Proceedings of the Second National Conservation Congress at Saint Paul Part 28

Now, it must be apparent to any one that the most efficient Executive must fail in safeguarding the property of the people if the laws provided for that purpose by the Legislative body are loose, inaccurate, or unfitted to conditions. I want to make the charge plainly and unequivocally that, when we come (as we shall in a moment) to inquire into the safeguarding of the property of this Nation, we will find that all the despoiling of the Nation is directly chargeable upon the Legislative branch of the Government, the Congress of the United States, to whom, under the Const.i.tution, we gave the power of trustees.

In the first place, if unfortunately _our_ representatives in the United States Senate--and I use the word "our" figuratively--if the representatives in the United States Senate from each State, respectively, are there in the interest of specially privileged cla.s.ses instead of in the interest of the average, common man, it will follow that the Executive arm of the Government will be inefficient; and I have discovered that it _is_ inefficient in the greater part of the West, where the greater part of the public property of the Nation lies--the Executive arm of the Government _is_, and since the Civil War has been the greater part of the time, utterly inefficient to safeguard the property of the people (applause). But I would be failing in my performance of duty if I failed to tell you why: It is because, while we have entrusted to the President of the United States the appointing of the United States attorneys for the different districts throughout the United States, a rule has grown up in the Senate of the United States which has in effect robbed the Executive of any real power in that respect, and has placed the appointing of such officials in the hands of the United States Senators from the respective States in which those districts lie. (Applause)

What is the result? The result is that if the lumber interests in a particular district are strong, because of having already succeeded in despoiling the people of a large part of their timber interests, they are apt to dominate the election of a United States Senator; and those lumber interests are also liable to dictate, through that United States Senator, the appointment of the United States officials whose duty it will be to enforce the laws of the United States against their benefactors. (Applause)

I would not dare to make such serious charges if I did not speak from absolute experience (applause). When I reached Oregon I found that situation existing in Oregon--indeed, I found on investigation before a grand jury that the then United States attorney was protecting certain men, who belonged to the higher-up cla.s.s, from indictment, and that he had entered into a corrupt conspiracy with both the United States Senators from that State, by which they had agreed to have him reappointed United States attorney _upon condition_ that these men should not be prosecuted (applause). Moreover, I found that when the first stealing of timber commenced in Oregon and men were arrested for it, a man representing a big and influential timber company had taken to the railroad train about twenty-five men at Portland and carried them up to Salem and had them file openly on contiguous timber claims, each one swearing falsely that he was taking the timber for his own use; and when the matter was exposed immediately and the United States attorney took the matter before a grand jury and indicted the leaders who had instigated those men to go up and make the filings, influential State officials appealed to the United States Senators from Oregon to interfere, and appeals were sent to the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior, so that finally the indictments were dismissed. Shortly thereafter about one hundred men filed on timber claims, under a contract to turn them over as soon as they were acquired, and again the influence of politicians and big business men brought about a failure of justice through an a.s.sistant United States attorney, who was the brother of the attorney representing the big interests who had hired these men to make the filings. Case after case of that kind came to my knowledge in Oregon; case after case of that kind has been brought to my attention in four or five other States. All of it can be traced back to the system under which we have been electing our United States Senators. (Applause)

Professor Hadley has well said that the fundamental divisions of power in the Const.i.tution of the United States are between the voters on the one hand and the property owners on the other. That is the fight. That always has been the fight. That always will be the fight in this country. You heard, probably, all of you, that great address by the greatest citizen of the world, made in this hall the other day (applause), in which he outlined those conditions.

Now let us come back, for I want to show you wherein our trouble lies; and I want to show that great genius in railroad building (who is a citizen of your State, and who talked to you yesterday afternoon)--I want to show you and him who is responsible for the "extravagance and waste" of the great natural resources of this country. (Applause)

I have pointed out to you how big business controlled the execution of the laws in practically every place in the West--except, of course, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota; in the early days when there was timber here none of these evils existed because these conditions didn't exist; your timber lands were not stolen in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan; you didn't have United States attorneys suggested by United States Senators who had been selected by owners of large timber tracts or railroads. Some States in the Union have suffered from that, but you never had any such thing come home to _you_ (laughter). I congratulate you (renewed laughter). The Nation has had in its possession, owned in common by all of us and our forefathers, 1,800,000,000 acres of land.

