255] Condition of Forests on the Public Lamls. 71 



local jury would convict these men criminally, or 

 bring a verdict against them for damages. 



That this condition of affairs is not the fault of 

 the General Land Office, which has charge of the 

 public timber lands, is evident from the fact that 

 ever since 1879 the Public Land Commissioners and 

 the Secretaries of the Interior have, in annual re- 

 port after annual report, called attention to their im- 

 potence in the matter of protecting government tim- 

 ber, and asked Congress repeatedly for such legisla- 

 tion as would remove this stain upon their admin- 

 istration. Notwithstanding these earnest appeals 

 Congress fails to take any action. The annual 

 appropriation for protective service has been hardly 

 sufficient to keep an average of twent} r -five timber 

 agents in the field, and they were supposed to cover 

 and protect 70,000,000 acres of public timber lands. 

 These figures show the utter absurdity of the pre- 

 vailing system. The officers in charge of the work 

 seemed to have despaired of accomplishing any 

 really beneficial results, and so these places have 

 come to be regarded as political spoils to be distrib- 

 uted among faithful party workers, who, in accept- 

 ing them, do so w T ith the idea that they are to have 

 a, sinecure. The character of the men appointed in 

 this way you can readily imagine. I have seen men 

 sent from cities to superintend the protection of the 

 public forests who probably had never before seen a 

 forest, who were totally unfamiliar with methods of 

 lumbering or estimating the damage done by the 

 utting of an area of timber, who were not lawyers, 

 and who had no ability whatever to collect testimony 

 on which the district attorney could successfully 

 prosecute. 



