THE FIGHT FOR ALASKA'S FORESTS 



203 



"(2) Under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Good 

 Roads ; 



"(3) Under the Territorial Road Board of Alaska. 



"The first and the last are cooperating closely. The 

 second, which has twelve hundred thousand dollars in its 

 treasury, through the gracious act of Congress, can not 

 or will not cooperate nor allow the Alaskan Road Com- 

 mission the use of any funds, nor has Congress directed 

 that the use of these funds should be allowed outside the 

 forest boundaries. 



"My thought as a business man was that Congress 

 should provide a proper working organization and adopt 

 a comprehensive plan of development embracing trans- 

 portation by railroad, boat, dirt road, dog road, trail, etc., 

 the best utilization of non-metalliferous mineral deposits 

 and other resources in mineral lands and water. 



"I stated before the Committee that the present system 

 was wrong, and suggested if Congress did not desire to 

 coordinate other activities and place them under the jur- 

 isdiction of the Interior Department or directly under the 

 jurisdiction of the President, then the activities of the 

 iHterior Department in the matter of homes, town sites, 

 mines, roads and all other lines, should be transferred to 

 the Agricuftaral or some other department. For this I 

 am held up to execration, public abuse and private 

 calumny. 



"I am in possession of letters written by Mr. Pinchot to 

 editors who he thought were in accord with the propa- 

 ganda to which I call your attentioi, which contain his 

 personal assurance that the entire purpose ia suggesting 

 such coordinftion as I have mentioned was that I should 

 wreck the Forest Service. Upon being called to task for 

 making this assertion, Mr. Pinchot has replied that yeajts 

 ago I had made an attack in the Senate upon the Forestry 

 Bureau, and that at one time I had some personal trouble 

 with that Bureau. 



"Mr. Pinchot is right in his statement 



"(1) That I made a speech attacking the Forestry 

 Bureau administration in 1912 in the United States Sen- 

 ate; 



"(2) He is' right in stating, but omits the facts, that 

 several years before I came into the Senate I had a per- 

 mit upon a forest reserve in New Mexico for grazing 

 sheep ; 



"That I bought out other parties who had preferential 

 rights, with waiver of their claims under the "use book" 

 regulations ; that the local assistant or deputy forester 

 demanded of me original copies of bills of sale, etc., 

 which were then in the hands of the recorder; that as 

 the forester knew me, as everyone in southern New 

 Mexico knew me, I became irritated at the delays and 

 aggravations incident to a request for the recognition 

 of what I believed to be my rights. I wrote a letter to 

 the district forester, which was forwarded on to Mr. 

 Graves, then Forester, and the latter agreed with the 

 conclusions of the local officer; that I immediately sur- 

 rendered my own permit, did not make any further appli- 

 cation for permit under my waivers, but moved my sheep 



forty-five miles across country to a ranch which I owned, 

 and this ended the incident. 



"In the speech which I made in the Senate, as can be 

 discovered by reference to it, I stated that I was not 

 opposed to the conservation of the forests; that I was 

 opposing the administration by the Forestry Bureau; 

 that I opposed the maintenance of small strips of land 

 in more than one place by the Forestry Bureau, within 

 which narrow strips were patented springs of water nec- 

 essary for the use of stock upon the adjacent range; 

 that such administration was merely for the purpose of 

 securing fees with which to make some showing to the 

 Congress of the United States, justifying deficiency ap- 

 propriations from that body. 



"As an evidence that my statement received consider- 

 ation, I may say that 114,000 acres were thereafter elim- 

 inated from these forests, including that portion of the 

 forest which I had specifically referred to; that other 

 eliminations followed, and that as an interesting side 

 matter, I may say to you that in one elimination in 1918, 

 of several thousand acres from a forest reserve to which 

 I had referred in this speech, every acre has been taken 

 up under the homestead acts by the returned soldiers of 

 *he recent war. 



I understand perfectly well that my ideas as to the 

 development of our natural resources and making them 

 accessible to our returned soldiers and other citizens, do 

 not meet with the approval of certain narrow-minded and 

 biased bureaucratic government officials and their spon- 

 sors." 



PRESIDENT PACK ANSWERS FALL 



The American Forestry Association on March 8 car- 

 ried "The Case of the People vs. The Proposal to Trans- 

 fer the U. S. Forest Service to the Department of the 

 Interior" direct to President Harding and members of 

 Congjess. This "case of the people" is a resume of the 

 editorial opinion of the country denouncing the proposed 

 plan to take the Forest Service out of the Department 

 of Agricultui^ These editorial opinions were sent to the 

 President and to members of Congress. 



The Association s*ys that Secretary Fall is misin- 

 formed if he believes that Secretary of Agriculture Wal- 

 lace has anything to do with the Association's protest 

 against the proposed transfer, or that Gifford Pinchot 

 has anything to do with guiding the Association's poli- 

 cies. The statement authorized by Charles Lathrop 

 Pack, the president of the Association, follows : 



"Secretary Fall takes exceptions to what he calls 'the 

 propaganda' of the American Forestry Astsociation. If 

 stating its objections to placing the United States Forest 

 Service in the Interior Department, if giving to the 

 newspapers the objections of the foresters of the country 

 as voiced by the Society of American Foresters, if quot- 

 ing United States Forester Greeley on the Alaskan situ- 

 ation, is propaganda then the Association conducts 

 propaganda. So did Paul Revere in his famous ride. 



"If reprinting and distributing editorial expressions of 

 the Chicago Tribune saying 'Our Forests are in Danger,' 

 or the Milwaukee Journal saying 'No More Ballingerism 



