Page:Report of the Oregon Conservation Commission to the Governor (1908 - 1914).djvu/257

 Bingham, and passed with little change, establishing a State Board of Forestry, outlining the State's functions in forest protection, classifying and tightening the punitive sections, and providing for the first time a state-controlled warden force with police authority and power to issue burning permits. This force was appointed by the Board but served voluntarily or under compensation other than by the State. It was still impossible to secure any appropriation further than $250 a year allowed for postal purposes.

This act created a framework of State sanction, enabling such additions for actual work as other agencies would contribute, and progress up to a certain point was rapid. The Board of Forestry was unpaid, but being composed by the act itself of representatives of interested institutions, did not remain inactive. A volunteer secretary did the necessary office work and funds for its correspondence and postage were contributed by the Oregon Conservation Association. With the encouragement of State backing, morally if not financially, timber owners greatly increased their patrol activities. Much was done to arouse public sentiment. Still, such a system was absurdly inadequate and its accomplishment was hardly more than proof of real demand and opportunity for serious work by the State itself.

Attempt to obtain an appropriation by the Legislature of 1909 failed partly because of imperfect organization and partly because of insufficient plans to amend the act so as to convert its voluntary machinery into a systematic branch of government expenditure. But during the following two years general public progress in forest protection was marked in Oregon. The timber owners' patrol associations of the other northwestern states organized the league known as the Western Forestry & Conservation Association which became a powerful agent in moulding sentiment throughout the Coast. It brought about organization of Oregon owners in the Oregon Forest Fire Association and continued to act with this organization in stimulating co-operative patrol in the State. The Oregon Conservation Association continued to devote most of its energy to the subject and the State Conservation Commission, previously engaged more actively in water questions, centered upon it.

By the close of 1910, a bad fire year in which the federal Forest Service and the Association demonstrated the profit of organized expenditure, the friends of forest protection were united to work harmoniously and effectively and there was also more general interest than ever before. Oregon had not