The charlatan had babbled; but without knowing it he had given Bob what
he sought. He saw all the reasons for what had heretofore been obscure.
Why had he been dissatisfied with business opportunities and successes
beyond the hopes of most young men?
How could he dare criticize the ultimate value of such successes without
criticizing the life work of such men as Welton, as his own father?
What right had he to condemn as insufficient nine-tenths of those in the
industrial world; and yet what else but condemnation did his attitude of
mind imply?
All these doubts and questionings were dissipated like fog. Quite simply
it all resolved itself. He was dissatisfied because this was not his
work. The other honest and sincere men--such as his father and
Welton--had been satisfied because this was their work. The old
generation, the one that was passing, needed just that kind of service
but the need too was passing. Bob belonged to the new generation. He saw
that new things were to be demanded. The old order was changing. The
modern young men of energy and force and strong ability had a different
task from that which their fathers had accomplished. The wilderness was
subdued; the pioneer work of industry was finished; the hard brute
struggle to shape things to efficiency was over. It had been necessary
to get things done. Now it was becoming necessary to perfect the means
and methods of doing. Lumber must still be cut, streams must still be
dammed, railroads must still be built; but now that the pioneers, the
men of fire, had blazed the way others could follow. Methods were
established. It was all a business, like the selling of groceries. The
industrial rank and file could attend to details. The men who thought
and struggled and carried the torch--they must go beyond what their
fathers had accomplished.
Now Bob understood Amy Thorne's pride in the Service. He saw the true
basis of his feeling toward the Supervisor as opposed to his feeling
toward Baker. Thorne was in the current. With his pitiful eighteen
hundred a year he was nevertheless swimming strongly in new waters. His
business went that little necessary step beyond. It not only earned him
his living in the world, but it helped the race movement of his people.
At present the living was small, just as at first the pioneer opening
the country had wrested but a scanty livelihood from the stubborn
wilderness; nevertheless, he could feel--whether he stopped to think it
out or not--that his efforts had that coördination with the trend of
humanity which makes subtly for satisfaction and happiness. Bob looked
about the mill yard with an understanding eye. This work was necessary;
but it was not his work.
Something of this he tried to explain to his new friends at headquarters
when next he found an opportunity to ride over. His explanations were
not very lucid, for Bob was no great hand at analysis. To any other
audience they might have been absolutely incoherent. But Thorne had long
since reasoned all this out for himself; so he understood; while to
California John the matter had always been one to take for granted. Bob
leaned forward, his earnest, sun-browned young face flushed with the
sincerity--and the embarrassment--of his exposition. Amy nodded from
time to time, her eyes shining, her glance every few moments seeking in
triumph that of her brother. California John smoked.
Finally Bob put it squarely to Thorne.
"So you'd like to join the Service," said Thorne slowly. "I suppose
you've thought of the chance you're giving up? Welton will take you into
partnership in time, of course."
"I know. It seems foolish. Can't make it seem anything else," Bob
admitted.
"You'd have to take your chances," Thorne persisted. "I couldn't help
you. A ranger's salary is ninety a month now, and find yourself and
horses. Have you any private means?"
"Not enough to say so."
"There's another thing," Thorne went on. "This forestry of our
government is destined to be a tremendous affair; but what we need more
just now is better logging methods among the private loggers. It would
count more than anything else if you'd stay just where you are and give
us model operations in your own work."
Bob shook his head.
"Perhaps you don't know men like Mr. Welton as well as I do," said he;
"I couldn't change his methods. That's absolutely out of the question.
And," he went on with a sudden flash of loyalty to what the old-timers
had meant, "I don't believe I'd want to."
"Not want to!" cried Amy.
"No," pursued Bob doggedly, "not unless he could see the point himself
and of his own accord. He's done a great work in his time, and he's
grown old at it. I wouldn't for anything in the world do anything to
shake his faith in what he's done, even if he's doing it wrong now."