That is _some_ property (laughter); that is more than either you or I possess today (laughter). And that included all of the present Rockefeller oil possessions, it included all of the Northern Pacific's land-grant possessions, it included all of the great anthracite companies' coal possessions, it comprised all of the millions of acres of timber land throughout the United States, including what there was in Minnesota. It belonged to you and me and our fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. We were pretty rich at that time. We _could_ have held on to it and developed it, because I can't believe that if we had offered to pay a patriotic citizen like James J. Hill the sum of $50,000 a year to build a railroad for us from Lake Superior to Puget Sound and to furnish him the money with which to build it, that he would have refused the job (applause); even had he considered it inadequate compensation for his great ability, his patriotic love of the people of the United States would have led him to do it. (Great applause and cheers) In talking with a banker the other night--one of the Big Four of New York--I asked him if in his opinion Mr Harriman, in the gigantic operations performed by him, was influenced by love of money and the desire to gain filthy lucre, or whether he was influenced by the great gratification of achievement, and he said undoubtedly by the latter; that Mr Harriman would have combined all these railroads for the people of the United States on a salary of $50 a month, if we didn't want to give him any more, just for the pleasure of doing it. (Laughter and applause) But we have received misinformation, and are receiving it yet, to the effect that there are no patriots in the United States; that no man is willing to develop our coal or our oil or our iron or our water-power or anything else that is left unless we give him everything in sight. (Laughter and applause)

My friends, the way the people of the United States have been treated in regard to this vast property which we owned reminds me of a story I heard about a man down South--a white man. He was going along the river in flood time in the back country, and the river was full of floating logs and refuse and all sorts of timber, and he saw a n.i.g.g.e.r sitting on the bank--and will you pardon me for using the word "n.i.g.g.e.r" instead of "colored man," because I have just been making a visit down in Virginia and I suppose I fell into it (laughter); it is not meant as a term of reproach, nor is it used as such there or here--and seeing this negro sitting on the bank, he said to him, "Sam, what are you doing?"

"Nothin', Suh." "Whose boat is that?" "That's mine, Suh." "Well, Sam, let me tell you what I'll do; you take your boat and go and haul those logs out of the river there, and I'll give you half of all you get on sh.o.r.e." (Laughter)

It took a little while for that to sink in (laughter). It has taken you forty years to let this railroad proposition sink in. (Laughter)

Right while I am on it, while it is fresh in my mind and in yours: Mr Hill says, "We have been extravagant." Why, my friends, do you know what we gave to Mr Hill? I say we "gave" it; as a matter of fact, we weren't consulted (laughter); we didn't have a referendum on it (laughter and great applause). We gave the greatest land-grant ever given to an individual or a corporation in the history of the world--sixty millions of acres; when I say to Mr Hill, of course I mean the Northern Pacific.

We gave outright a strip of land 2000 miles long, 20 miles wide in the States and 40 miles wide in the Territories! Worse than that: instead of giving it in a solid body, we gave every even section, so that in timber lands it carried an immense advantage over anybody else coming in from the outside. Now, it is easy to demonstrate, and I hardly believe Mr Hill would care to deny it--and if he does, I'll get the figures and demonstrate it (applause)--that this land-grant was worth, at a fair figure, ten dollars an acre at the very least. That is six hundred million dollars (applause) of _our_ property that we "extravagantly and improvidently wasted," as Mr Hill would call it; and I agree with him.

(Laughter and applause)

But what does that mean? Why, the road is 2000 miles long; $50,000 a mile on an average for the entire road is a very fair figure as the cost of it, making, if I calculate correctly, $100,000,000, to build it.

