Part 9

In Baden, where the forest organization began in 1836 upon the basis of volume allotment, a change was made in 1849 to an area allotment, simplifying to a greater extent than anywhere else the calculation of the yield; finally, Heyer’s method was adopted entirely in 1869.

It appears then that the schematic allotment methods found the most general application in the earlier time of the period, being favored probably on account of their simplicity in application. The improvement in their present application over the original methods as designed by Hartig and Cotta, is that now they require no volume calculation for any long future, but are satisfied with making a sufficiently accurate calculation and provision for the proper felling budget for the present.

6. _Forest Administration._

About the middle of the 18th century the recognition of the importance of forestry led to a severance of the forest and hunting interests, and it became the practice to place the direction of the former into the hands of some more or less competent man--a state forester--usually under the fiscal branch or treasury department of the general administration. Fully organized forest administrations, in the modern sense, however, could hardly be said to have existed before the end of the Napoleonic wars (1815) which had undoubtedly retarded the peaceful development of this as well as of other reforms.

The present organization of the large Prussian forest department in its present form dates from 1820, when Hartig instituted the division into provincial administrations, and differentiated them into directive, inspection and executive services. The direction of the provincial management was placed in the hands of an Oberforstmeister, with the assistance of a number of Forstmeister, who acted mainly as inspectors, each having his inspection district consisting of a number of ranges. The ranges (100,000 to 125,000 acres) were placed in charge of Oberförster or Revierförster, who with the assistance of several underforesters (Förster) conducted the practical work. At first only indifferently educated, these latter were allowed little latitude, but with improvement in their education they became by degrees more and more independent agents.

This tri-partite system of directing, inspecting and executive officers, after various changes in titles and functions, finally became practically established in all the larger German states; in some rather lately, as for instance, in Bavaria, not until 1885, and in Württemberg in 1887.

With this more stable organization, the character and the status of the personnel changed greatly: the prior right of the nobility to the higher positions, which had lasted in some States until 1848, and the practice of making connection with military service a basis for appointment were abolished, and, instead of Cameralists, educated foresters came everywhere to the head of affairs. The lower service, which had been recruited from hunters and lackeys, and which was noted for its low social, moral and pecuniary status, was improved in all directions. The change from incidentals in the way of fees, and natural instead of money emolument for the lower grade foresters, (which had been the rule, and still play a role even to date), to definite salaries, and the salutary change of methods in transacting business, which Hartig introduced, became general. With the development and improvement of forestry schools, the requirement of a higher technical education for positions in State service could be enforced. Yet only within the last twenty-five or thirty years, has the ranking position of forest officers been made adequate and equalized with that of other public officials of equal responsibility, and still later have their salaries been made adequate to modern requirement.

The central administration now lies in the hands of technical men (_Oberlandforstmeister_) with a council of technical deputies (_Landforstmeister_) all of whom have passed through all the stages of employment from that of district managers up. This central office or “division of forestry” is either attached to the department of agriculture, or to that of finance, and has entire charge of the questions of personnel, direction of forest schools, of the forest policy of the administration, and the approval of all working plans, acting in all things pertaining to the forest service as a court of last resort. The working plans are made and revised by special commissioners in each case, or, as in Saxony, under the direction of a special bureau, with the assistance of the district manager. Upon the basis of the general working plan prepared by these commissions, an annual plan is elaborated by the district managers with consultation and approval of the provincial and central administration. These plans contain a detailed statement of all the work to be done through the year, the cost of each item, and the receipts expected from each source. This annual working plan requires approval by the provincial administration, which is constituted as a deliberative council, consisting of a number of Forstmeister with an Oberforstmeister as presiding officer. The titles of these officers, to be sure, and the details of procedure vary somewhat in different states, but the system as a whole is more or less alike.

The district manager or Oberförster, now often called _Forstmeister_, has grown in importance and freedom of position, although his district has grown smaller (mostly not over 25,000 acres), and, being one of the best educated men in the country district, he usually holds the highest social position, although his emoluments are still moderate. He holds many offices of an honorary character, as for instance that of justice of the peace, and the position of states’ attorney or public prosecutor in all cases of infraction of the forest laws. These forest laws are still largely local, _i.e._, State laws, although the criminal code of the empire has somewhat unified practice.

Curiously enough, wood on the stump is still not considered property in the same sense as other things, so far as theft is concerned; the stealing of growing timber is not even called theft, the word used in the laws being _Frevel_ (tort), and, like other infractions against forest laws, it is punished by a money fine, more or less in proportion to the value of the stolen material or the damage suffered. This money fine may be transmuted into imprisonment or forest labor, but corporal punishment, which still prevailed in the first decades of the century, has been abolished. Wood stealing was very general and rampant during the beginning of the century, but improvement in the condition of the country population and in the number and personnel of the forest officers since 1850 has now reduced it to a minimum.