"He and his kind have always slaughtered the forests shamefully!" broke
in Amy with some heat.
"They opened a new country for a new people," said Bob gently. "Perhaps
they did it wastefully; perhaps not. I notice you've got to use lots of
lubricating oil on a new machine. But there was nobody else to do it any
different."
"Then you'd let them go on wasting and destroying?" demanded Amy
scornfully.
"I don't know," hesitated Bob; "I haven't thought all this out. Perhaps
I'm not very much on the think. It seems to me rather this way: We've
got to have lumber, haven't we? And somebody has to cut it and supply
it. Men like Mr. Welton are doing it, by the methods they've found
effective. They are working for the Present; we of the new generation
want to work for the Future. It's a fair division. Somebody's got to
attend to them both."
"Well, that's what I say!" cried Amy. "If they wouldn't waste and slash
and leave good material in the woods--"
Bob smiled whimsically.
"A lumberman doesn't like to leave things in the woods," said he. "If
somebody will pay for the tops and the needles, he'll sell them; if
there's a market for cull lumber, he'll supply it; and if somebody will
create a demand for knotholes, _he'll invent some way of getting them
out_! You see I'm a lumberman myself."
"Why don't you log with some reference to the future, then?" demanded
Amy.
"Because it doesn't pay," stated Bob deliberately.
"Pay!" cried Amy.
"Yes," said Bob mildly. "Why not? The lumberman fulfills a commercial
function, like any one else; why shouldn't he be allowed freely a
commercial reward? You can't lead a commercial class by ideals that
absolutely conflict with commercial motives. If you want to introduce
your ideals among lumbermen, you want to educate them; and in order to
educate them you must fix it so your ideals don't actually spell _loss!_
Rearrange the scheme of taxation, for one thing. Get your ideas of fire
protection and conservation on a practical basis. It's all very well to
talk about how nice it would be to chop up all the waste tops and pile
them like cordwood, and to scrape together the twigs and needles and
burn them. It would certainly be neat and effective. But can't you get
some scheme that would be just as effective, but not so neat? It's the
difference between a yacht and a lumber schooner. We can't expect
everybody to turn right in and sacrifice themselves to be
philanthropists because the spirit of the age tells them they ought to
be. We've got to make it so easy to do things right that anybody at all
decent will be ashamed not to. Then we've got to wait for the spirit of
the people to grow to new things. It's coming, but it's not here yet."
California John, who had listened with the closest attention, slapped
his knee.
"Good sense," said he.
"But you can educate people, can't you?" asked Amy, a trifle subdued and
puzzled by these practical considerations.
"Some people can," agreed Thorne, speaking up, "and they're doing it.
But Mr. Orde is right; it's only the spirit of the people that can bring
about new things. We think we have leaders, but we have only
interpreters. When the time is ripe to change things, then the spirit of
the people rises to forbid old practices."
"That's it," said Bob; "I just couldn't get at it. Well, the way I feel
about it is that when all these new methods and principles have become
well known, then we can call a halt with some authority. You can't
condemn a man for doing his best, can you?"
The girl, at a loss, flushed, and almost crying, looked at them all
helplessly.
"But----" she cried.
"I believe it will all come about in time," said Thorne. "There's sure
to come a time when it will not be too much off balance to _require_
private firms to do things according to our methods. Then it will pay to
log the government forests on an extensive scale; and private forests
will have to come to our way of doing things."
"What's the use of all our fights and strivings?" asked Amy; "what's the
use of our preaching decent woods work if it can't be carried out?"
"It's educational," explained Thorne. "It starts people thinking, so
that when the time comes they'll be ready."
"Furthermore," put in Bob, "it fixes it so these young fellows who will
then be in charge of private operations will have no earthly excuse to
look at it wrong, or do it wrong."
"It will then be the difference between their acting according to
general ideas or against them," agreed Thorne.
"Never lick a pup for chasin' rabbits until yore ready to teach him to
chase deer," put in California John.