Let's double that, and allow $100,000 a mile for the 2000 miles; that certainly would build and equip the road. That is two hundred million dollars. And we gave six hundred million dollars worth of land, and the railroad was built and now wants _forever_ to charge you rates--upon how much of a capitalization? Well, I don't know. But four hundred million dollars profit! Why, that would more than build the Panama Ca.n.a.l--and I wonder that some private corporation didn't do _that_ (laughter). It _would_, undoubtedly, if we had been willing to give to it all of the remaining 700,000,000 acres of land that we have left--including Alaska, with the coal mines that Guggenheim wants (laughter and applause). We _have_ been "improvident"--or somebody has--with the property of the people.

Now, who was so improvident? Why, Congress; because the Const.i.tution places in the hands of Congress the power to dispose of, regulate, and control the property of the United States; and Congress did it--and _did_ us, too (laughter and applause). But not satisfied with that, Congress gave to the Southern Pacific, the Central Pacific, and the Union Pacific 120,000,000 acres more of our inheritance, which we purchased with both blood and money--because the war with Mexico led to a part of the purchase, in which thousands of American citizens were killed, and thousands of American women widowed, and thousands of American children orphaned, while we put fifteen millions of _our_ money--our common pot--into the purchase on top of that human blood; and then we "extravagantly and improvidently" gave it away. (Applause)

Not satisfied with that, when we commenced to realize that it was necessary to save the forests of this country--some of the forests which were left--Congress again pa.s.sed an act, in 1907, called the New Land Act. In 1891 it had pa.s.sed the law authorizing the President to create National forest reserves. At the same time it had pa.s.sed a law authorizing the States to select new lands for the school sections which might be included in the National forest reserves. A gentleman in California by the name of Frederick A. Hyde, and another gentleman (who is since dead, and who served a year in jail, just before his death, for defrauding the United States), were actively operating in the State of California in school lands. Now, don't get the idea in your heads from what I have been saying about the way Congress has handled the lands and property of the United States that I am in favor of turning over to the States the power to handle any property in the hope that it will be better handled, because there, again, my experience teaches me that it will be worse--_if possible_ (laughter and applause). Well, under that law of 1891, Hyde and his companion adopted this system: Where they found that school lands were in reserve (they had a man in the Surveyor-General's office who was looking out for them), they would go down and get bootblacks, and saloon barkeepers, and Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry to sign an application for school lands--under the law of California 320 acres--the law requiring that in making his filing the applicant should swear that he was taking it for his own use and benefit and not for speculative purposes. And at the same time that Mr Bootblack signed the application, he would sign a transfer of his interest, a conveyance of the land, with the date left blank; and a very agreeable notary public would put his seal and acknowledgment upon the affidavit and the a.s.signment, despite the blanks and the absence even of any description of the lands in the application. Then, when Mr Hyde had one or two hundred of these, he would go and take up all those school lands, and have the agent of the State thereupon locate all of these school lands in a body in the finest forest he could find in California--some of the finest that ever grew on earth are there, trees two and three hundred feet high, sixteen to twenty feet in diameter, cutting so many millions of feet to the quarter-section that it would astound even a Minnesota lumberman unless he had been out there and seen it; and those magnificent virgin forests would be separated from public owners.h.i.+p by our "extravagance"--and this, mark you, through Congress pa.s.sing the 1891 law for the benefit (?) of the schools of the State so loosely drawn that speculators could take advantage of it in this way. So the virgin forests went into private owners.h.i.+p; and Mr Hill will tell you, "What of it? Doesn't that develop the country?"

