62 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



timber on the market and so increased the cost of lumber, and that 

 by making purchasers pay the full value of what they buy it has 

 levied on the necessities of the public. I have tried to point out that, 

 far from being withdrawn from the market, the timber of the 

 National Forests is being pushed upon the market. Ten times the 

 quantity sold last year would have been sold if purchasers could 

 have been found. By withdrawing the forests from private acquisi- 

 tion the Government has increased the amount of timber on the 

 market, for it prevented the absorption of their finest stands by the 

 speculators who now hold for the rise enormous quantities of the 

 best timber in the West. By making purchasers pay the full value 

 of what they buy the Government has simply done justice to all in- 

 stead of permitting a favored few to profit at the expense of the 

 many. AVhile it has been collecting the actual worth of all timber 

 sold, the Government has been doing CA^erything that it has power to 

 do legitimately to keep prices down by offering as much timber as 

 possible for sale and by regulating sales to prevent the collection of a 

 monopoly toll from the public. Any proposal looking to the sale of 

 timber at prices below its actual market value will require to receive 

 the closest scrutiny to discover who will in point of fact be its actual 

 beneficiaries, and at whose expense. 



AGRTCULTDRAL LANDS IN THE FORESTS. 



While the National Forests comprise the great mountain regions of 

 the West and in general have neither the climate nor the soil nor the 

 topograph}^ that would make cultivation possible, there are excep- 

 tional localities and many scattered patches of land which are 

 adapted to tillage. As originally proclaimed, the forest boundaries 

 included much more land of this character than they do now. 

 Naturally the loAver-lying parts of the forests w^ere the parts in which 

 such lands were generally found. The early work of examining 

 lands which were under consideration for National Forests was nec- 

 essarily hasty, for a small force had to cover a great territory in the 

 shortest possible time if the forests w^ere to be saved to the public. 

 In consequence the lines were draAvn somewhat roughly. In places 

 they took in too little land, elsewhere too much. 



A revision of all boundaries, based on careful examinations and 

 land classification, has been under way for three years and has re- 

 sulted in the elimination of about 10,000,000 acres which were found 

 not to be chiefly valuable for forest purposes. In making these elimi- 

 nations an effort has been made to exclude all important nontimbered 

 areas chiefly valuable for agriculture and located along the borders 

 of the forests or running back from the borders into the forests. 

 Many deep indentations which the maps now show indicate where 

 valley lands extending for miles up the course of a stream have been 



