t;i; i ondition of Forests on the Public Lands. [250 



the General Land Office, in his last annual report, 

 says: 



"It is useless to enact laws to prohibit the use of an article of 

 absolute necessity, upon a judicious use of which the growth and 

 prosperity of our country largely depend. If the exportation of 

 timber and the destruction of trees and undergrowth upon the 

 mountain slopes can be prevented, and other public timber left free 

 and open to all subject to proper restriction, there will, in my 

 opinion, be far less destruction and waste than is now going on 

 through unlawful appropriation and forest fires. 



" The laws now in force are discriminating and unjust. Under 

 them the owner of a mine in Arizona, from which he may be re- 

 ceiving an income of 100 a day, can procure all of the timber nec- 

 essary in developing and operating said mine from the public min- 

 eral lands without cost, except for the felling and removing, while 

 the owner of a farm in Minnesota, upon whose labors we are de- 

 pending for our daily bread, cannot procure a stick of timber from 

 any public land ' with intent to use or employ the same in any 

 manner whatsoever ' not even to build a fire with which to keep 

 the warmth of life in his body if he be freezing without violating 

 the law. 



"The necessity for a general law to remedy this evil cannot be 

 too strongly urged upon Congress." 



The settler, after taking a piece of government 

 land in the vicinity of the mountains, finds imme- 

 diate use for timber for the construction of his build- 

 ings and fences, and he naturally helps himself to 

 whatever he desires. The prospector and miner and 

 the great mining companies have the right to cut 

 timber growing on the mineral lands about them: the 

 railroad supplies itself from the adjacent timber, and 

 the settler can hardly be blamed for doing the same. 

 Oftentimes, as a community of settlers becomes 

 sufficiently large to support it, a small saw-mill 

 springs into being, and the wants of this little com- 

 munity are supplied by the local mill, drawing its 

 timber from the government land without any au- 

 thority whatever. Both of these classes, the settler 



