fire lookout, timber cruising, law enforcement—to the administrative machinery in Washington, all while stressing that forestry demands a specific blend of character, mind, and body. The excerpts reveal a writer who prizes efficiency, duty, and a love for the outdoors above all, and who is unafraid to warn off the uncommitted.

A Career for the Few

Pinchot frames forestry as a calling, not a fallback. In the preface, he states that for those it suits, forestry offers a career more attractive than any other, yet he immediately adds that those who began study and then left are likely more numerous than those who persisted. This binary framing—either altogether at home or very much out of place—recurs throughout the excerpts. The book does not promise easy success; instead, it emphasizes that the profession punishes the ill-suited. Pinchot’s language is blunt: he urges no man to make forestry his profession unless he has a compelling love for the Forester's life and work. This insistence on self-selection is a defining feature of the text, distinguishing it from more boosterish career guides of the era.

The Machinery of Federal Forestry

The excerpts detail the structure of the Forest Service with administrative precision. Pinchot describes the Forester’s role in Washington: general supervision, policy determination, budget preparation, and defending the Service before Congress. He notes that immediate subordinates spend much time in the field inspecting work and keeping its tone high. The text also catalogs state-level forestry efforts, listing appropriations for fire protection—Pennsylvania leading with $275,000 for chestnut blight—and the number of states with forest nurseries, which in 1912 produced twenty million young trees. These concrete figures ground the book in the practical realities of early twentieth-century conservation, showing a profession still building its institutions.

The Forester’s Knowledge and Point of View

Pinchot devotes chapters to what a forester must know and the perspective he must adopt. The table of contents lists sections on the Forester’s Knowledge, the Forest and the Nation, and the Forester’s Point of View, though the excerpts do not include their full text. However, the preface and later passages make clear that this knowledge is not merely technical but includes a sense of public service and efficiency. Pinchot writes that the Forester keeps his hand upon the whole machinery of the Service, holding it up to its work and supplying it with the right spirit and point of view, without which any kind of efficiency is impossible. This emphasis on spirit and point of view suggests that the book treats forestry as a moral and civic enterprise as much as a scientific one.

Readers approaching The Training of a Forester should note its dual purpose: it is both a practical handbook for the aspiring forester and a piece of institutional advocacy from the man who built the U.S. Forest Service. Pinchot’s voice is authoritative, sometimes stern, and always focused on the real conditions of the work. The book rewards attention to its administrative details and its frank assessment of who should—and should not—pursue this path. For those interested in the history of conservation or early twentieth-century professional life, it offers a primary-source view of how one influential figure defined a profession.

There’s something touching about the way Gifford Pinchot warns young foresters that the work must call to you, not merely pay you. It made me think of those old rhythm plays, where children learn the shape of a story before they can name it. Dramatized Rhythm Plays Mother Goose and Traditional — Story, Setting & Ideas holds that same quiet faith—that love of the thing itself, played out in small, repeated steps.