Once upon a century: a magazine for the ages, part 2.

A look at our second 50 years, and where we go from here.

As described in Part 1 of this article in the last issue, American Forests magazine is now in its 100th year of continuous publication, an almost unheard-of milestone. Trying to capture, in two short articles, the energies, accomplishments, and sheer guts that have emanated from these pages over a century is an impossible task--but a fascinating one.

Poring through 100 years of magazines is an awesome and humbling experience. Hearing the echoes of powerful voices raised so long ago in support of the land enhances the listener's appreciation for similar voices heard today. It also generates a wistful longing for a time when life was simpler and issues more clearcut (pun intended). And finally, it reminds this writer of the inestimable value and privilege of overseeing a magazine with such a long memory. Very few of us "ink-stained wretches," as someone once called editors, are blessed to have at our disposal the example and perspective of a full century.

The perspective of AMERICAN FORESTS, publishers of this magazine, is even longer. It was already celebrating a half-century of existence in 1926, by which time it had become established as a national conservation power, a voice to be heeded in legislatures, and a militant champion of the public interest.

You might think that wilderness preservation is a relatively recent headline issue, but it was one of the banners taken up by the then American Forestry Association (AFA) and its magazine during the 1920s. Aldo Leopold's feature, "Last Stand of the Wilderness," in the October 1925 issue of American Forests and Forest Life (one of the seven monickers we've had over the years), was the basis for the Association's national campaign that eventually helped bring about legislation preserving such special places as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area on the Minnesota-Ontario border.

Wilderness would continue to appear on the AMERICAN FORESTS agenda, but the issue would become increasingly complex. Interestingly, in the furor preceding passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, critics accused this organization of being opposed to wilderness because of its support of the multiple-use concept. But the Directors refused to be stampeded into endorsing bills that were obviously capable of being improved. And Editor James B. Craig wrote in an editorial in March of 1961, "Let everyone know that AFA believes in wilderness now as always and that it will not procrastinate when proposals that will serve the public interest are brought forward and perfected by prudent men."

The bill as finally enacted compromised the controversial issues and permitted orderly development of a wilderness system within the multiple-use idea. Once

again, AMERICAN FORESTS and its magazine had helped formulate a national conservation policy and a governmental function.

The mention of Leopold--a wonderful wordsmith best known for his classic A Sand County Almanac, parts of which appeared in this magazine--stirs thoughts of other notable bylines that have appeared in these pages. They read like a litany of saints in the natural-resource arena: Stewart Udall, Arthur Carhart, Gifford Pinchot, Robert Marshall, Sigurd Olson, Olaus Murie, Rene Dubos, Jay N. (Ding) Darling, George Bird Grinnell, Edwin Way Teale, Frederick Law Olmsted, Archibald Rutledge, Michael Frome, George Reiger, Ira Gabrielson, and many others.

A lesser light whose writings literally fired up the readers in the late 1920s and early '30s was Erle Kauffman, the assistant editor who would later be named editor. Kauffman's burning issue was forest fire.

In those years, 80 percent of all fires reported in the nation occurred in the South. Many were set by arsonists--cattlemen who wanted to "green up" the woods for their stock, and rural people following an ages-old custom of burning the piney woods each year to kill ticks, chiggers, and snakes. Woods burning was deeply rooted in the traditions of the South. But it was an economic disaster, and obviously prevented the use of wise forestry practices.

In response, AMERICAN FORESTS initiated the Southern Forestry Educational Project, intended to attack the problem at its heart--in the schools, homes, and churches of rural people. Its main outreach was the Dixie Crusaders, young foresters who carried the message of fire prevention to three million people in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina during 1928-31. Two-man teams traveled to tiny hamlets in trucks specially fitted with an electric generator (most of the towns lacked electricity), a motion-picture projector, and exhibits.

Movies created for the Crusaders included Trees of Righteousness; Pardners, which told farmers and other small woodland owners how to grow timber as a crop; and The Burner. That last flick starred W.J. McCormick, assistant state forester of North Carolina and the director of the Dixie Crusaders project, in the lead role of Burnin' Bill, a mustachioed desperado if there ever was one. The movie, which featured spectacular fire scenes, was written and directed by Erle Kauffman.

Highly innovative for those days, the Dixie Crusaders was one of the most intensive educational campaigns ever conducted anywhere up to that time. Movie showings and lectures were held in some 6,000 schoolhouses, including every rural school in Mississippi and Florida, and 2,000 others in churches, sawmill settlements, and turpentine camps. Hundreds of newspapers throughout the South endorsed the project's objectives, and American Forests reported its progress monthly.

During the bleak depression years of the early 1930s, American Forests began a series of editorials and other articles probing the possibilities of relieving unemployment by providing emergency jobs in national and state forests and parks. Within a month of his inauguration as President in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps, which eventually set up some 2,000 camps that gave gainful and useful occupation--as well as a much needed shot of hope--to about three million men.

So strongly had AFA been identified with the work-camp idea that some observers assumed that Roosevelt had simply adopted the Association's plan.

It is interesting to note that during this same period, the last of this magazine's seven name changes was made--with almost no fanfare. A one-sentence notation in the January 1931 number said the new title, American Forests, was ". . . a name brief but all inclusive of the plant and animal life and the human activities for which the forests stand." Pretty short shrift for a monicker that has stood the test of six-plus decades. And one which now graces the parent organization, thanks to a landmark vote by our Board of Directors last year.

The editors--all three of them, led by Ovid Butler--truly outdid themselves with the September 1935 issue. Financial contributions from Association members helped underwrite the ambitious, well-illustrated, 168-page issue commemorating the organization's 60th anniversary. (SPECIAL NOTICE TO MEMBERS: Would anyone care to help us pay for the ambitious January/February 1994 issue, celebrating our 100th year of publication? All contributions would be gratefully accepted. Send them to the editor.)