Why, my friends, they didn't even put the patents on record, because the tax collector of the county would put them on the a.s.sessment roll if they did (laughter). And so they grabbed millions of acres, that they had no idea of using in the present; they were holding it for the profit which would come from scarcity of timber through the waste and use which is going on. Why, people living in the very neighborhood of the timber grabbed don't know that it has pa.s.sed out of Government owners.h.i.+p! And yet those are some of the people who have been living "extravagantly." I believe that some of them wear shoes that cost the high price of a dollar, and eat bacon that is four-fifths fat. (Laughter and applause)

Let me tell you that extravagance is largely a matter of trying to copy after the Higher-ups. No nation was ever destroyed until it had a large leisure cla.s.s to set a bad example (applause) in living to the common people; and this Nation has a leisure cla.s.s which is rapidly growing, and which is more wealthy than any leisure cla.s.s ever known to the world, civilized or barbarian. Why? My friends, _solely_ because Congress has by bad laws permitted all this vast property of the people to get into the hands of the few (applause). There is not a fortune in this country today large enough to be a menace to the liberties of the common people which has not been acquired by despoiling the people through legislation that was either corrupt or the result of such ignorance that it ought to be punished as criminal negligence, or else through unfair discrimination made by common carriers giving one man an advantage over his compet.i.tors. (Applause)

Now, I haven't time to finish--I am afraid I have overstepped my time already--(Voices: "Go on, go on," and applause) but I want to "go on"

just a little longer (laughter and applause) because I have something on my mind that I want to put on yours. (Laughter)

We didn't lose our great inheritance until after the Civil War.

Practically all of the rapes of this Nation by Congress have been committed since the Civil War, and every land law which Congress has placed upon the statute books since 1860 has been vicious--absolutely vicious--in its tendencies, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior have constantly, every year, told Congress about it in printed reports and begged and urged Congress to change the laws: _and it has refused to do it!_ (Applause)

Of course all members of Congress are not to blame for that; because this fight which Hadley says is going on always, and always will go on, in the division of power fundamentally between the voters and the property owners, has resulted in the property owners having more representatives in Congress than the people ever had. (Applause)

Now, I am not here to abuse anybody. I heard a man tell a homely story last night that went directly to my heart; it's exactly in line with what I think about most of the men who are responsible for the present condition; I don't say these men are bad, but only that they have a wrong viewpoint--and that was ill.u.s.trated in the story. This gentleman said that one day his boy brought home a fox-terrier. They had poultry at his home, some brown leghorns and some white chickens. This fox-terrier had been born and raised on a ranch where they had nothing but brown leghorns, and consequently when he went out in the chicken-yard and saw the feed thrown out he rushed out immediately--of course, without being told to do it--and weeded out the white chickens from the brown leghorns and drove them away from the feed and let the brown leghorns have it all (laughter). Now, it wasn't the fault of the dog that the white chickens lost their feed (laughter); we mustn't blame him; that had become second nature, from what we would call, speaking in reference to human beings, _environment_ (laughter and applause); and it's a rare dog who can discover for himself that the white chickens ought to have an equal right with the brown leghorns to get _some_ of the feed. (Laughter and applause)

When, after the Civil War, business commenced to swing with great strides in this country, owing to the great inventions in machinery, the discovery of the cotton-gin and so many other things that we can't stop to enumerate them, and the growth of the use of electricity in later days, a few men commenced to see business enlarge--and they were not the men who fought in the War, but the men who remained at home and reflected (laughter and applause). Some of them were like the man pictured in one of the ill.u.s.trated papers where there was a cartoon of Thomas Jefferson signing the Declaration of Independence, with one of the imaginary corporation men of the day--a Tory--rus.h.i.+ng in through the door and saying, "Hold on, Thomas, don't sign that doc.u.ment; it'll hurt _business_" (laughter); and these men said, "Let's stop this War, it's hurting business." And there were others who thought the War _made_ business, though that was before they had commenced to can beef (laughter). Then after the War, when the men who had made the fight for human liberty and the continuance of equal opportunities in this country came home and went to work, they went ahead satisfied to make a living for their little families in the best way they could, while these _business men_ who had remained at home had discovered that _if_ a man can get possession of those natural resources which can be turned into energy--the energy which drives modern machinery, which can do the work of human hands--he can sit back and fold his arms and say to the eighty million people in the United States, "Go ahead; when you want energy to run your machinery, you'll have to come to me and buy it; when your money is gone the eighty millions of you will have to work for me; and when you get to be one hundred and sixty millions, you'll still have to work for me." Now, it requires some imagination to see that, but it is just as fundamentally true as that the earth is spherical--flattened at the poles, as Cook tells us (laughter); and Peary corroborates it.