Formerly, and until 1848, the administrators and even the forest owners acted at the same time as prosecutor, judge and executioner, and only in 1879, was this condition everywhere and entirely changed, and infractions against forest laws adjudged by regular courts of law, holding meetings at stated times for the prosecution of such infractions.

Nevertheless, the court proceedings in forest matters still vary from the usual court practice, providing a simpler, cheaper and more ready disposal of testimony and witnesses, and quicker retribution, which is largely rendered possible through having every forest officer under oath as a sheriff, and his statement, and perhaps the confiscated tools employed in the theft, being accepted as _prima facie_ evidence of the infraction.

The social position of the underforesters and the forest protective service has also been improved until all charges of incompetency and immorality, which were not undeserved even until past the middle of the nineteenth century, have become reversed; the forest service being morally on as high a plane as all the departments of German administrations.

7. _Forest Policy._

During the first half of the century the old conception of _Forsthoheit_--superior right of the princes to supervise and interfere with private property--changed into the more modern conception of the police function of the state, and, by 1850, after the revolutionary period, the seignorage of the princes had passed away. The issue of forest ordinances (the last in 1840) was replaced by the enactment of forest laws which, since the establishment of representative government, has become a function of legislatures.

The tendency to restrict the exercise of private property rights had been assailed by the theories of _Laissez faire_ and the teachings of Adam Smith, and, as a consequence, all the restrictive mandates of the older forest ordinances had been weakened and had more of less fallen into disuse. Especially the attempts to influence prices and markets had nearly if not entirely vanished during the first decade. Only for the state forest, it was still thought desirable to predetermine wood prices, or at least keep rates low, because wood was a necessary material for the industries. This theory prevailed until, perhaps under the lead of Hundeshagen (see above), the propriety of securing the highest soil rent was recognized as the proper aim, when the practice of selling wood at auction in order to secure the best prices became the rule.

The regulations regarding export and import between the different States, which had been enacted under the mercantilistic teachings of the last century (see page 52), and the many tariffs which impeded a free exchange of commodities, lasted for a long while into the 19th century, and were not all abolished until 1865, when under the lead of Prussia, the North German Federation instituted the _Zollverein_ (Tariff alliance) which abolished not only all tariffs between the States of the Federation, but also tariffs on wood products against the outside world. Import duties were, however, again established in 1879, and the policy of protecting the established organized forest management against competition by importations from exploiting countries has been again and again recognized as proper in the revision of tariff rates and railroad freight rates on the government railroads.

During the first decades of the century, the supply question was uppermost, and although such men as Pfeil (1816) laughed at the idea of a wood famine, there was good reason, prior to the development of railroads, of coal fields, of iron and steel manufactures, etc., for discussing with apprehension the area and condition of supply and the extent of the consumption. Nevertheless, the attitude of the state toward private property was much more influenced by the economic theories then prevalent, which taught the ideas of private liberty to which the French Revolution had given such forcible expression.

With the change of municipal communities from mere associations with common material interest into units or parts of political or state machines, also independence in the management of their property was secured, and many of the old restrictions which had circumscribed this right fell away. Curiously enough, during the French domination under Napoleon, the new masters, forgetting the spirit of the revolutionary period, introduced the prescriptions of the old French ordinance of 1669 which restricted the use of communal property to the extent of excluding the owners entirely from the management of their property, and placed it under government officers. After the French withdrew, this method, of course, collapsed, although it probably had an influence on the final shaping of forest policies in these respects. Altogether, there was such variety of historic development in the different parts of Germany that it is not to be wondered at that one finds a great variety of policies still prevailing not only in different States but in different localities of the same State.

At the present time three different principles in the relations of the state to the corporation forests may be recognized, namely, entire freedom, excepting so far as general police laws apply, which is the case with most of the corporation forests in Prussia (law of 1876); special supervision of the technical management under approved officials with proper education, which is the case in Saxony, most of Bavaria, the Prussian provinces of Westphalia, Rhineland and Saxony, and in some of the smaller states; or lastly, the absolute administration by the state, which prevails in Baden, parts of Bavaria, provinces Hesse-Nassau, and Hanover. The tendency, however, in modern times appears to be toward a more strict interpretation of the obligation of the state to prevent mismanagement of the communal property.

Private forest property, which during the preceding century had been largely under restrictions, first under the application of the hunting right, and then under the fear of a wood famine, became in the first decades of the century under the influences already mentioned, almost entirely free, all former policies being reversed; indeed Prussia, in 1811, issued an edict insuring absolutely unrestricted rights to forest owners, permitting partition and conversion of forest properties, and even denying in such cases the right of interference on the part of possessors of rights of user.

