FOEEST LANDS FOE THE PEOTECTION OF WATERSHEDS. 131 



slopes, which never can be farmed, are protected from fire they will 

 always be forested, or at least covered with a growth that will prevent 

 erosion. 



Remembering these two undenied facts, can it be argued that it is 

 necessary for the Government to purchase either the upper or the 

 lower slopes of the mountains in order to protect the streams? The 

 lower slopes are more valuable for farming than for timber raising if 

 they can be prevented from erosion. Since they can be so prevented 

 by proper methods of tillage, would it not be better national economy 

 for the Federal Government to help teach the farmers of that region 

 how to till their soil in such a way as to prevent erosion and maintain 

 its fertility than it would be to buy out those farmers and return the 

 land to the wilderness? And since the upper slopes will always have a 

 forest cover, if protected from fire, would it not be better national 

 economy for the Federal Government to lend its aid to such protec- 

 tion at a comparatively trifling cost (it is estimated by the Forest Serv- 

 ice that the cost of an effective fire patrol would not exceed 2 cents per 

 acre per annum) than to buy the land at a very great initial expendi- 

 ture, with the cost of fire protection to be added as a fixed and con- 

 tinuing charge? Would it not be better for the States concerned to 

 have the lands remain in private ownership, supporting a larger popu- 

 lation than could possibh 7 be maintained if the policy of the pending 

 bill is pursued, and retaining the value of the propert} 7 on the tax 

 rolls? 



The very best that can be said in support of the proposition for the 

 federal purchase of these lands is that as a result of such purchase the 

 impairment of navigable streams may possibly be diminished or 

 retarded. But will this vague general possibility, or probability, of 

 a distant and shadowy good offset the immediate and certain evil of 

 driving large numbers of people away from homes which in many 

 instances have been occupied for generations, of reducing the produc- 

 tivit} 7 of large areas, and of taking large amounts of property from 

 local tax rolls? 



It is cited as a special merit in the pending bill that the money to 

 carry it into effect is taken not from the General Treasury but from 

 the receipts of the existing Forest Service, the agreeable inference 

 therefrom being that the proposed new forests can be bought without 

 any real draft upon the Treasury. We are unable to see the force of 

 this argument. The receipts from the present national forests are not 

 a new source of income conjured into existence by the pending bill. 

 On the contrary, these receipts are a part of the national revenues 

 which are paid into the Federal Treasury, just as are the revenues from 

 customs dues or internal taxation To regard the income from the 

 forests as a special fund which can be diverted without any real effect 

 upon the Treasury balances is a palpable fiction, which if adopted 

 would expose the Congress to the charge of doing by indirection what 

 it was not willing to do directly. If we are going to enter upon this 

 policy, let us do it openly and boldly with a full understanding of 

 what it will cost and where the money is to corne from. 



In its terms, the life of the measure being limited to ten years and 

 the expenditures under it restricted in the aggregate to $19,000,000, 

 this bill is extremely conservative compared with others that have been 

 introduced upon the same subject. It is to be noted, however, that it 

 is applicable to every section of the country, and that the foremost ad- 



