Reservations were undertaken.  In 1903, so rapidly did the public work of the Bureau of Forestry increase, that the examination of land for new forest reserves was added to the study of those already created, the forest lands of the various States were studied, and cooperation with several of them in the examination and handling of their forest lands was undertaken.  While these practical tasks were pushed forward, a technical knowledge of American Forests was rapidly accumulated.  The special knowledge gained was made public in printed bulletins; and at the same time the Bureau undertook, through the newspaper and periodical press, to make all the people of the United States acquainted with the needs and the purposes of practical forestry.  It is doubtful whether there has ever been elsewhere under the Government such effective publicity—­publicity purely in the interest of the people—­at so low a cost.  Before the educational work of the Forest Service was stopped by the Taft Administration, it was securing the publication of facts about forestry in fifty million copies of newspapers a month at a total expense of $6000 a year.  Not one cent has ever been paid by the Forest Service to any publication of any kind for the printing of this material.  It was given out freely, and published without cost because it was news.  Without this publicity the Forest Service could not have survived the attacks made upon it by the representatives of the great special interests in Congress; nor could forestry in America have made the rapid progress it has.

The result of all the work outlined above was to bring together in the Bureau of Forestry, by the end of 1904, the only body of forest experts under the Government, and practically all of the first-hand information about the public forests which was then in existence.  In 1905, the obvious foolishness of continuing to separate the foresters and the forests, reenforced by the action of the First National Forest Congress, held in Washington, brought about the Act of February 1, 1905, which transferred the National Forests from the care of the Interior Department to the Department of Agriculture, and resulted in the creation of the present United States Forest Service.

The men upon whom the responsibility of handling some sixty million acres of National Forest lands was thus thrown were ready for the work, both in the office and in the field, because they had been preparing for it for more than five years.  Without delay they proceeded, under the leadership of Pinchot, to apply to the new work the principles they had already formulated.  One of these was to open all the resources of the National Forests to regulated use.  Another was that of putting every part of the land to that use in which it would best serve the public.  Following this principle, the Act of June 11, 1906, was drawn, and its passage was secured from Congress.  This law throws open to settlement all land in the National Forests that is found, on examination, to be chiefly valuable for agriculture.  Hitherto all such land had been closed to the settler.