h all men, and in the
game of politics the equal of any one in Washington, he is giving the
best years of his life to a cause that will bring him no personal
advantage save a place in our national history greater than that of
great generals and war captains. For while their armies destroy, his
little army is saving and preserving; while their forces are ever
non-productive, he and his small force are making "two blades of grass
grow where one grew before"; are building up and developing to the
uttermost the great region lying around and about the national forest
areas.

_Training an Army of Foresters_

Mr. Pinchot rapidly gathered about him a force of expert assistants. The
forest schools in the East were just turning out their first crop of
young men, trained and educated as scientific foresters, and he brought
them into the work. A year or two in the forests, mapping, scaling,
estimating, and studying the western timber conditions, made them
practical as well as scientific. The old sawmill men, themselves
educated in the college of "Hard Knocks," first laughed at these
college-bred foresters, but soon learned to respect and trust them. They
began to adopt their plans and follow their suggestions, and to-day one
of the most serious embarrassments the forester has to meet is the
continual hiring away from him of his best men by the Western lumber and
sawmill men, who offer salaries far beyond what the government pays.

To handle the stockmen's interests--by far the most difficult and
perplexing of all the problems connected with the administration of the
national forests--Pinchot went to the Southwest and persuaded one of the
most intelligent and level-headed young stockmen in the country to
become head of the grazing department. A. F. Potter had been for years a
cow-boy and range cattleman, then for several years a sheep owner, and
not only knew every branch of the stock business through practical
experience, but had the administrative ability to handle successfully
the intricate and perplexing questions of ranges, priority of rights,
effects of grazing, and methods of handling stock that must be passed
upon. With this corps of assistants, and with Mr. Overton W. Price, a
man second only to himself in ability, as his chief lieutenant, Mr.
Pinchot began in earnest in the year 1898 the work of saving the
remaining forested areas of the United States.

A few years ago the mining men, lumbermen, and the stockmen were