FOREST PRESERVATION GRAVES. 435 



for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States " ; and it 

 also authorized the Secretary of the Interior "to make such rules 

 and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects 

 of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use 

 and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction." The same act 

 specifically authorized the sale of timber under methods prescribed 

 by the act and authorized the Secretary of the Interior to permit 

 free use of timber under regulations to be prescribed by him. In 

 other words, the law had explicitly recognized that the forests were 

 not merely hoarded reserves of timber, but public property to be 

 developed, to be occupied, and to be used as well as to be preserved; 

 and further, it recognized that the sum total of these ends could be 

 attained only through regulated use. Yet the only product which 

 the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to dispose of was the 

 timber. 



By the act approved February 1, 1905, entitled "An act providing 

 for the transfer of forest reserves from the Department of the In- 

 terior to the Department of Agriculture," full authority was given 

 for regidation combined with the securing to the public of a proper 

 return for the use of its resources by private interests for public gain ; 

 for this act specified the manner in which " all money received from 

 the sale of any products or the use of any land or resources of said 

 forest reserves " should be disposed of. Thus when the Forest Serv- 

 ice took charge of the national forests the way was clear for solving 

 the administrative problem involved in giving practical effect to the 

 policy formulated in the act of June 4, 1897. The national forests 

 now contain a gross area of over 190,000,000 acres. Except in the six 

 States of Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colo- 

 rado, in which the authority of the President to add further to the 

 area of the national forests was withdrawn by Congress in 1907, 

 practically all the public lands of the United States capable of con- 

 tributing most largely to the public welfare by their management 

 as productive timberlands or by the effect of their forest groAvth in 

 protecting water supplies or preventing soil erosion, or by both to- 

 gether, have been put into the national forests. Wherever the timber 

 on these forests is in demand, it is now being sold (or given away 

 where settlement and development can best be promoted by free use) 

 under methods which will not only maintain but also improve the 

 timber growth, and which at the same time safeguard the water sup- 

 plies of the West. The total amount of timber cut from the national 

 forests last year was nearly 500,000,000 feet; of this the cut under 

 free use was over 100,000,000 feet. 



The National Government has also adopted a plan which looks to 

 forest preservation, for purposes of stream protection, in those parts 

 of the countiy in which there are no longer public lands available for 