(Laughter)

Let me explain; because I want you to take home something, besides figures, that you will remember. When a man in the old days, when they had no machinery, employed four or five men, he commenced to be a business man; and when he began to put profit in his pocket--even at the rate of only ten cents a day for the labor of each man working for him, if he had five men he was making a clear profit of fifty cents a day, and if he had fifty men the profit was five dollars a day--he got on the road to "big business." If he could have five hundred men and could make fifty cents a day off the labor of each one, he would be making two hundred and fifty dollars a day; and if he could have factories spread out over the United States in which he had an aggregate of ten million men working for him--as in shoe factories when they made shoes entirely by hand--and could make fifty cents a day off each of the ten million men, he would make five million dollars a day. The figures stagger us.

Now, with machinery you can take coal, oil, timber, gas, or water-power--those are the energy-creating natural resources--and make machinery run with them; and if you own enough of those energy-creating natural resources to be equivalent to the labor of ten million men, and apply it to the right machinery, you can compete with the man who has ten million slaves to work for him and does not possess this other energy--and you can do better than merely compete, because your water-power doesn't wear out shoes at the toes nor coats at the elbows nor trousers at the knees; so, my friends, the man who owns the water-power is a greater slave-owner--has more energy that can be turned into wealth--than all the planters who owned the colored men of the South.

Now, at the time of the Civil War we didn't understand this great power and the importance of preserving it in the owners.h.i.+p of the people--because it all belonged to us then. There is available--so the report of the National Conservation Commission says--37,000,000 horsepower in the streams of this country. What does this mean? Why, my friends, the energy expended by an average draft-horse working eight hours a day is equal to only four-fifths of the unit horsepower, as we use it in speaking of water-power, so that it would be equivalent, for an eight-hour day's work, to more than fifty-four million average draft horses. Now, machinery used to be driven by man-power before the draft horse was made to work in place of the man; that was what they did in the old tread-mill before the discovery of steam, which has only been in effective use about a hundred years; and in man-power, what does the forty million horsepower available immediately for use mean? You don't conceive of it, I am sure. A horsepower is equal to the work of at least ten men, and forty million horsepower would be equal to the work of 400,000,000 men! Why, all the people in the United States today are only 90,000,000, including babies. Four-hundred-million-of-men power! And just as sure as the sun will rise, if we permit that to go into perpetual owners.h.i.+p of individuals, the day will come when one corporation will own it all and one man will dictate and dominate that corporation (applause). If you want this country to have material progress at the cost of human liberty, let this source of energy slip out of your hands (applause); but if you want to hold on to any kind of a chance for your children and children's children to have equal opportunities like yours, then follow the policies laid down by Theodore Roosevelt the other day in regard to those energy-producing resources--coal, oil, gas, and water, as well as timber--and this country will be so great that all earlier history will never have told of such progress as the human race will make within these confines.

(Applause)

It seems to me that we all ought to be able to realize that no human being in the short s.p.a.ce of a lifetime can have earned a hundred million dollars--he cannot have given an equivalent to mankind for $100,000,000; and when we see the example set by some of these great captains of industry who go over to Monte Carlo and risk a fortune on one bet and one turn of the wheel, and come back to this country and talk about their great benevolence, and then find that the Pittsburg "Survey" found conditions of human life at their workshops so low that it is bound to degrade and pull down the human race--surely it is time to stop and consider. (Tremendous and prolonged applause)

