THE GRASS LANDS 173 



ranching community. The chairman of a meeting to consider 

 this program in Roundup, Montana, put it this way: 



"I have been in the livestock business for 25 years. ... I 

 have seen central Montana go from livestock to farming, then 

 back to livestock raising. We have gradually seen this program 

 coming back. But only under improved conditions due to the 

 development program, can the ranchers survive." 21 



THE DIVISION OF GRAZING 



By far the most ambitious attempt to regulate government 

 range land is the Taylor Act. This act passed in 1934 permitted 

 the Secretary of the Interior to set up the Division of Grazing as 

 part of the Department of the Interior. It has set aside 142," 

 000,000 acres of the public domain to be managed in such a 

 way that the grass will be saved and the soil kept out of the 

 streams. It closes to settlers all of the Public Domain, that once 

 seemingly endless middle of America. It is the official end of 

 the free land period of American history. Today's pioneers 

 must go to the highly civilised, irrigated, and usually electrified 

 reclaimed lands opened up by the Bureau of Reclamation. 



The purposes of the Taylor Act are stated thus in its pre 

 amble: "To stop injury to the public gracing lands by preventing 

 overgrazing and soil deterioration, to provide for their orderly 

 use, improvement, and development, to stabilize the livestock 

 industry dependent upon the public range." 22 



If you are going to control the way in which land is to be 

 used you must either own or lease it. In the range country the 

 land is a checkerboard of squares of federal land, state land, 

 county land, railroad land, private land, and tax-delinquent 

 land. The first step in controlling grazing is to get a large solid 

 block of suitable land under a single control. Where the owner- 



21 The Agricultural Situation, May 1938, Vol. 22, Number 5. Washington, 

 D. C. A publication of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. 



22 The Taylor Grazing Act, Approved June 28, 1934 (48 Stat. 1269) and 

 amended June 26, 1936 (Public, 827, 74th Cong.). 



