70 Condition of Forests on the Public Lands. [254 



continue their cutting in unsurveyed regions For 

 this reason a large amount of cutting is done at the 

 present time, which may or may not be legal; it is 

 impossible to say. 



One of the difficulties in effecting the conviction of 

 timber thieves is the difficulty of placing the respon- 

 sibility upon the right man. Oftentimes a band of 

 irresponsible foreigners, who scarcely speak the lan- 

 guage, will go into the mountains to cut ties for a 

 railroad, for which the railroad is to pay when deliv- 

 ered at certain points on its line. The ties are cut 

 and perhaps are in condition to be floated down to the 

 railroad. Information comes to some government 

 timber agent of this cutting, and he goes to the scene 

 of it. Upon his arrival he finds that the men who 

 cut it are mere employes, and that the responsible 

 parties have decamped, in anticipation of his presence. 

 There are no written contracts, and it is not possible 

 to show the connection between the cutting and the 

 railroad. The railroad has not yet received or paid 

 for the ties. All the agent can do is to seize them, 

 which he does, to find that his only customer is the 

 same railroad that is really responsible for the cut- 

 ting, and the chances are that he gets a much less 

 price for them than the men who cut them had con- 

 tracted for, so that his action inures to the benefit of 

 the railroad that ought to be punished. The poor tie- 

 cutters, who have been hard at work in the woods, 

 perhaps for weeks, are the sufferers, losing all their 

 wages: oftentimes without knowing that they had 

 not a perfect right to cut the timber which they were 

 engaged to do by the agent of the railroad. It is 

 manifest from what has been said before, that no 