My friends, we must have more democracy in this country (applause). I know this is no place to talk politics, and I am not here for the purpose of talking politics in a partisan sense; but the Conservation of the natural resources for the benefit of the human race--not only the people of the United States--is of such transcendent importance that it rises above all parties and all men (great applause). Why is it that some of these men who have profited by our mistakes and our improvidence in the past are fighting against this Conservation movement? Is it because they fear that we will fail to develop the country rapidly enough? No! Every true Conservationist believes in developing the country rapidly as possible. But we realize the danger, the menace to human liberty, that lies in _parting with the fee t.i.tle_ to all these great energy-producing natural resources; and if we can arouse the people of the United States to a realization and understanding of this question--which, after all, is simple when we get down to it--there will be such a wave of insurgency sweep over this country as will drive the representatives of the special interests out of every public office in the Nation. (Great and prolonged applause and cheers)

Now, in order to ill.u.s.trate what I have said about what these people--or Congress--have done and failed to do, I must draw your attention to the fact that under the Timber and Stone Act, 13,000,000 acres of the finest timber in the world have been extravagantly and improvidently disposed of and lost to the people through a vicious Act of Congress, and have gone largely into the hands of a few owners; for the repeated reports of the Secretary of the Interior--even the present Secretary, Mr Ballinger--show that ten of the thirteen million acres are in the hands of a few individuals and corporations. Ten million acres! Why, that is equal to two of the smaller eastern States. In 1878, the then Secretary of the Interior, immediately after the Act was pa.s.sed, said in his report for that year (Report of Secretary of Interior, 1878-1879, pp.

xii-xv):

While no legislation applicable to all parts of the country with regard to this subject was had, two bills of a local character were pa.s.sed, one "Authorizing the citizens of Colorado, Nevada, and the Territories to fell and remove timber on the public domain for mining and domestic purposes," and one "For the sale of timber lands in the States of California and Oregon and in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory."

In the opinion of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, which is on record in this Department, these two acts are more calculated to _hasten the destruction_ of the forests in the States and Territories named than to secure the preservation of them.

Of this act the Commissioner of the General Land Office, in a letter addressed to the Secretary of the Interior, expresses the following opinion:

"It is a fact well known that while almost all the timber-bearing land in those States and all the Territories, except Dakota and Was.h.i.+ngton, is regarded as mineral, only a small portion is so in reality. The effect of this bill will, in my opinion, be to prevent the survey and sale of any of the timber lands, or the timber upon the lands, in the States and Territories named, thus cutting off large prospective revenues that might and should be derived from the sale of such lands or the timber upon them. It is equivalent to a donation of all the timber lands _to the inhabitants of those States and Territories_, which will be found to be the largest donation of the public domain hitherto made by Congress. This bill authorizes the registers and receivers of the land offices in the several districts in which the lands are situated to make investigations without any specific directions from the Secretary of the Interior or the Commissioner of the General Land Office, to settle and adjust their own accounts, and retain from the moneys coming into their hands arising from sales of lands such amounts as they may expend or cause to be expended. This method will be found exceedingly expensive and result in no good. Experience has shown that the machinery of the land offices is wholly inadequate to prevent depredations."

The "Rules and Regulations" issued in pursuance of the first section of this act are to be found in the report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, herewith presented.

These rules, drawn up with a view to and the intention of preserving the young timber and undergrowth upon the mineral lands of the United States and to the end that the mountain sides may not be left denuded and barren of the timber and undergrowth necessary to prevent the precipitation of the rain-fall and melting snows in floods upon the fertile arable lands in the valleys below, thus destroying the agricultural and pasturage interests of the mineral and mountainous portions of the country, make it the duty of registers and receivers to see to it that trespa.s.sers upon timber lands, not mineral, be duly reported, that upon mineral lands only timber of a certain size be cut, and that young trees and undergrowth be protected, and that timber be cut only for the purposes mentioned in the act. These "Rules and Regulations" will be enforced with all the power left to this department to that end, in order to save what may be saved. But I deem it my duty to call attention to the fact that, as set forth by the Commissioner in the letter above quoted, the machinery of the land offices is utterly inadequate to accomplish the object in view.

