[7] James and Mary were both well-connected with prominent Republican Party leaders and former Union generals, including family friend William T. Sherman, and they would frequently aid Pinchot's later political career.

[8] Pinchot's paternal grandfather had migrated from France to the United States in 1816, becoming a merchant and major landowner based in Milford, Pennsylvania.

"[13] At Yale, Pinchot became a member of the Skull and Bones society, played on the football team under coach Walter Camp, and volunteered with the YMCA.

[16] He traveled to Europe, where he met with leading European foresters such as Dietrich Brandis and Wilhelm Philipp Daniel Schlich, who suggested that Pinchot study the French forestry system.

[20] Pinchot landed his first professional forestry position in early 1892, when he became the manager of the forests at George Washington Vanderbilt II's Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

[27] Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal.

[29] Pinchot's main contribution was his leadership in promoting scientific forestry and emphasizing the controlled, profitable use of forests and other natural resources so they would be of maximum benefit to mankind.

[31] In 1900, Pinchot established the Society of American Foresters, an organization that helped bring credibility to the new profession of forestry, and was part of the broader professionalization movement underway in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

[36] As the first head of the Forest Service, Pinchot implemented a decentralized structure that empowered local civil servants to make decisions about conservation and forestry.

[37] Pinchot's conservation philosophy was influenced by ethnologist William John McGee and utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham,[38] as well as the ethos of the Progressive Era.

[39] He was generally opposed to preservation for the sake of wilderness or scenery, a fact perhaps best illustrated by the important support he offered to the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.

[40] Pinchot used the rhetoric of the market economy to disarm critics of efforts to expand the role of government: scientific management of forests and natural resources was profitable.

[42][b] The Roosevelt administration's efforts to regulate public land led to blowback in Congress, which moved to combat "Pinchotism" and reassert control over the Forest Service.

[3][citation needed] One year after the Great Fire of 1910, the religious Greeley succeeded in receiving a promotion to a high administration job in Washington.

[3][citation needed] Under Greeley, the Service became the fire engine company, protecting trees so the timber industry could cut them down later at government expense.

[25][citation needed] Pinchot and Roosevelt had envisioned, at the least, that public timber should be sold only to small, family-run logging outfits, not to big syndicates.

[50]When Ballinger approved of long-disputed mining claims to coal deposits in Alaska in 1909, Land Office agent Louis Glavis broke governmental protocol by going outside the Interior Department to seek help from Pinchot.

The Pinchots represented the more ideologically left wing faction of the party, and they frequently feuded with financier George Walbridge Perkins.

[67] After leaving office in 1910, Pinchot took up leadership of the National Conservation Association (NCA), a conservationist non-governmental organization that he had helped found the previous year.

[28] Under Greeley, the forest service became a figurative fire engine company, protecting trees so the timber industry could cut them down later at government expense.

[71] Pinchot had a more favorable view of Greeley's successor, Robert Y. Stuart, and his influence played a key role in blocking several plans to transfer of the Forest Service out of the Department of Agriculture.

As chairman, Pinchot coaxed a major budget increase from the legislature, decentralized the commission's administration, and replaced numerous political appointees with professional foresters.

[73] Pinchot's victory over his Republican opponents owed much to his reputation as a staunch teetotaler during the early period of Prohibition; he was also boosted by his popularity with farmers, laborers, and women.

[75] Pinchot and engineer Morris Llewellyn Cooke pursued ambitious plans to regulate Pennsylvania's electric power industry, but their proposals were defeated in the state legislature.

[80] Taking office in the midst of the Great Depression, Pinchot faced persistently high unemployment levels and sharply declining revenues during his second term.

Though Pinchot is often misquoted as having said his goal was to "discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible", in reality he believed that the PLCB would put bootleggers out of business by offering lower prices.

[4] Pinchot also argued that under the new system of state controlled liquor stores "[w]hisky will be sold by civil service employees with exactly the same amount of salesmanship as is displayed by an automatic postage stamp vending machine.

[100] The younger Pinchot later helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council, an organization similar to his father's National Conservation Association.

A master politician, he advocated for the wise use and preservation of natural resources, promoting the idea of conservation as a means to ensure long-term benefits for society.

[104] Pinchot developed the concept of multiple-use management, which advocated for balancing conservation with the utilization of natural resources for economic and social purposes.