102 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



afford to buy the land, the sheep men 

 proceeded at once to protect themselves 

 by the purchase of limited areas of 

 ground containing waterholes. The 

 fight for an adequate leasing system 

 dragged on for many years ; those who 

 were enjoying the public range opposing 

 it because they felt that such a change 

 would take something from them to 

 which they thought they had a right. 

 When the law was finaaly enacted it 

 provided that all areas leased should 

 be subject to entry and purchase, as 

 if they had not been leased. This led 

 to inevitable conflict, and finally this 

 plan was abandoned and the leaseholder 

 given a holding with some guarantee of 

 tenure. Under this law half the area 

 of the lease was secure from entry for 

 the full term of the lease, but the other 

 half was subject to entry after a rela- 

 tively short period. This plan was 

 finally found unsatisfactory and was 

 abandoned for the present one which 

 gives the leaseholder a longer term with 

 the assurance that, while the Govern- 

 ment can on six months' notice resume 

 any of the land if it should be needed 

 for closer settlement, such resumption 

 could be effected only when the lessee 

 was fully compensated for damages. 

 Under this plan, which is now general 

 in the Australian States, leaseholders 

 have spent large sums in the improve- 

 ment of their runs, in sinking artesian 

 wells, building storage reservoirs, con- 

 structing fences, planting forage plants, 

 killing noxious weeds, and in other ways 

 improving the range. 



As a result, there are today no more 

 enthusiastic supporters of leasehold than 

 the sheep men of Australia. They re- 

 gard leasehold as the most satisfactory 

 form of tenure, not only for the state, 

 but for themselves as well. While I 

 was in New South Wales one of the 

 large sheep owners of that state re- 

 turned from a six months' trip to the 

 western United States, where he had 

 spent his time wholly looking into the 



conditions in this region. He reported 

 that "the American pastoralists had not 

 got beyond the conditions which pre- 

 vailed in the earliest days of the in- 

 dustry in Australia; that there was no 

 land legislation in America to give re- 

 spectable tenures or anything of that 

 kind, and that the industry was carried 

 on in a most primitive way." Some 

 weight is given to Mr. Chaffey's posi- 

 tion by the fact that New South Wales, 

 with but slightly less than the combined 

 area of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, 

 has two and one-fourth times as many 

 sheep and produces seven times as much 

 wool. 



The other Australian states seeing 

 from the new South Wales experience 

 the undesirableness of allowing per- 

 sons to endeavor to control the range 

 by acquiring the water, adopted the 

 policy of making public reserves of all 

 the watering places in the semi-arid 

 region and of reserving a strip on each 

 side of every water course which con- 

 tained water for any considerable por- 

 tion of the year. This plan is now uni- 

 versally followed in Australasia. Only 

 in New South Wales and New Zealand 

 was this "gridironing" or "peacocking," 

 as the Australian calls it, carried to any 

 very great extent, and in both states the 

 land officials state that under the acts 

 which permit the land officers to ex- 

 change lands with private owners and 

 the laws which require fencing, they 

 were having no difficulty in controlling 

 the matter, and were gradually repair- 

 ing the harm already done. 



The present terms and conditions of 

 grazing leases in Australasia are briefly 

 summarized in the following table : 



This table represents a careful digest 

 of the very voluminous laws in force in 

 the various states and merits the most 

 careful and exhaustive study. It gives 

 a bird's-eye view of the principal fea- 

 tures of the grazing systems at present 

 in force in Australasia. 