After a careful consideration of the above-named Act and its probable effects, I venture the prediction that the permission given the inhabitants of the States and Territories named therein, to take timber from the public lands in any quant.i.ty and wherever they can find it, for all purposes except export and sale to railroads, will be taken advantage of, not only by settlers and miners to provide economically for their actual current wants, but by persons who will see in this donation a chance to make money quickly; that it will stimulate a wasteful consumption beyond actual need and lead to wanton destruction; that the machinery left to this Department to prevent or repress such waste and destruction through the enforcement of the rules above mentioned will prove entirely inadequate; that as a final result in a few years the mountain sides of those States and Territories will be stripped bare of the timber now growing upon them, with no possibility of its reproduction, the soil being once washed off from the slopes, and that the irreparable destruction of the forests will bring upon those States all the calamities experienced from the same causes in districts in Europe and Asia similarly situated.

It appears to me, therefore, that the repeal of the above-named act, and the subst.i.tution therefor of a law embodying a more provident policy, similar to that of the above-mentioned Senate Bill No. 609, is in the highest degree desirable. If the destruction of the forests in those States be permitted, the agricultural and pasturage interests in the mountainous regions will inevitably be sacrificed, and the valleys in the course of time become unfit for the habitation of men.

The act for the sale of timber lands in the States of California, Oregon, and Nevada, and in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, pa.s.sed by Congress at its last session, is, in a letter addressed to this Department, commented upon by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, in the following language:

"It is a bill of local and not general application to the timber lands of the United States, and adds one more to the already numerous special acts for the disposal of the public domain. The price fixed is too low, as much of the land is worth from five to fifty dollars per acre.

"Under the provisions of the bill the timber lands will, in my opinion, be speedily taken up and pa.s.s into the hands of speculators, notwithstanding the provisions to prevent such results. The soil should not be sold with the timber where the land is not fit for cultivation. Only the timber of a certain size should be sold, and the soil and young timber retained with a view to the reproduction of the forests. The bill should have limited the sale of the lands to persons who have farms and homes within the State or Territory, and it ought to have required the purchasers to show affirmatively that they had need of timber for domestic uses."

No less emphatic were later recommendations for repeal or amendment of the Timber and Stone Acts (Report of Secretary of Interior, 1879-80, p.

27):

In my last annual report I discussed the inadequacy of the laws enacted by the last Congress "Authorizing the citizens of Colorado, Nevada, and the Territories to fell and remove timber on the public domain for mining and domestic purposes," and providing "for the sale of timber lands in the States of California and Oregon and in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory." The opinion I then ventured to express, that the first of these Acts would be taken advantage of not only by settlers and miners to provide economically for their actual current wants, but by persons who see in this donation a chance to make money quickly; that it would stimulate a wasteful consumption beyond all actual need and lead to wanton destruction, and that the machinery left to this Department to prevent or repress such waste and destruction through the enforcement of the rules to be made by the Commissioner of the General Land Office would be found insufficient for that purpose, _has already_ in many places _been verified by experience_; also the predictions made by the Commissioner of the General Land Office with regard to the effect of the second one of the above-named acts. Referring to what was said about these laws in my last annual report, I repeat my _earnest_ recommendation that they be _repealed_, and that more adequate legislation be subst.i.tuted therefor.

