EDITORIAL 



A Remarkable Speech 



NEAR the close of the last session of 

 Congress a Senator from one of 

 the western states delivered a remark- 

 able speech — remarkable from many 

 points of view. The speech was deliv- 

 ered in the course of the discussion over 

 the appropriation for the United States 

 Forest Service, and in it the Senator 

 made so many statements that are at 

 wide variance from the known facts 

 that the speech seems to require atten- 

 tion. Among the statements made in 

 this remarkable utterance were the 

 following : 



That Forest guards, rangers, etc.. are 

 an arrogant class of government em- 

 ployees : that acts of violence at their 

 hands are of frequent occurrence ; that 

 a citizen of the state represented by the 

 Senator speaking had been set upon, on 

 the open highway, and feloniously shot 

 simply because the said citizen refused 

 to give the road to the guard — the citi- 

 zen at the time being in a vehicle, while 

 the guard was mounted. It was fur- 

 ther stated that the Forest Service re- 

 quires its guards, rangers, etc., to wear 

 a uniform ; that the Senator himself had 

 often seen such uniformed guards 

 lounging upon the piazzas of summer- 

 resort hotels, sporting their livery and 

 wearing cocked and cockaded hats : 

 that costly steam yachts were provided 

 — paid for out of Government funds — 

 for the sole use and pleasure of the 

 guards, rangers, and others of the For- 

 est Service. And, finally the statement 

 was made, virtually, that the entire For- 

 est Service is a farce, if nothing worse, 

 and that it is conducted solely for the 

 profit and aggrandizement of certain 

 individuals, actually accomplishing no 

 good whatever, and of no benefit save 

 to a favored few. 



This truly remarkable utterance, as 



we say, seems to require attention; not 

 because the Forest Service needs de- 

 fenders — its work shows for itself — but 

 because there are many men, both in 

 public and private life, in the western 

 states, who make a practice of going 

 about the country delivering themselves 

 of these and similar utterances, thereby 

 creating impression that are wholly un- 

 justified by facts. Taking the above 

 statements up seriatim, the answers 

 follow : 



«««?«? 



The Murderous Guard 



THE shooting episode spoken of by 

 the Senator has become a classic 

 in the West. During a trip last sum- 

 mer, in which the writer went into half 

 a dozen far western states, he heard 

 this story a score of times. Each time 

 the actors in the drama were dififerently 

 named, and the location of the shooting 

 was different with each teller of the 

 tale. At last becoming skeptical after 

 liaving heard of the shooting as hap- 

 pening in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, 

 Montana, Utah, and Arizona, the writer 

 set about learning the truth of the 

 story. It was found that there had ac- 

 tually been a shooting aflfair, in which 

 the aggressor was a forest guard. The 

 shooting occurred on a forest road 

 traversing a National Forest in Idaho, 

 but it was not found that any one was 

 actually shot, the information being 

 that the guard — -a man named Wagner 

 — had fired either into the air or into 

 the ground, and the private citizen be- 

 ing uninjured. However, this much 

 was learned : The shooting did occur, 

 and it was done by a forest guard. 

 Wagner, the man who did the shoot- 

 ing, was promptly arrested by forest 

 officers, haled into an Idaho court, 



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