THE FOREST 183 



enough, since the railroads needed the timber, first for ties and 

 construction, then for fuel. 



But when the railroads began to sell this timber to lumber 

 companies at a considerable profit, the government decided that 

 it was time to change its policy. This change in policy was the 

 Timber and Stone Act. According to this law, lands with 

 valuable timber or gravel pits were reserved for settlers. The 

 attempt to distribute timberland among the settlers, however, 

 was not successful, because lumber companies sent in train' 

 loads of men to pose as settlers, take up land, and later sell it to 

 the companies. In Modoc County, in California, more than 85 

 per cent of 25,000 acres of timberland was taken over by the 

 lumbermen by this device in less than a year. Over 14 per cent of 

 this went to one man, the rest went to three others. 3 There were 

 many government restrictions to prevent this, but the lumber 

 companies found ways of overcoming all these restrictions. For 

 instance, the law said that a settler had to build a house 16 feet 

 long by 14 feet wide on the land on which he settled. The settler 

 would file a report with the government saying that a building 

 16 by 14 had been built. He did not think it necessary to men' 

 tion, however, that his building was 16 by 14 inches instead of 

 feet. 4 By this method land worth $20,000 per quarter section 

 was acquired for $400. 



The tremendous frauds practiced in administering the Tim" 

 ber and Stone Act soon showed that something else would 

 have to be done, if the forests were to be preserved. 



As early as 1877, Carl Schurz;, then Secretary of the In' 

 terior, influenced by his knowledge of forestry in his na' 

 tive Germany, suggested that the public timberlands be re' 

 served as national forests. Some years later the American As' 

 sociation for the Advancement of Science acted to have his 

 suggestion made into a law. In 1891, the Association succeeded 



3 Hibbard, op. cit., p. 468. 

 * Ibid., p. 390. 



