253] Condition of Forests on the Public Lands. 69 



unlawfully cut from the public land, and 306 criminal 

 prosecutions for violation of the timber laws were 

 also pending. The effect of this system has been to 

 place almost the entire population in opposition to the 

 government in its efforts to protect the public timber, 

 and it is all the more difficult now to gain their coop- 

 eration. It will be necessary to educate the people up 

 to the belief that this legislation for the protection of 

 public timber is for their benefit, and for their chil- 

 dren's, that it is to preserve their country, and to pre- 

 vent its becoming an arid waste. To attempt a harsh 

 and stringent punishment of unintentional offenders 

 will be to arouse the hostility of all the inhabitants, 

 and probably lead to acts of revenge in firing the 

 forests that would do incalculable harm. 



The railroads have cut timber right and left to 

 meet their requirements, and many of them under 

 their charter rights had such privileges in the matter 

 of cutting timber for the construction of the line that 

 it is difficult to determine whether their cutting has 

 been lawfully or unlawfully done. Along those lines 

 of road which had alternate sections of government 

 land granted them, where these lands are unsur- 

 veyed, it is, of course, impossible to say whether the 

 land on which the railroad employes are cutting is 

 a section granted to the railroad or a section reserved 

 by the government. The Supreme Court has held 

 that these grants of land are grants in present; and 

 that the title to lands so granted vests at once in 

 the railroad upon its fulfilling the conditions of the 

 grant that is. when it is constructed. That these 

 lands are unsurveyed is not the fault of the rail- 

 roads they could not survey them, in any event- 

 consequently the government cannot complain if they 



