CORRESPONDENCE 



The Problem of Public Pasture 



A Pioneer's Plea 



THE pioneer lays foundations. He is the 

 architect of the building to be. Here in 

 the Sierra National Forest, where I live, 

 the conditions that surrounded the pioneer 

 still appeal to me. I understand in some de- 

 gree the pioneer's plea for free grass, as of 

 yore. I will state it once for all : 



The settler came from Great Britain with 

 the common-law right of feeding off the pub- 

 lic pasture, "the commons," that lay near by 

 him. No legislative body has repealed the 

 common law of public pasturing of the waste 

 lands of the United States. After two cen- 

 turies of unbroken custom, until quite re- 

 cently, he has come to regard his right to 

 run his stock free on the outlying range as a 

 vested right. In the rugged, broken moun- 

 tain country, scarcely a claim could be found 

 on which the homesteader could hope to 

 make a living. He needed the grasses on the 

 waste land around, as much as he needed 

 the bubbling branch that threaded its way 

 through his homestead. If he was to sub- 

 sist on his 160 acres, the herbage of the 

 solitudes adjoining was as much appurtenant 

 as was the water. The government, when 

 patent was issued to him, was fully aware of 

 his environment, that he could not live with- 

 out the forage of the surrounding fastnesses. 

 And now, since more people must live here, 

 and since the range is more or less ex- 

 hausted, it seems shameful that conditions 

 must be made harder as they naturally tend 

 to grow worse. 



Here in California, the owner of the 

 hacienda let his cattle roam at large on the 

 vast expanse of Mexican public lands. It was 

 his right, and never questioned. Under the 

 treaty of Queretare the right to free use of 

 the public range passed to the people of 

 California, as former Mexican subjects. 



A well regulated pasturing of the forest 

 land is a necessity. The herbage must be 

 cropped off as a prudential and protective 

 measure; otherwise the grass, drying, makes 

 a great tinder-box to destroy the growing 

 timber when the flames sweep the curtained 

 hills. Horse and cow do a work the ranger 

 cannot. They are among the greatest public 

 benefactors of the national forest. Why 

 should the owner of stock be fined for what 

 they do, since no other class of property does 

 so much to save the forest? 



By reason of alleged concurrent jurisdic- 

 tion of the federal and local governments, the 

 forest authorities pay one-fourth of the re- 

 ceipts from timber sales and from grazing 

 permits in each county into the county treas- 

 ury. Thus the settler who has paid the 

 county tax on his stock finds that a part of 

 his permit fee goes into the county treasury, 

 also, and there reduces, however little it may 

 be, the amount of tax necessary to be paid 

 by each of his fellow-citizens. The stock 

 raiser objects to paying permit money either 

 for national or county revenue. He affirms 

 that such a method of raising revenue is un- 

 constitutional ; that taxation is cause, and 

 revenue, effect ; and that raising revenue 

 without one's consent in any other manner 

 than by taxation is an invasion of the citi- 

 zen's private rights. 



The public land was withdrawn from en- 

 try for the purpose of conserving the forest 

 and for the maintenance of a continuous flow 

 of water. The wood and the water are the 

 two primary natural resources of the na- 

 tional forests. The timber, when ripe, is sold. 

 The large lumber companies, outbidding the 

 small mill men, buy the government stump- 

 age, then reserve their own holdings, and 

 thus control the lumber market. They can 

 assess the stumpage upon the consumer, and 

 hence lumber is dearer than ever before. 

 There large lumber interests follow the co- 

 operative methods of "big business ;" that is, 

 they enjoy a monopoly of the lumber trade 

 consequent upon the corporate ownership of 

 modern machinery. But the stock raiser is 

 old-fashioned. He competes with his fellows. 

 Competition makes it impossible for him to 

 recoup himself and assess permit fees upon 

 the consumer, as the lumber interests can do 

 in the matter of stumpage expenditures. The 

 net price of beef cattle is now twenty-five per 

 cent lower than it was a few years ago. So 

 it does not seem fair to argue that the blade 

 of grass as a secondary natural resource for 

 the conservation of which no appropriation 

 has ever been made, should be held for a 

 consideration in the same way as the giant 

 pine. 



The free use of water, however, is claimed 

 by the water trust, that schemes to control 

 the power of the future. Why should poor 

 settlers in pastoral regions, twenty-four out 



