Shortly after starting his work with the Division of Forestry, Pinchot began recruiting a staff. In hindsight, it was an extraordinary group of men. They met every Saturday morning at the Pinchot mansion (his parent’s home in Washington DC on Rhode Island Avenue). They called themselves the Service Committee. Fortunately for us, they kept notes. Week by week you can see the evolution of the agency. They wanted to be different, and they were. Within his first six years of building the Forest Service, Pinchot had gathered a leadership cadre that would astound us today. To mention just a few of the most notable:
Raphael Zon. A Russian Jewish man imprisoned by the Czar. Zon escaped to America, where he enrolled in the first forestry school at Cornell. A brilliant thinker, Zon more than anyone is responsible for establishing the system of forest experiment stations in America, as well as setting the standards for forest research. He was extremely devoted to Pinchot. Maybe more importantly, he continually challenged the agency after Pinchot left whenever he felt they were straying from the mission Pinchot had established. Zon appears to have been blunt and demanding. He spoke seven languages, had a brilliant mind, and seemed to have endless energy. Zon is an example of a classic Heifetz disruptor. He pushed things to the edge, and sometime went over it. Subsequent leaders had to deal with him without bringing down Pinchot’s wrath on the agency. They sent him to head up the Shelterbelt Program and the Lakes States Experiment Station. Zon is a champion of Pinchot, even past Pinchot’s death. He was one of the editors/writers of Pinchot’s posthumous autobiography Breaking New Ground.
Henry Overton Price. The organizational genius behind Pinchot, Price was Associate Chief. If I mentioned Price at a forestry meeting and asked who he was, only one or two would know. Yet, we owe so much to Price. With Pinchot on the road for most of his tenure, Price was responsible for the agency’s organizational structure, operation, and its high level of performance. The Service Committee defined the role of “actings.” In Federal agencies, when the head was away, everything waited until their return. This would not work for the Forest Service. Pinchot was gone half the year, and when in, was mostly out.
Henry S. Graves. Graves’s administrative and political savvy held the agency together after Pinchot’s departure in 1910. He “set the bar” for competent managers. When Pinchot left, he also left an army of Western legislators that wanted the Forest Service dead. They did everything they possibly could to kill it. The agency was saved by a few things, most notably the “Big Burn”—the catastrophic 1910 fires in Idaho and Montana—and later, the Great Depression. I refer to Graves as the one who started what I refer to as Apostolic Succession in the Forest Service – the belief that the Chief must be selected from the ranks of the agency, and a forester. Political party donors need not apply.
George Woodruff. A Yale classmate and lawyer, Woodruff took 11 cases to the Supreme Court, and won every one, ten unanimously. Without Woodruff ’s skillful use of the judicial system, the authority of the young Forest Service to control the occupancy and use of the National Forests would be in question. Because of Woodruff’s success in expanding the authority of the agency, Congress prohibited the Forest Service from having its own legal department. To this day, the Forest Service has a shared Office of General Counsel within the Department of Agriculture.
Albert Potter. Pinchot needed a leader who would take responsibility for complex and politically sensitive issues to address the first significant challenges the agency faced: managing sheep and cattle on the western reserves. Potter was genius at bringing order from chaos and was the progenitor of the field-hardened leader.
Herbert Smith. Smith established the government public affairs job in a way that never previously existed. With a swift and competent hand, he made the Forest Service front-page news across America. Forestry and conservation became household words, and more information flowed from the Forest Service than all other government agencies combined. One of his most significant contributions was the Forest Service writing style—a single page of short declarative statements, with no wasted words. He wrote like Pinchot spoke.
When Taft became President, Pinchot lost more than his connection to the White House, he lost his job. Taft fired Pinchot in 1910 for insubordination just five years after the Transfer Act of 1905. By then, Pinchot had built up not only several powerful and supportive friends, but also an equally impressive group of enemies. When Pinchot was fired, he orchestrated the appointment of Henry Graves as his successor. Char Miller puts together the puzzle of how this came about. It is Pinchot’s skill in getting the president of Yale to contact President Taft and recommend Graves. It works. Graves’ greatest challenge is ensuring the Forest Service’s survival. Graves served as Chief for 10 years.
What kept this infant agency alive and functioning? To some degree, it was the skill and adeptness of Pinchot’s successor. But more importantly, it was the credibility that the Forest Service was gaining.
Pinchot returned home to Pennsylvania[i], where he carried on a full and active life in politics, including two terms as Governor. But he never lost contact with the Forest Service and was actively involved until his death in 1946. In the last days of his life, he put the finishing touches on his autobiography, Breaking New Ground. As Char Miller told me, “Think of it as his own version of history. He fights all his old battles and wins every one decisively.” But it also a political document, Pinchot’s gospel of conservation.
[i] Gifford married Cornelia Bryce at the Bryce Mansion on Long Island in 1914. They established their residency in Milford, Pennsylvania. Cornelia was a “modern woman,” a social activist, and turned out to be extraordinary in so many ways. This is a description of the wedding, “On a beautiful spring Saturday morning a few weeks ago, the informal marriage of Miss Cornelia Bryce and Mr. Gifford Pinchot took place on the piazza extension at stately Bryce House at Roslyn, Long Island, overlooking scenic Hempstead Harbor. The bride wore a white gown with some pink trimmings, a hat to match and carried a gathering of white flowers. She had no attendants but was given in marriage by her father, Lloyd Stevens Bryce. The groom, Mr. Pinchot was attended only by his brother, Amos. There were no ushers. The small group of wedding guests included some of the most prominent citizens in the country including Colonel and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Mr. Peter Cooper, who is the brides’ great grandfather.” The engagement was extremely short because Mary Pinchot was dying. She wanted to see her son married, and Theodore Roosevelt served as matchmaker.