251] Condition of Forests on the Public Lands. 67 



and the local mill man, are then criminals under the 

 law, and are also liable in a civil action for damages. 

 The special agents employed by the General Land 

 Office to protect the public domain from timber dep- 

 redations are supposed to collect such testimony as 

 is necessary to sustain a prosecution, and to superin- 

 tend this prosecution in behalf of the government, 

 the government being represented by the United 

 States district attorneys. Do I need to tell you 

 that before a local jury such prosecutions almost 

 invariably fail. 



The sympathies of the entire community are 

 always with these depredators of the public timber, 

 and quite often the jurors themselves have been 

 freely using such timber. Indeed it is a matter of 

 the greatest difficulty to induce a grand jury to indict 

 persons who have confessedly been cutting govern- 

 ment timber for years to supply their saw-mills, the 

 product of which is used quite likely by the very 

 members of the grand jury. In the rare cases where 

 a verdict for damages is rendered for the govern- 

 ment it will be for merely nominal damages. 



'' In nearly every public land State and Territory, poor hard- 

 working laboring men, who have been compelled to cut timber to 

 procure the means of a bare subsistence for themselves and fami- 

 lies, have been arrested, convicted, fined and imprisoned for cut- 

 ting and removing timber from vacant, unappropriated and unre- 

 served non-mineral public land in violation of section 2461, U. S. 

 Revised Statutes." 



"It is true that in some localities the sympathies of the people 

 are so strong and in other localities the timber is an article of such 

 public necessity, that it is impossible to convict a man for violation 

 of said section, even if caught in the very act and the proof is over- 

 whelming; so that to some minds the retention of that law upon 

 our statutes is deemed quite immaterial." (Commissioner's Eeport, 

 G. L. 0., 1890.) 



