One year after the Great Fire of 1910 Greeley received a promotion to a high administration job in Washington . In 1920 , he became Chief of the Forest Service . The fire of 1910 convinced him that Satan was at work , and elevated firefighting to the '' raison d'être '' — the overriding mission — of the Forest Service . Under Greeley , the Service became the fire engine company , protecting trees so the timber industry could cut them down later at government expense . Pinchot was appalled . The timber industry successfully oriented the Forestry Service toward policies favorable to large-scale harvesting via regulatory capture , and metaphorically , the timber industry was now the fox in the chicken coop . Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt had envisioned , at the least , that public timber should be sold only to small , family-run logging outfits , not to big syndicates . Pinchot had always preached of a " working forest " for working people and small-scale logging at the edge , preservation at the core . In 1928 Bill Greeley left the Forest Service for a position in the timber industry , becoming an executive with the West Coast Lumberman 's Association
Great Fire of 1910
Great Fire of 1910
William B. Greeley