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.During the late nineteenth century, success in writing, science, or brav-ery through exploration were equally accepted paths for men to accruesocial authority.The rise of a new occupational culture in the 1920s limitedMarshall s ability to achieve these goals through similar means.Status andTHE FOREST AND THE TREES 131 masculinity were increasingly tied to occupational achievement.84 In hisprofessional career, Marshall participated in the bureaucratization of Amer-ican society.He worked as a government employee and advanced throughthe ranks, yet Marshall never embraced this world.As a boy, he found anescape from his urban home in literary adventures.As an adult, he foundan alternative in the outdoor work of scientific forestry.For all of hissuccess, however, Marshall did not provide for a family.Maintaining afamily and its status defined the male role in the 1920s and 1930s.Onereviewer of Arctic Village highlighted the paradox within Marshall s defini-tion of social stability.Happiness in Wiseman, the reviewer explained, isthat of carefree adults without the burden of family. Civilizations, however,are built on the unhappiness of parents struggling to protect and guidetheir young. The white residents of Wiseman know nothing of this.Theylive for themselves. 85 The same could be said of Marshall.King tried, albeitunsuccessfully, to support his family, but the blissfully unmarried Mar-shall rejected this measure of manliness and status.86 Achievement in thephysical world, he believed, could better define social worth, and, howeverunconventional, he believed nature could be America s salvation as well.When Marshall returned home from Alaska in the fall of 1931, hestepped right back into the vociferous debates in the U.S.Forest Serviceabout preservation policy.He began a running feud with George Pratt, theeditor the main forestry trade journal, American Forests and Forest Life, forhis continued support of a pro-lumberman position.He continued hiscriticism of the lumber industry with a 1932 contribution to a new study ofthe nation s forest system, known as the Copeland Report.87 In this congres-sionally commissioned and in-depth examination of American forestry,Marshall wrote the sections on forest recreation. The use of forests forrecreation, he began, probably dates to the time when some wanderingsavage, returning to his cave through the depth of the primeval forest, mayhave noticed a beam of sunlight shining on some darkened tree trunk andfelt all at once without knowledge of the reason a moment of great, surgingjoy in the chaotic passage of his life. 88 It was not the typical beginning to agovernment report, but it was indicative of Marshall s now well-developednatural philosophy.Following his contributions to the Copeland Report, Marshall began hismost active work in natural preservation.In 1933, the Commissioner of IndianAffairs, John Collier, appointed Marshall to head the Division of Forestrywithin his agency.Marshall s task was to improve resource conservation onAmerica s reservations as a means to increase Native American political andeconomic autonomy.Marshall directed the creation of reservation forestpreserves and advocated selective harvesting as a means to provide nativepeoples access to a steady source of revenue.He also continued to agitate forfederal acquisition of the nation s woodlands with the publication of The132 ROBERT MARSHALL AND THE REDEFINITION OF PROGRESS People s Forests (1933).Marshall s promotion of socialism, including an end tonatural resource privatization, remained a major element of his effort toimprove the public good.His critics were quick to label him a political radical,but Marshall saw the expansion of market forces as a threat to civil liberty.Marshall did not always explain how his mix of democratic rights and cen-tralized controlled would work, but his promotion of preservation was part of alarger mission to protect traditional notions of community well-being.Thenext year, 1934, Marshall expanded these activities in a campaign for a park inMinnesota s Superior National Forest and against the construction of scenichighways in Tennessee s Great Smoky Mountains.This work put Marshall incontact with an influential cohort of concerned citizens equally committed toprotection of the physical world
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