72 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



With these developments in the national forestry policy, and to a 

 large degree underlying and supporting all of them, must go more 

 comprehensive research in timber growing and in economy in the use 

 of timber. The research facilities with these objects in view already 

 existing in the Department of Agriculture have made notable prog- 

 i-ess, but should be expanded to meet the growing need for soimd 

 technical data on which the whole forestry movement depends. 



THE NEED FOR EXTENDING REGUI^TION OF RANGE USE. 



Adjoining many national forest ranges are large areas of the 

 public domain suited only for grazing purposes. Just as the accumu- 

 lation of cut-over lands has been a force making for overdevelop- 

 ment of farming on soil of inferior productiveness, so has the public 

 policy with respect to these open-range lands of the West worked in 

 the same direction. Settlement of these lands has been encouraged 

 without consideration of the economic and social waste that results 

 when the settler locates on land from which a decent living can not 

 be made through cultivation because of adverse natural conditions. 

 But a point has now been reached beyond which no substantial fur- 

 ther development of agriculture is possible. There are still 175,000,- 

 000 acres of unreserved public lands which remain unentered. They 

 are used in the main as grazing commons. The greater part of this 

 land is arid or semiarid in character and supports no tree growth. 

 It is land on which, by and large, 60 years experience has demon- 

 strated that there is no possibility of agriculture except as limited 

 areas may now and then be embraced within irrigation developments. 

 For the most part, it is land whose natural productivity is low and 

 has been steadily declining by reason of excessive and unregulated 

 grazing. On much of it at the present time the natural forage 

 grown on 20 or 30 acres will no more than furnish yearlong pas- 

 turage for a single cow. Much of it is land which the stockman 

 could not afford to own and carry. 



This vast area is now no man's land in very truth. The Govern- 

 ment owns it but exercises no control over it. The sheep or cattle 

 owned by near-by ranchmen or by itinerant herders graze it as they 

 can. The first comer gets the best of the forage; later comers take 

 the leavings, if there are any. Under this unregulated and destruc- 