It is by no means denied that the people of the above-named States and Territories must have timber for their domestic use as well as the requirements of their local industries. Neither is it insisted upon that the timber so required should be imported from a distance, so that the forests in those States and Territories might remain intact. This would be unreasonable. But it is deemed necessary that a law be enacted providing that the people may lawfully acquire the timber required for their domestic use and their local industries from the public lands under such regulations as will prevent the indiscriminate and irreparable destruction of forests, with its train of disastrous consequences. It is thought that this end will be reached by authorizing the Government _to sell timber from the public lands princ.i.p.ally valuable for the timber thereon_, _without conveying the fee_, and to conduct such sales by Government officers under such instructions from this Department as will be calculated to _prevent the denudation of large tracts_, especially in those mountain regions _where forests once destroyed will not reproduce themselves_. I have no doubt that under such a law, well considered in its provisions, the people of those States and Territories would be enabled to obtain all the timber they need for domestic as well as industrial purposes at reasonable rates, and that at the same time the cutting of timber can be so regulated as to afford sufficient protection to the existence and reproduction of the forests, which is so indispensable to the future prosperity of those regions. I venture to express the opinion that the enactment of such a law has become a pressing necessity, and cannot much longer be delayed without great and irreparable injury to one of the most vital interests of the people. I therefore again commend to the consideration of Congress the bill introduced as Senate Bill No. 609 in the _last_ Congress:

"The last clause of the second section will permit any person applying for a tract of timber land and securing a certificate from the Register to sell his right and interest therein _immediately_, and the purchaser, although it may have been obtained by perjury, may be ent.i.tled to a patent for the land.

"Section 5 provides that any person prosecuted under Sec. 2461 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, may be relieved of the penalty by the payment of two dollars and fifty cents per acre for the land trespa.s.sed upon. This is objectionable, for the reason that the penalty fixed is altogether inadequate, and does not require the payment of costs of prosecution, which are often greater than the penalty to be collected. It should require that the trespa.s.ser should pay for the entire subdivision trespa.s.sed upon.

"There can be no doubt that if this bill becomes a law it will be taken advantage of, by persons who want to make money quickly, to acquire the timber lands under its provisions at a very low price, and strip the mountain sides of their forest growth as rapidly as possible. How disastrous such a result will be to these States and Territories need not be detailed here."

My friends, every report from 1878 down to the last report this year, tells Congress exactly the same thing, and begs and urges Congress to repeal this Timber and Stone Act. Not only that; every report goes on and tells that large tracts are being stolen and taken fraudulently, and Congress is urged for that reason to repeal it and make a different rule in regard to the sale of the timber, not to hold it but to sell the timber off the land letting buyers take the mature growth, and replanting and reforesting so that the timber will always be there; and Congress failed to act until 1892, fourteen years later. After the above reports went in, with a report of the same kind every year for fourteen years, then, in 1892, with a report before them at the time to the same effect, Congress _extended_ the Timber and Stone Act to take in Montana and some other States. _Who got them to do it?_ The great amalgamated copper interests are in Montana, and the great smelting interests there wanted _timber_--that belonged to us, and that they could well afford to pay for--and they wanted to get it under this vicious Act, and they _did_ get it under this vicious Act; and indictments followed only a short time ago, but there was failure of proof although everybody knew who was guilty (applause). And, my friends, the Act of Congress in extension of the vicious law, with all these reports before them, cannot be accounted for upon any other theory than that the people of the United States have a minority of representatives in both branches of Congress (applause). Now, after the extension, the adverse reports commenced to come in again; and they have been followed up every year down to the present year, yet that Timber and Stone Act still remains on the statute books unamended and unrepealed! _How_ can you account for it? I'll tell you how. Why, _there is still some timber to be stolen_!

(Applause)

Now, I have taken altogether too much of your time. I have not been able to present this matter as satisfactorily to myself as I would have liked on account of the limitation of time--I suppose most of you are glad of that. (Voices: "No, no, no; go on!") I can't go on; it wouldn't be fair to other gentlemen who are here to speak, especially to Mr Gifford Pinchot who is to talk to you immediately after I conclude, and I know you want to hear from him (applause). But I want to say to you that the fight to prevent our natural resources from getting into private owners.h.i.+p is a war that will have a greater influence upon the future of the human race than even the great Civil War in this country had (applause); and I want to say to you, further, that I have enlisted in that war as a private soldier (applause, and a voice: "We'll make you the leader!") for the full term of my natural life. (Great applause)