forestry school in the United States. - ScholarsArchive at Oregon ...

The Beginnings 17
spirited individuals and organizations which are working toward that
end. I was obliged, however, to deprecate the reflections made upon Yale
University.
"I shall take the liberty of transmitting the correspondence and your
editorial to President Wheeler, to whom, of course the designation of our
policy and procedure properly belongs."
The March, 1906, issue of Wood and Iron followed up with almost two
pages under the heading, "A Pacific Coast Chair of Forestry." It led off
with this paragraph:
"This journal seems to be the only one on the western slope that has
the necessary amount of coast patriotism at heart to urge the location of the
Chair of Forestry on the shores of the Pacific. The National Lumber Manufacturer's
Association is endeavoring to raise funds for the establishment of
a Chair of Forestry at Yale, way back in the elm-shaded precincts of classic
New Haven. It is akin to the location of an oyster bed in the shoals of Kansas
this establishment so distant from the great timber belt."
Thus went unheeded Wickson's admonishment about reflections on
Yale. Under the caption, "What Professor Wickson Says," Everett did not
quote from Wickson's letter, but carried instead a part of his address, "A
forestry school's work," before the Agricultural Club. However, a letter
from Wheeler was printed in full. Here are excerpts:
"I am most vigorously in sympathy with your idea as expressed in your
article. . . Certainly we ought to have the School of Forestry at the University
of California. A number of our students have been forced to go
East.... I have recommended the establishment of a School of Forestry
repeatedly in my Biennial Reports. -. It would seem to me that, with five
thousand in salaries and five thousand in equipment, we could begin perfectly
well. In fact, I believe we could start with seventy-five hundred. .
The trouble is that the University of California is impoverished in the midst
of California's greatest prosperity."
Everett commented as follows: "President Wheeler's view on the subj ect
of the State University's meagre funds are well known and shared by
graduates of that great growing institution, and this poverty should be
relieved, but a Chair of Forestry, privately endowed, will be free from
neglect of the State politicians."
Everett also reproduced an editorial from the San Francisco Call which
said in part: "The University of California and Stanford University.
are nearest to the great lumber interest that needs the foresters and proposes
to train them. Then why not endow a forestry school in one of these universities?
. . . why waste such an endowment on Yale? . . . The only dendrological
clinic there is furnished by the elms of New Haven.. . Wood and
Iron opposes the Yale proposition and upon grounds that should be accepted
by the lumber interests."
During the bieni'iiim following the 1909 session of the legislature,
Wheeler had the funds to stdrt forestry instruction. The money must have
been included in the University's budget since nothing was said about a
private source and no special appropriation had been asked.
Ironically, nothing resulted.