P. 
; | DIVISION OF FORESTRY. 609 
been made with the purpose of relinquishing the land as soon as possi- 
ble to some large lumbering corporation or syndicate, which, in fact, 
has often paid men to perjure themselves in taking up such lands. 
(2) In the Southern States it has been possible to buy Government 
timber lands at $1.25 per acre. Most of these have probably been 
disposed of and are held by speculators and lumbermen and not by 
the agriculturists, whom it was avowed this disposition of land was 
to benefit. 
(3) Every land-grant railroad, in addition to its share of the land 
grant of 75,000,000 acres and the right of way, is permitted to cut 
timber ‘‘ for first construction, adjacent to the line of its road.” But 
the railroads do not construe ‘‘ construction” and ‘* adjacent” exactly 
in the sense in which the lawgivers did, and they have cut wherever, 
whenever, and for whatever purpose they chose. 
(4) Those who take up a homestead or pre-emption claim upon 
timber land are also given the right to clear as much timber as is 
necessary for the development of their claim and improvements be- 
fore they have acquired title. But it is known that most settlers on 
such lands do not exert themselves to procure the title after they have 
got the timber off. : 
(5) Lastly, any resident citizen may cut allthe timber he needs for 
mining and domestic purposes upon lands which are designated as 
‘*mineral lands,” a term which will defy definition even by an expert. 
Without going into a detailed account of the history which pelea 
to the disposition of public lands and the various ways in which at- 
tempts were made to protect the forest property from spolation, it 
can be stated as a result of an examination of the reports of the Gen- 
eral Land Office that at all times these attempts at protection have 
been futile, from the fact that no adequate means were allowed for 
this purpose. 
That the timber on the public domain had a special value and also 
that it needed, like all movable property, to be looked after and pro- 
tected, was recognized by the Act of March 2, 1831, for the care and 
custody of public timber land, which established asystem of agencies 
under the supervision of the Solicitor of the Treasury. When, in 
1854, the management of the timber interest was transferred to the 
Generai Land Office, and the registers and receivers were expected to 
act as timber agents without additional pay, an exceedingly liberal 
construction as to the rights of taking timber, and naturally a lax 
enforcement of any laws, prevailed until 1877. In 1878 a special 
appropriation of $25,000 was made ‘‘to meet the expenses of sup- 
pressing depredations upon timber on the public lands.” 
In fact, until 1876 all the action taken against timber stealing, 
when discovered, was the collection of stumpage; and an attempt 
was made to levy, in the discretion of the receivers, a regular quar- 
terly tax from saw-mill men, without sanction of the law. From 
the year 1872 annual appropriations had been made for this service, 
amounting in the aggregate to $48,000 ($45,624.76 expended). 
In 1877 the Commissioner of the Land Office instituted a service 
of special. agents to prevent or detect timber trespass, and this sys- 
tem has prevailed ever since. As to the efficiency of the present 
methods of protection no words need to be added to the following 
table, which exhibits the results of the administration of this public 
property during the last seven years, showing that the depredations 
which, were discovered upon the public timber land amounted to over 
AG 87 39 
