392 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



mandate of law ^ to dissipate the public heritage, nevertheless, it inter- 

 posed stout resistance while the very enactments were before Con- 

 gress which were later to bring the department into disrepute among 

 the forest conservationists. And it did more than merely attempt to 

 defeat that bad legislation. It stood out vigorously for the substitu- 

 tion of a provident forestry administration of the public domain. In 

 fact, the fight maintained in that quarter throughout Secretary Schurz's 

 entire administration constituted one of the most outstanding features 

 of the whole forestry campaign. 



Before detailing the facts it may be well to glance for a moment 

 at certain of the attendant circumstances, more especially in respect 

 to the twin acts of June 3, 1878, which have left the stamp of iniquit- 

 ousness on this period. Fortunately, when the calamity of their en- 

 actment was impending, the Secretary of the Interior at that time was 

 more than a mere "keeper of the timber" for the people — he was a 

 forester at heart. Born and bred in a country where forestry had 

 been accepted as practical, Carl Schurz measured rightly the potenti- 

 alities of our forests. And, loyal American that he had ere that time 

 become, his every instinct revolted against the violation of democratic 

 principles involved in so shaping legislation as to admit of the spolia- 

 tion of our natural resources in the interest of the powerful and unscru- 

 pulous. Grafters of every kind, great and small alike, met with short 

 shrift at his hands. And as one who had unhesitatingly jeopardized 

 his life to establish and defend democratic institutions in his own 

 unhappy land (crushed even then under the heel of Prussian despot- 

 ism) he was not likely to see those identical principles violated here 

 in connection with the domain entrusted to his care, without a protest 

 amounting in point of vigor to decisive action. In evidence of the 

 strength of his convictions in respect to the duty of defending such 

 institutions, may be cited the noble utterance which he, himself, has 



' The question of the duty of executing the public timber laws as they stand 

 upon the statute books, whether obnoxious or otherwise, was taken up and 

 squarely faced by Secretary Schurz in his first annual report, as follows : 



"That the laws are made to be executed, ought to be a universally accepted 

 doctrine. That the Government is in duty bound to act upon that doctrine, needs 

 no argument. There may be circumstances under which the rigorous execution 

 of a law may he difficult or inconvenient, or obnoxious to public sentiment, or 

 working particular hardship; in such cases it is the business of the legislative 

 power to adapt the law to such circumstances. It is the business of the Execu- 

 tive to enforce the law as it stands." 



