636 



CONSERVATION 



And there we are. Secretary Lamar 

 and First Assistant Secretary Chandler 

 held that the law meant what it said, 

 and Secretary Lamar's knowledge of 

 law was deemed sufficient to warrant 

 his promotion to the bench of United 

 States Supreme Court. 



"But Secretary Smith reversed him." 

 In a sense, yes; yet the Smith decision 

 would not help Ballinger. 



Secretary Smith's decision was based 

 on the theory that a claim for public 

 land was not a "claim against the 

 United States." 



From his standpoint, public land was 

 of no value to the United States. In- 

 stead, it was but so much old junk, to 

 be gotten rid of as fast as practicable. 

 Whatever basis this astounding 

 theory may have had in the practise of 

 the Interior Department, it does not 

 apply to claims for United States coal 

 lands — in Alaska or anywhere else. 



For the scandalous practise of sell- 

 ing Government coal lands for a song, 

 President Roosevelt substituted the 

 present plan of selling such lands for 

 a price approximating their market 

 value. 



And he did this before Commissioner 

 Ballinger left the Land Office. 



Since this change in practise it has 

 been and is the pride and boast of 

 the Interior Department and Geolog- 

 ical Survey that the Government is 

 treating the people's coal as a thing 

 of value, not be dumped like rubbish 

 upon the first applicant. 



A claim for Government coal lands 

 means to the Government to-day as 

 much as a claim for the money value 

 placed by the Geological Survey upon 

 such lands. 



Yet Secretary Ballinger overlooks 

 all this ; and he ignores the masterly 

 decision of Secretary Lamar, the un- 

 fjuoted parts of which simply add to 

 its strength. 



Nevertheless, Secretary Ballinger is 

 a champion of "strict construction" — 

 when it suits. 



Was it not a lawyer who, on an 

 earlier occasion, found his judgment in- 

 fluenced by the question as to whose ox 

 was gored? 



Construction — Strict To-'day and Free 

 To'-morrow 



AFTER all,, is not the question of 

 construction one less of schools 

 than of moods and tenses ? 



Upon this question light is thrown by 

 our national constitutional history. 



The father of strict construction in 

 America found it necessary, when in 

 power, to "stretch the Constitution un- 

 til it cracked" to cover an important ad- 

 ministration measure. 



On the other hand, the free con- 

 structionists, when out of power, have 

 sought aid and comfort from the strict 

 construction philosophy. 



The fact seems to be that people are 

 free constructionists when they want to 

 do things, and strict constructionists 

 when they want to prevent things from 

 being done. 



We are now in the midst, apparently, 

 of another era of strict construction. 

 Yet, as noted in another connection, the 

 Secretary of the Interior forgot all 

 about his strict construction principles 

 when Section 190 of the Revised Stat- 

 utes got in his road. 



Furthermore, when it was found de- 

 sirable for the Government at Wash- 

 ington to aid American financiers in 

 securing a share of the $25,000,000 loan 

 for the construction of certain Chinese 

 railways, a way was promptly found 

 to do so. But has any one pointed to 

 the clause of the Constitution or the 

 article of the Revised Statutes authoriz- 

 ing such aid? 



Still, when it was discovered that 

 users of irrigated land were paying in 

 part for their water rights by their 

 labor, or that trained Government for- 

 esters were applying approved methods 

 to the handling of Government forests 

 on the Indian Reservations, immediately 

 legal lions blocked the path. 



'wonderful, indeed, is law, and more 

 wonderful still the legal mind ! 



in '^ ^ 

 Legal Last Year But Not This 



THAT the plan whereby Forest Serv- 

 ice men cared for the forests on 

 the Indian Reservations was eminently 

 wise, practicable and helpful is con- 



