263 



companies are allowed to take timber for construction along their right of way. 

 The impossibility of purchasing in a straightforward, honest way from the 

 Government either timber or timber- bearing lands- 

 has compelled the citizens of these nine States and Territories to become trespassers and 

 criminals on account of taking the timber necessary to enable them to exist. 



Settlements upon timber lands in these States and Territories under the homestead and 

 pre-emption laws are usually a mere pretense for getting the timber. Compliance with those 

 laws in good faith where settlements are made on lands bearing timber of commercial value is 

 well nigh impossible, as the lands in most cases possess no agricultural value, and hence a 

 compliance with the law requiring cultivation is impracticable. As to cutting timber from 

 mineral lands, perhaps not 1 acre in 5,000 in the States and Territories named is mineral, and 

 perhaps not one in 5,000 of what may be mineral is known to be such. 



By the provisions of the law approved March 8, 1891, the Secretary of the 

 Interior is empowered to further regulate and restrict this cutting of timber for 

 domestic and railroad use, but in the absence of officers to control and enforce 

 these regulations and restrictions they are practically meaningless, especially 

 since it is almost impossible to obtain convictions where all are equally violators 

 by necessity, arising from absence of adequate and equitable legislation. 



And even if it were possible to enforce the regulations, there could hardly 

 be expected any method in the cutting performed by an unknown number of 

 independent individuals, and such a system comes as near deserving the name of 

 management as the pillaging of a city by a band of soldiers in war time deserves 

 the name of municipal administration. To verify the general existence of these 

 conditions the reports of the Secretaries of the Interior, the Commissioners of 

 the Land Office for the last fifteen or twenty year's, and the report of a special 

 commission laid down in a volume called " The Public Domain," published in 

 1884 (House Ex. Doc. No. 47), may be consulted, or Bulletin n of the forestry 

 division, Department of Agriculture, on the forest conditions of the Rocky 

 Mountains. 



(3) In consequence of the absence of a well-developed system of admin- 

 istration, the value of this forest property is annually decimated by fire and by 

 illegal and wasteful cutting. 



It is not necessary to argue this point, for it is a necessary corollary of the 



preceding. 



The Senate Irrigation Committe, travelling two years ago in the western 

 mountains, was for weeks precluded from any view by dense clouds of smoke from 

 forest fires, and it is asserted that in that year more timber was burned than has 

 been used legitimately since the settlement of that country.* 



* The acres burned over and values destroyed during the census year 1880 were reported as follows : 



