ABSTRACT
This focus of attention excludes two important considerations about the activities of public administrative agencies. One is an evaluation of the wisdom, the soundness, of the policies pursued by the Forest Service. The other is the "external" relations of the agency leaders with Congress, with the President, with other line and staff agencies, with interest groups (both friendly and hostile), with political parties and party functionaries, with state and local governments and agencies. Both issues are unquestionably extremely significant, but they are not relevant to the questions this study was designed to answer. For field forces may execute to the letter policies widely regarded as unsound, or, by the same token, may, by departing from their instructions, upset strategies deemed rational by many observers; whether or not their actions are congruent with policy does not necessarily depend on the goodness or badness, the Tightness or wrongness, of the policy. And when adroit handling of their foreign relations by the leaders of the Forest Service ensure the agency's jurisdiction, position, funds, and status-when its survival is thus guaranteed for a time-the problem of unifying the activities of the men in the field remains; insofar as Service relations with the environment impinge on the internal functioning of the organization, they are examined here, but they are extraneous for the most part and therefore are not treated at length. The Rangers at the base of the administrative pyramid are subjected to influences pulling and pushing them in many different directions, yet they are held together; the restricted but difficult goal of this report
7 wise directing attention to the context of the specific problem.