This policy of freedom was also applied, although less radically, in Bavaria, except as to smaller owners. The result was, to a large extent, the increase of exploitation and forest devastation, creating wastes and setting shifting sand and sanddunes in motion. The reaction, which set in against this unrestricted use of forest property, resulted in Prussia not in renewal of restrictive measures, but in the enactment of promotive ones. The law of 1875 sought improvement by encouraging small owners to unite their properties under one management; but the expectations which were founded on this ameliorative policy seem so far not to have been realized.

This promotive policy has especially since 1899 found expression in the institution in many provinces of information bureaus, which give technical advice, make working plans, secure plant material and give other assistance to woodland owners.

A new relation, however, of a conservative character arose by the establishment of the entail, i.e., a contract made by the head of the family with the government under which the latter assumes the obligation of forever preventing the heirs from disposing of, diminishing, or mismanaging their property. As a result of this arrangement, many of the larger private forest properties are forced to a conservative management, not as a direct influence of the law, but as a matter of agreement. The condition of state supervision of private and communal forest property at present prevailing is expressed in the following statement of divisions by property classes of forest areas of Germany, which shows that at least 63.9% are under conservative management:

Total Forest 34,769,794 acres. Crown forest 1.8% State forest 31.9% Corporation forest 16.1% Institute forest 1.5% Association forest 2.2% Private forest (10.4% entail) 46.5%

Until the beginning of the present century, the protective function of the forest had played no role in the arguments for state interference, but just about the beginning of the century cries were heard from France that, owing to the reckless devastation of the Vosges and Jura Alps by cutting, by fires and over-grazing, brooks had become torrents, and the valleys were inundated and covered by the debris and silt of the torrents. A new aspect of the results of forest devastation began to be recognized, which found excellent expression in a memoir by _Moreau de Jonnès_ (Brussels, 1825), on the question “What changes does denudation effect on the physical condition of the country.” This being translated into German by Wiedenmann, was widely spread, being interestingly written, although not well founded on facts of natural history and physical laws. Nevertheless, sufficient experience as regards the effect of denudation in mountainous countries had also accumulated in southwest Germany and in the Austrian Alps, and the necessity of protective legislation was recognized. This necessity first found practical expression in the Bavarian law of 1852, in Prussia in 1875, and in Württemberg in 1879. But a really proper basis for formulating a policy or argument for protective legislation outside of the mountainous country is still absent, although for a number of years attempts have been made to secure such basis.

8. _Forestry Science and Literature._[5]

[5] The necessarily brief statements which are made under this heading presuppose knowledge of the technical details to which they refer. In this short history it was possible only to sketch rapidly the development of the science in terms familiar to the professional man.

The habit of writing encyclopædic volumes, which the Cameralists and learned hunters had inaugurated in the preceding century, continued into the new one, and we find _Hartig_, _Cotta_, _Pfeil_ and _Hundeshagen_ each writing such encyclopædias. _Carl Heyer_ began one in separate volumes, but completed only two of them. Even an encyclopædic work in monographs by several authors was undertaken as early as 1819 by _J. M. Bechstein_, who with his successors brought out fourteen volumes, covering the ground pretty fully. While in the earlier stages the meager amount of knowledge made it possible to compress the whole into small compass, the more modern encyclopædias of _Lorey_, _Fürst_ and _Dombrowski_ arose from the opposite consideration, namely, the need of giving a comprehensive survey of the large mass of accumulated knowledge.

Since 1820, monographic writings, however, became more and more the practice. Among the volumes which treat certain branches of forestry monographically, the works of the masters of silviculture, _Cotta_, _Hartig_ and _Heyer_, based on their experiences in west and middle Germany, and of _Pfeil_, referring more particularly to North German conditions, were followed by the South German writers, _Gwinner_ (1834), and _Stumpf_ (1849). In 1855, _H. Burkhardt_ introduced in his classic _Säen und Pflanzen_ a new method of treatment, namely, by species, and after 1850, when the development of general silviculture had been accomplished, such treatment by species became frequent. Of more modern works on general silviculture elaborating the attempts at reform of old practices those of _Gayer_ (1880), _Wagener_ (1884), _Borggreve_ (1885), _Ney_ (1885), all writing in the same decade, are to be especially mentioned. In this connection should be also noticed _Fürst’s_ valuable collective work on nursery practice (_Pflanzenzucht im Walde_, 1882).

At present the magazine literature furnishes ample opportunity to discuss the development of methods in all directions. The text books at present appearing seem to be justified by or intended mainly for the needs of the teacher and rarely for the practitioner. Such a text book is that by _Weise_. But the latest contributions to silvicultural literature by _Wagner_ (1907), and _Mayr_ (1909) are works of a new order, utilizing broader ecological knowledge.

