1906 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



49 



Stone act, the commutation clause of 

 the Homestead act, and the Desert 

 Land act, in accordance with the rec- 

 ommendations of the President in his 

 annual messages to Congress. 



A Public Lands Commission, ap- 

 pointed by the President, consisting of 

 W. A. Richards, commissioner of the 

 General Land Office ; Frederick H. 

 Newell, chief engineer of the Recla- 

 mation Service, and Gifford Pinchot, 

 chief of the Forest Service, has during 

 the course of two years made a study 

 of the public lands' condition and has 

 brought in a report which has been 

 forwarded to Congress by the Presi- 

 dent with a special message recom- 

 mending the repeal of the Timber and 

 Stone act and the substitution of a 

 rational forest policy of selling only 

 the stumpage from the public timber 

 lands, retaining the lands for future 

 timber growth ; recommending the 

 radical amendment of the commuta- 

 tion clause of the Homestead act and 

 a like amendment of the Desert Land 

 act, in such manner as to require ac- 

 tual residence and improvement under 

 both of the latter named laws, amount- 

 ing to their practical repeal. 



The provisions of this report are 

 highly satisfactory to the forestry and 

 irrigation committee of the National 

 Board of Trade, which believes that 

 their enactment into law, strictly en- 

 forced, would do away with land and 

 timber grabbing and promote those 

 policies on this subject for which the 

 Board has consistently striven. 



The present indefensible land policy 

 of the United States is resulting in an 

 actual money loss to the government 

 of tens of millions of dollars annually, 

 in the denuding of our watersheds and 

 the destruction of all chances for a 

 future timber supply, in the building 

 up of lordly landed estates in the West 

 of ten and hundreds of thousands of 

 acres in single ownerships, instead of 

 providing for the creating of thous- 

 ands of small rural homes in short, 

 in the mismanagement and waste of 

 the greatest resource ever possessed 

 by any nation on earth. 



The attention of our lawmakers in 

 Congress should be urgently called to 

 the fact that while they are attempting 

 economy in the expenditure of money,, 

 they are allowing laws to remain in 

 force under which by far the most 

 valuable asset of the nation is being 

 recklessly wasted. 



The rapidity with which the public 

 lands are being absorbed into private 

 ownership is shown by the following 

 table from the reports of the commis- 

 sioner of the General Land Office : 



Year. Acres. 



1898 8,453,896 



1899 9,182,413 



1900 13453,887 



1901. . . 15,562,796 



I9 2 19,488,535 



1903 22,824,299 



1904 16,405,822 



I95 17,056,622 



Total for 8 years. .122,428,270 



Under the Timber and Stone act the 

 sales of public timber lands during the 

 last five years have been as follows : 



Year. Acres. 



!9Qi 396,445.61 



1902 545,253.98 



1903 1,765,222.43 



1904 1,306,261.30 



1905 696,677.06 



Total 4,709,860.38 



A large proportion df these lands 

 have been in the heavily timbered belt 

 of the far northwest and is of the class 

 of timber described by the Secretary 

 of the Interior in his report for the 

 fiscal year ended June 30, 1903, in 

 which he says : 



"The Timber and Stone act will, if 

 not repealed or radically amended, re- 

 sult ultimately in the complete destruc- 

 tion of the timber on the unappropri- 

 ated and unreserved public lands. The 

 rapidity with which the public tim- 

 bered lands are being denuded of their 

 timber, and the opportunity offered 

 under the Timber and Stone act for 

 the fraudulent acquisition of title to 



