26 



CONSERVATION 



years, and on surveyed lands the same period 

 after the plats of the survey were returned to 

 the local land office. 



In addition to these methods of disposal, 

 we soon got the homestead law, which, in its 

 main provisions, has been one of the great 

 home builders of the country; I mean one of 

 the great instrumentalities that settled up our 

 Western country and, barring some defects in 

 that law, it is one of the best land laws that 

 any country in the world has ever adopted or 

 worked under. The defect of that law was 

 what w^e call the commutation provision. 

 Originally a settler could enter his homestead, 

 and, after living on it six months, could com- 

 mute by paying the Government the price; 

 but, in many cases, instead of the man who 

 made the original entry becoming the perma- 

 nent occupant of the land, the property got 

 mto the hands of speculators. The law was 

 subsequently modified so as to permit commu- 

 tation in fourteen months, and at first the 

 land office interpreted that law to provide 

 that they could commute within eight months 

 after the first six months in which they were 

 required to settle the land. Afterwards the 

 land office abandoned that construction, and 

 today they require fourteen months' actual 

 residence before they can commute. 



But even under that provision, today the 

 records will show that a large number of 

 these homesteads are taken and commuted, 

 and as soon as commuted and proved up and 

 paid for, they pass into the hands of specu- 

 lators and middlemen who hold them simply 

 for a rise and not for the purpose of utilizing 

 them for agricultural purposes. 



In addition to that, we have had other laws. 

 They were no doubt designed for a beneficent 

 purpose, but in their practice they worked out 

 unsatisfactorily. We had, years ago, what 

 they called the timber culture law. The ob- 

 ject of that was to promote the growth of 

 timber on the prairies of the country, but 

 experience showed that law was almost a fail- 

 ure. In many of the Western States, where 

 they have these timber claims, a few trees 

 were raised, but today on many of those old 

 timber claims you can scarcely find a tree 

 growing. That law was repealed. After- 

 wards they passed what was known as the 

 timber and stone act, to which I have already 

 referred. That law was no doubt passed for 

 a beneficent purpose, simply for the purpose 

 of permitting the entry of that class of lands 

 that were wholly unsuited for agricultural 

 purposes, and to permit those entries to be 

 made by men who actually wanted the land 

 for their own use. But in recent years that 

 law has been made the vehicle under which 

 the big lumber men have been enabled to 

 secure a lot of land. 



Then we had some other laws allowing 

 men to relinquish lands in forests and other 

 reservations, and select new lands in other 

 parts of the country. Years ago Congress 

 passed an act relative to what they called the 

 Mount Ranier Reservation. It was within 

 the limits of the North Pacific grants. /\ 



great deal of the land was of very inferior 

 character, with little or no timber on it. 

 Claimants were allowed, under the law, to 

 relinquish that land and select other lands in 

 lieu thereof, and under that law they selected 

 some of the best timber in those Western 

 States. 



Under the timber and stone act, the law 

 required in terms that the land should be sold 

 at a minimum price of $2.50 per acre. Until 

 recently, the Land Department has been con- 

 struing that to mean the maximum price, and 

 the timberland owners or other intermediaries 

 who secured these lands have secured the 

 most valuable pine land for $2.50 per acre. 

 The Land Department has now adopted a 

 new ruling, under which they interpret the 

 law to mean that $2.50 is the minimum price, 

 and that the Government can charge a higher 

 price in proportion to the value of the land. 

 If that rule is enforced, it will be a great pro- 

 tection for us, but in order to enforce that 

 rule the Government, through its officials, will 

 have to investigate and examine these lands, 

 classify them and determine, so far as they 

 can, the quantity of timber, in order to fix the 

 price for which these lands should be sold. 



My own notion as to these timber lands — 

 and this is merely my own individual state- 

 ment — is that all our public lands, whether in 

 the shape of forest reservations or other pub- 

 lic lands valuable chiefly for the timber, ought 

 never to be sold, but that the Government 

 ought to retain possession of them, guard 

 them, and simply sell the mature timber from 

 time to time as the necessity arises. That is 

 the only possible way in which we can con- 

 serve our timber supply. 



Now with reference to these agricultural 

 lands^I call them agricultural lands, but I 

 mean lands not covered with timber. These 

 lands are commonly in the western portion of 

 our country west of the Mississippi, in the 

 arid or semi-arid regions. Some of them can 

 be farmed by dry farming, some by irrigation, 

 and some of them can be farmed by careful 

 and prudent farming by the ordinary method. 



I have grown up in two frontier States, 

 first in Wisconsin and then in Minnesota, and 

 I have noticed one thing, and that is the arid 

 belt and frost belt seem to retire in the face 

 of settlement. I can remember twenty-five 

 years ago when the earliest settlers went to 

 Minot, on the Great Northern Railroad, in 

 North Dakota. When the early settlers went 

 there in the first instance they were literally 

 starved out. They all came back into the 

 timber in Minnesota. Within the last fifteen 

 years, settlers have gone in there and have 

 raised crops successfully for the last eight or 

 ten years, and that country is now considered 

 as good for agricultural purposes as any part 

 of the great State of North Dakota. The 

 same thing is true in the matter of frost. I 

 can remember some eighteen or twenty years 

 ago, when our wheat in northern Minnesota 

 and in that territory north of a line through 

 Crookston and Grand Forks, was bitten by 

 the frost before the crop was mature. We 