Other branches than silviculture were similarly first treated in comprehensive volumes and then in monographic writings on special subjects of the branch. The literature on _forest utilization_ covering the whole field, was enriched especially by _Pfeil_, _Koenig_, _Gayer_, and _Fürst_. The first investigation into the physical and technical properties of wood was conducted by _G. L. Hartig_ himself, followed by _Theodor Hartig_, and the subject has been most broadly treated by _H. Noerdlinger_ (1860). In later years, _Schwappach’s_ investigations deserve special mention.

The question of means of _transportation_ gradually became also a subject capable of monographic treatment and a series of books came out on locating and building forest roads. _Braun_ issued such a book in 1855 for the plains country, and _Kaiser_ (1873) for the mountains, also _Mühlhausen_ (1876), who had been commissioned to locate a perfect road system over the demonstration forest at the forest academy of Muenden. Only within the last quarter of the century were railroads introduced into the economy of forest management. The first comprehensive book on the subject of logging railroads was issued by _Foerster_ (1885), and a later one by _Runnebaum_. _Stoetzer_ (1903) furnished in his compact style the latest discussion on the subject of roads and railroads.

A very comprehensive literature on the value of _forest litter_ was brought into existence by the established usage of small farmers of supplying their lack of straw for bedding and manure by substituting the litter raked from the forest. Hartig and Hundeshagen were active in the discussion of this subject as well as almost every other forester, the discussion being, however, mainly based on opinions. But, after 1860, the subject became so important both to the poor farming population and to the forest, which was being robbed of its natural fertilizer, that a more definite basis for regulating its use was established by analysis and by experiments at the experimental stations.

With the inauguration of the various methods of forest organization described before, there naturally went hand in hand the development of _methods of measurement_. Better forest surveys developed rapidly, the transit generally replacing the compass and plane table. At this period the necessity for books teaching the important methods of land survey was met by _Baur_ (1858) and by _Krafft_ (1865). This subject does no longer occupy a place in forestry literature, the knowledge of it being taken for granted.

On the other hand the subject of _forest mensuration_ which formerly was generally treated in connection with forest organization has developed into a branch by itself, and has been very considerably developed in its methods and instruments, making a tolerably accurate measurement of forest growth possible, although many unsolved problems are still under investigation. Still, late into the century it was customary to measure only circumferences of trees, by means of a chain or band, although an instrument for measuring diameters is mentioned by Cotta, in 1804, and by Hartig, in 1808. _Schœner_ and _Richter_ are in 1813 mentioned as inventors of the first “universal forest measure” or caliper. The improvement of calipers to their modern efficiency has been carried on since 1840 by _Carl_ and _Gustav Heyer_ and by many others until now self-recording calipers by (_Reuss_, _Wimmenauer_, etc.) have become practical instruments. For measuring the _heights_ of trees, _Hossfeld_ had already a satisfactory instrument in 1800; a very large number of improvements in great variety followed, with _Faustmann’s_ mirror hypsometer probably in the lead. As a special development for measuring diameters at varying heights _Pressler’s_ instrument should be mentioned, and a very complicated but extremely accurate one constructed by _Breymann_.

Various formulas for the computation of the contents of felled trees had already been developed by _Oettelt_ and others in the eighteenth century and a formula by _Huber_, using the average area multiplied by length was definitely introduced in the Prussian practice in 1817. The names of _Smalian_, _Hossfeld_, _Pressler_ and others are connected with improvements in these directions.

The idea of _form factors_ and their use was first developed by _Huber_, who made three tree classes according to the length of crowns, measured the diameters six feet above ground, and used reduction factors of .75, .66, .50 for the three classes. But the first formula for determining form factors is credited to _Hossfeld_ (1812). _Hundeshagen_ and _Koenig_ also occupied themselves with elaborating form factors. _Smalian_ (1837) introduced the conception of the _normal_ or true form factor relating it to the area at one-twentieth of the height. An entirely new idea has lately been introduced by _Schiffel_, an Austrian German, under the name of form quotient, placing two measured diameters in relation.

_Volume tables_ giving the volumes of trees of varying diameters and height were already in use to some extent in the 18th century; _Cotta_ gives such for beech in 1804, and, in 1817, furnished a new set of so-called normal tables which were, however, based upon the assumption of a conical form of the tree. _Koenig_ perfected volume tables by introducing further classification into five growth classes (1813), published volume tables for beech and other species, and, in 1840, published volume tables not for single trees but for entire stands per acre classified by species, height and density; using the so-called space number which he had developed in 1835 to denote the density. It is interesting to note that these tables, which he called _Allgemeine Waldschætzungstafeln_, were made for the Imperial Russian Society for the Advancement of Forestry.