THE CONFERENCE PROPER 



25 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR KNUTE NELSON 



YOU who were here this morning heard 

 the joint report of the Conservation 

 Commission and the part of it relating 

 to the matter of our public lands. This ques- 

 tion of conserving our lands in this country 

 resolves itself really into two different heads. 

 One relates to the conservation of the lands 

 that are now in private ownership, conserv- 

 ing them against soil erosion, and also against 

 improper use or unwise, improper agricul- 

 tural methods. That part of the problem is 

 very well covered in the special reports that 

 will accompany this general report. This 

 problem relates more to the care-taking by 

 the States than the Federal Government, for 

 the underlying principle in reference to land 

 matters is that where land has passed out of 

 the hands of the Federal Government, the 

 jurisdiction of it is under the laws and regu- 

 lations of the respective States. So that 

 whatever is done in the way of conserving 

 lands that have passed into private ownership, 

 the problem relating thereto must be in the 

 main worked out under State legislation and 

 through private efforts. 



Indirectly the Government can help out in 

 this matter, at least so far as the matter of 

 soil erosion is concerned and so far as the 

 matter of water is concerned, bv the regula- 

 tion of streams ; but in respect to wasteful 

 methods of farming and in respect to these 

 other matters that go to the deterioration and 

 diminution of the value of the land for agri- 

 cultural purposes in the main, that is a prob- 

 lem either for the States or for the individual 

 citizens. 



The question to which I propose briefly to 

 call your attention is the conservation of the 

 public lands that are still in the ownership 

 of the Federal Government, and before I state 

 anything on that subject I want to call your 

 attention to what we still own. 



According to the latest statistics on this 

 subject, we had, upon the first day of July 

 last, 386,873,787 acres of public land that were 

 unappropriated and in the Government's 

 hands, and not in a State or reservation. We 

 had in addition to that, 6,400,000 acres of land 

 in Indian reservations, and we had 167.976,000 

 acres in forest reserves. This relates to the 

 lands that we have within the continental 

 boundaries of the United States and does not 

 include the territorit>'' or district of Alaska. 



The great object or purpose which we ought 

 to have in view is to conserve these lands for 

 the benefit of the American people. One of 

 our great safety-valves in the past, when we 

 have been in the midst of periods of indus- 

 trial stagnation and paralysis, when we have 

 found a large army of idle men in our indus- 

 trial centers and our large cities, has been the 

 fact that many of those people who failed to 

 get work in those industrial centers in the 



large cities could wend their way to the fron- 

 tier and take up public land and make little 

 homes of their own. 



I have figured out that all of the unappro- 

 priated public lands which we now have, 

 which are not in forest or Indian reserva- 

 tions, fit for agricultural purposes would 

 amount to 2,292,000 homesteads of 160 acres 

 each. According to the statistics, we had, at 

 the last census, 6,000,000 farms of 146 acres 

 each. If all this public land that is still in a 

 state of reservation could be conserved and 

 utilized for agricultural purposes, it would 

 furnish homes to 2,292,000 homesteaders. 



One of the great problems, perhaps the 

 greatest problem, we have on hand today is 

 the utilization of these lands. Fortunately, 

 we have a large body of lands in forest reser- 

 vations. I think that is one of the most 

 fortunate things that has occurred in recent 

 years in respect to our public lands. 



Some years ago we tried to repeal the tim- 

 ber and stone law, under which so many of 

 our valuable timber lands had been appropri- 

 ated at a cost of not more than $2.50 per acre. 

 While such a bill was passed in one house of 

 Congress, it failed to pass in the other body, 

 and as a consequence, if it had not been for 

 the fact that so many of our lands were seg- 

 regated and put into forest reservations, we 

 would today have been in a far more deplor- 

 able and precarious condition in respect to 

 our timber lands than we really are. 



When we think of how our public lands 

 have been disposed of in the past, it is ap- 

 palling. We began at the outset by selling, 

 aside from filling certain grants to officers 

 and men of the Revolutionary Army and 

 some of our other wars, from our lands, at 

 public sale or auction, auctioning them off in 

 large bodies, and then those lands that were 

 not bid in at public sale were offered after- 

 wards at private sale, and from that usage 

 we got the term of "offered" and the term of 

 "unoffered" land. Offered land was that 

 which had been offered at public sale, and 

 could be always purchased at a price of about 

 $1.25 an acre. Land that had been offered at 

 public sale and not sold, was later sold at any 

 price bid for it. 



After we had continued under that policy 

 of selling lands, first at public sale and then 

 offering the lands remaining at private sale, 

 the United States took another step, which 

 was to adopt the preemption law. That, for 

 the time being, was of great value and assist- 

 ance to pioneers, because it enabled them to 

 get a brief period in which to raise the money 

 to pay for their land. Originally they could 

 go and occupy land and file a declaratory 

 statement, and have a year in which to pay 

 for the land. Afterwards that was so modi- 

 fied that they could have two and one-half 



