ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 117 



Congress of the United States. It is one, too, that is full 

 of difficulty. 



Prejudices are to be encountered, abuses have to be 

 corrected, and it is high time that the people who are 

 living in this great territory should seriously take the 

 subject under consideration. They have begun to do so, 

 but yet there is much difference of opinion as to what 

 remedy, if any, should be adopted and applied. The 

 purpose of my remarks today is to discuss the best attain- 

 able remedy for present evils — the best possible under 

 existing circumstances — and I think I fully realize the 

 difficulty of framing a law dealing with this question. 

 The home is the base of everything, and if we start re- 

 forms on this subject with the home as the foundation 

 the structure will be safe. 



In examining this question and preparing a bill upon 

 it the home seeker and actual settler is the man for whom 

 we should exercise our first concern. The actual settler 

 is the strength of a new state. The nomadic herder who 

 drifts with his flocks from state to state, paying taxes no- 

 where and having no care for the future of the state, 

 should be accorded no rights which will conflict with the 

 local interests of the community or which will deter the 

 actual settlers from taking up permanent homes. 



The protection of the forests has no longer much op- 

 position. By saving the forests we preserve the streams. 

 The benefits of the restoration of the herbage of the plains 

 are more direct. Grazing is even more important than 

 irrigation. The nakedness of the plains should be clothed 

 with grass and the mountains with trees. 



In reading the early history of the United States, es- 

 pecially of the Far "West, the mention of abundance of 

 grasses suitable for grazing will always strike the atten- 

 tion of the reader. It is interesting to take the story of 

 Lewis and Clark's expedition, or the journals of the 



