r902. 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION. 



517 



iiiidertaking, keeping intact the fund 

 for new works. No consideration of ex- 

 pediency or sentiment can be tolerated, 

 but only those making the working a 

 success from a business standpoint. 



SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 



The report shows that there were dis- 

 posed of during the fiscal j-ear public 

 lands aggregating 19,488,535 acres, 

 .an increase of 3,925,739 acres as com- 

 pared with the aggregate disposals for 

 the preceding fiscal year. 



Total cash receipts during the fiscal 

 year, from various sources, including 

 disposal of public land, $5,880,088.65, 

 aggregate $6,261,927.18, an increase of 

 $1,289,766.39. 



The total area of the public lands is 

 approximately 1,809,539,840 acres, of 

 which 893,955,476 acres are undis- 

 posed of. 



GRAZIN interests' MENACE. 



The avowed policy of the government 

 to preserve the public domain for homes 

 for actual settlers has no more implac- 

 able and relentless foe than the class 

 that seeks to occupy the public lands 

 for grazing purposes by maintaining 

 unlawful fences thereon. 



The fight between this cla.ss and the 

 government has been going on for 3'ears, 

 and resulted in the passage of the act of 

 February 25, 1885, which provides for 

 the institution of civil proceedings for 

 the removal of such fences and criminal 

 pro-secution of the trespassers, and au- 

 thorizes the President, if necessary, to 

 call on the civil and military authorities 

 to remove such unlawful inclosures ; 

 but, notwithstanding the passage of 

 .said act and the efforts of this depart- 

 ment to enforce it, the abuse has con- 

 tinued, and the beneficiaries thereof 

 have grown so bold and arrogant that 

 they practically defy the efforts of the 

 department and the government to exe- 

 cute the law. 



There is now pending before Congress 

 a bill entitled "A bill to provide for the 

 leasing, for grazing purposes, of the 

 vacant public domain, and reserving all 

 .rights of homestead and mineral entry, 



the rentals to be a special fund for irri- 

 gation. ' ' Should that bill become a law, 

 the public domain in the sixteen states 

 and territories mentioned therein, ag- 

 gregating an area of 525,000,000 acres, 

 practically all of the vacant public do- 

 main west of the Mississippi, would be 

 subject to lease at two cents per acre 

 for ten years, with the privilege of re- 

 newal for ten years more. It is need- 

 less to say that such a bill, if enacted 

 into law, would place the last acre of 

 desirable public land out of the reach 

 of the homeseeker and defeat the pur- 

 pose of the government to preserve the 

 public domain for homes for actual set- 

 tlers. 



It would also defeat the operations of 

 the reclamation act and make possible 

 the formation of a land monopoly never 

 contemplated by the public-land system, 

 but which, on the contrary, it is one of 

 the purposes of that system to prevent. 



MINERAL LOCATION PRETENSE. 



Another method resorted to by un- 

 scrupulous speculators to obtain timber 

 upon the unreserved timber lands, and 

 to which the attention of the department 

 has been called by its special agents, is 

 the location of so-called mining claims 

 under placer mining laws. Quite a 

 number of such claims have been lo- 

 cated in fine bodies of timber in a num- 

 ber of western states. So far as the 

 records of the L,and Department show, 

 the lands are unappropriated public 

 lands, and there is nothing to call the 

 department's attention to them, and it 

 would never know of these locations 

 unless reported by a special agent or if 

 the locator should apply for a patent. 

 Assuming the land to be really mineral, 

 so long as the locator does the annual 

 assessment-work required by law he will 

 be entitled to the main possession of the 

 tract embraced in his mineral location. 

 If it be made for purposes of speculation 

 only and for purposes of acquiring tim- 

 ber within the limits of the location, the 

 only way by which the government can 

 reach him will be b}- careful investiga- 

 tion of the character of the land upon 

 which the location is made, and if, after 

 such investigation, it be determined that 



