EDITORIAL 



243 



champions of legislation whose tendency is to cripple or 

 destroy efficient and sound forest administration. As 

 an illustration, during the consideration of a dangerous 

 bill in the Philippine legislature recently, whose purpose 

 was to combine the forestry department with that of 

 lands and mines, an American of some prominence re- 

 marked, "What has the forestry department of the Islands 

 ever accomplished they haven't even pruned the trees!" 

 Again, many of our best citizens can see but one, and that 

 by no means the most important, aspect of forest pro- 

 duction, namely, the aesthetic value of forests as parks. 

 This type of enthusiast has effectually paralyzed the 

 proper development of the state forests of New York, and 

 if permitted full sway would render the economic use of 

 every acre of National Forest land impossible. The in- 

 tentions of these citizens are of the best, but they have 

 utterly failed to understand the basic facts of forestry, 

 which recognize all the uses of the forest in both aesthetic 

 and industrial life. The remedy for this condition lies 

 in a better system of primary education on the value and 

 uses of forests in the life of the nation. 



But what can we expect to teach a grade school pupil 

 about forestry ? An answer is found in the following state- 

 ment by a young German of high school age, who has been 

 a resident of this country since he was ten years old, but 

 has never received any instruction in the subject except 

 that which is given to all grade pupils in the schools of 

 his native land. 



"In the third grade I was taught the meaning of care 

 for a tree and a forest. We were given a course in the 

 growth and development of trees and forests. We learned 

 that a tree is of great value to the country. It affords 

 shade, consumes carbon dioxide and yields lumber. The 

 abundance of trees means that the adjacent land will be 

 fertile. I remember I was told that the massive foliage 

 of the trees softened the downpour of torrential rains. 

 The same foliage when dropped by the trees in the fall 

 served as a fertilizer. Leaves, being a poor conductor of 

 heat, preserve the moisture in the ground. Forests in- 

 crease the agricultural products of agricultural communities. 

 Forests also have tremendous financial value in the lumber 

 a forest will yield. I was also shown the beauty of trees as 

 well as their value in other respects." 



When every citizen of a nation has such fundamental 

 and well balanced conceptions of forestry and when even 

 an eight-year-old boy knows that the beauty of trees is 

 only one feature, ' ' as well as their value in other respects, ' ' 

 is it any wonder that rational forest management, by which 

 the forests are both utilized, and renewed, has taken the 

 place of our primitive policies, which seek either to utterly 

 destroy them or to preserve them intact ? 



Let us use every effort to introduce a short but effec- 

 tive course in forestry into every public school in the 

 land. In this way only will the forest policies of our 

 great country be built upon the rock foundation of popular 

 intelligence and approval. 



THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AND THE STOCK-RAISING HOMESTEAD LAW 



IN American Forestry, October, 1916, page 619, a 

 statement was given based on most recent investiga- 

 tions showing the extent of the public lands in western 

 states, reserved and unreserved. Outside of the National 

 Forests these lands are largely non-timbered, and non- 

 irrigable, and can be used only for grazing. 



For years the question of the proper policy for their 

 management was debated in Congress. The struggle lay 

 between the advocates of a leasing law permitting the 

 Interior Department to administer grazing and to collect 

 fees and the plan proposed of facilitating the private 

 acquisition of these lands. By the latter method the 

 lands would be placed on the tax list and would produce 

 local or state revenues, either by taxes or later by confis- 

 cation for unpaid taxes, when the states could lease the 

 lands and get the grazing revenue. Incidentally, such a 

 law would greatly increase the business and the fees of 

 the officials of the United States Land Office. 



With the three great forces behind it, the desire of the 

 individual for land, the desire of the state for revenue 

 and the desire of the land office for business, nothing 

 could stop the passage of the stock grazing law. 



The law was safeguarded by stipulating that only 

 non-forested and non-irrigable land could be filed upon 

 and then only after the Interior Department had exam- 

 ined and designated it as land suitable only for the pur- 

 pose of the law, namely, for stock grazing. Mineral rights 

 were reserved to the Government. The area allowed to 

 each individual is 640 acres. 



But here comes the rub. Land which cannot be 

 irrigated, lying in arid regions and not capable of dry 

 farming, in other words, land of the character contem- 

 plated by this bill, will graze only one cow on from ten 

 to forty acres, depending upon the local conditions. The 

 average capacity is perhaps twenty acres, giving a herd 

 of 32 range cattle as the possibility from which to make a 

 living. To obtain title to this land, improvements worth 

 $1.25 per acre are required. 



It is the judgment of stock raisers that fully 100 head 

 of cattle are required to yield a competent living and this 

 requires from four to ten sections of grazing land. If 

 these facts are true, the stock grazing law is based on a 

 fundamental economic error and only about one man in 

 from four to ten of those who file on these homesteads 

 and invest their time, health and capital in improvements 

 can hope to win out, and then only by acquiring title to 

 the lands of those who fail. But as these failures may 

 not all prove up before quitting, an extended period of 

 economic disturbance and adjustment will be inevitable, 

 during which the present winter range for stock will be 

 split up, fenced off and made inaccessible, to the disruption 

 of the stock business as now conducted. Unless economic 

 questions affecting the public welfare are settled on some 

 other basis than immediate self-interest, the public inevit- 

 ably pays the piper in the long run. In this instance, 

 private interest has won. Let us hope that similar ques- 

 tions which may arise in the future will be looked at from 

 a broader and more far-reaching standpoint. 