At a single-issue cost of 35 cents, the hefty issue--surpassing its goal of "giving a graphic picture of the growth and development of conservation since the Association first pioneered the field"--definitely begins at the beginning, oratorically describing the formation of the first soil (". . . it may have formed from volcanic ash . . .") and early life in the sea, and moves forward in time-sequence chapters with such titles as "The World Begins to Flower" and "The Beginning of Forest Exploitation" and ranging through "The Public Domain" and "Game and Wildlife" to "Fire Fighters and Tree Planters" and "The Dawn of Reconstruction." Large advertisements featured the products of Bell Telephone System, Caterpillar Diesel, Du Pont (explosives), International Harvester, and Plumb (axes).

That issue's editorial contents--which, curiously, carry not a single byline--were later published as a book, American Conservation in Picture and in Story, which went through three printings.

A tour through the early 1940s issues bring a poignant reminder of the enormous impact of World War II on the people and resources of this nation. For details, see the sidebar "A Magazine at War."

The mid '40s saw a series of changes in the magazine's editorial force. In 1944 Erle Kauffman, assistant editor since 1927, was named to succeed Ovid Butler as editor. Butler was a tough act to follow, but Kauffman, as noted earlier, was up to the challenge.

In 1946 associate editor Lilian Cromelin retired, exactly 40 years from the day she had gone to work for the Association. Cromelin was one of the first women to devote her life's work to conservation, which, in the words of forest historian Henry Clepper, "never had a more devoted follower."

In 1947 newspaperman James B. Craig was appointed assistant editor. He left the staff in 1950 but was rehired in late 1952 as editor, and his distinguished 25-year tenure is the longest among those who have held this position. During that time he wrote hundreds of editorials and features. One of the most memorable was "The Shot Heard 'Round the South, his June 1955 editorial that helped trigger a wave of national forest-fire reform and stimulate the First Southern Fire Prevention Conference. This writer was privileged to have worked with Jim Craig for a short time before his retirement in 1977.

An even longer track record can be claimed by James J. Fisher, who became American Forests' art director in 1949. Until his retirement in 1987, Jim's design talents made this magazine "as handsome to look at as it is interesting to read," to again quote Henry Clepper.

In the 1950s and '60s, the magazine used feature articles, editorials, news items, and even verse to keep readers on top of hot potatoes such as clearcutting, mining-law abuses, proposals for federal regulation of private forest land, and the Association's idea for a Redwood National Park (finally signed into law by Lyndon Johnson in 1968).

All those issues and many more found reader/member voice in the popular letters column--called then, as now, Forest Forum. The impassioned input of readers continues to be one of the clearest reflections of how an informed public feels and thinks about important resource issues. That input helps give direction, purpose, and clout to policy and other decisions made by the AMERICAN FORESTS Board and carried out by its professional staff.

For 100 years now, our reader/members have been the lifeblood of this organization. They are a group of citizens who have supported policies of resource conservation without being extreme and programs of environmental improvement without being partisan. The open-minded stance taken by AMERICAN FORESTS and its magazine over those years has won us respect and cooperation from the public, government, industry, and other conservation groups.

But what now? What do we do for an encore, now that we have 100 years of publishing under our belt?

What we do now is get on with our second century. For details on what that means, see Neil Sampson's Editorial in the previous issue, the Editorial on page 6 of this issue, and the AMERICAN FORESTS Today section beginning on page 9.

As long as this old/new organization continues to follow that kind of action agenda, its magazine will continue to be the voice of forest conservation.

A Magazine at War

Meandering through issues in the early 1940s brings a gripping reminder of the incredible impact of World War II on people and natural resources. The pages are brown now with age, but they seem almost to pulse with the urgency and scope of the war effort.

These items appeared in a column called "Conservation Communiques--Reports from the Home and Battle Fronts":

* Britain's all-wood Mosquito bombers have suffered losses of but one percent in their raids over Germany. This is due to their terrific speed, said to exceed 400 miles per hour.

* As new fighting fronts are opened up and supply lines extended, war demands for lumber will jump. As an example, 5,000,000,000 board-feet for boxing and crating were used in 1941; the demand in 1943 was for 14,000,000,000 feet.

* More than 185,000 volunteers are being trained and organized in crews by the Forest Fire Fighters Service. Despite this record number, the Office of Civilian Defense has issued a call for an additional 65,000 volunteers.

* Crepe-paper parachutes have been approved for use by American fighting forces to deliver supplies to men whose lines of communication have been cut off by enemy action.

Features such as "Jim Died at Salerno," "Today We Fight; Tomorrow . . . ," "Teaching Wood To Fight," and "Forestry in the Peace Plan for Germany" helped keep readers informed and morale up. A series of articles investigated forest fires and their effect on the wartime economy, and others covered lumber and naval-stores production, and the forestry units organized by the Army and Navy.

AMERICAN FORESTS was among the first publications to report on attempts by the Japanese to firebomb West Coast woodlands via the use of incendiary balloons and small aircraft launched from submarines (see "The Year They Firebombed the West" in the May/June 1993 issue).

A fitting windup to the Association's war contribution was a fact-finding survey, initiated in 1944 and reported faithfully in these pages, to determine the effect of war on the nation's woodlands and their probable condition when hostilities ceased. During those difficult war years, as in peacetime, this magazine has never lost its ability to fight for the forests of this nation and the people who depend on them.

BILL ROONEY oversees publications for AMERICAN FORESTS and has been editor of this magazine for 658,974 years (or since 1977).