THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Dynamic Geographer 



By FRANK BUFFINGTON VROOMAN, F. R. G, S. 



(Concluded} 



COORDINATION 



A FAIR question to ask in esti- 

 mating the value of any service, 

 public or private, is "How would 

 it have been with us otherwise?" What 

 the country was without the Reclama- 

 tion Service we have seen who knew 

 the arid West years ago. What Amer- 

 ican agriculture would have been with- 

 out national interference one could 

 imagine who knows what farming was 

 a generation ago. What the land 

 would have been without a National 

 Forest Policy the average man cannot 

 imagine. Under the laws for which 

 Mr. Roosevelt was responsible a hun- 

 dred and twenty million acres of the 

 public domain have been set aside to 

 be held in public ownership for the 

 public good, making 168,000,000 acres 

 in all of Forest Reserve. In connec- 

 tion with this act of administration he 

 sounded the note for the whole con- 

 servation policy. "It is consistent," he 

 said, "to give to every portion of the 

 public domain its "highest possible 

 amount of use." This large domain is 

 now held for development and use. 

 These reserves are for the people. The 

 land-skinner was abroad. It became 

 necessary for Mr. Roosevelt, when he 

 came to office, not only to set 

 aside the Forest Reserve, but to take 

 the most vigorous measures to se- 

 cure bona fide settlers in their rights, 

 and to prosecute those who had unlaw- 

 fully taken the land. During a period 

 of five years of this administration, 

 fences were removed unlawfully en- 

 closing public land from 3,518,583 

 acres, and suits have been recom- 

 mended on other actions, and steps 

 754 



taken to remove such enclosures, from 

 more than an equal amount. During 

 the administration something like a 

 hundred thousands pounds have been 

 collected by the Government for timber 

 trespass on the public lands, and legal 

 proceedings taken involving trespasses 

 of half a million pounds. During this 

 time, there has been secured in public 

 land cases, involving perjury, subor- 

 nation of perjury, conspiracy, forgery, 

 false affidavits, timber trespasses, and 

 unlawful enclosures, 3,096 indictments. 

 8/1 convictions, with 251 prison sen- 

 tences with main' indictments awaiting 

 trial. During the same period 7,874 

 fraudulent land entries have been can- 

 celled, restoring over a million and a 

 quarter acres to the public domain. 



It was also found that large tracts 

 of public coal lands were being illegally 

 obtained. The President at once took 

 measures to ascertain the extent and 

 value of the coal areas, and the Geolo- 

 gical Survey was directed to classify 

 and value coal lands. It has been found 

 that the Government still owns between 

 seventy and eighty millions of acres 

 of known coal fields of the West. The 

 President immediately withdrew from 

 all entry 67,000,000 acres of this 

 land, and the Geological Survey fixed 

 the prices at from two to twenty 

 pounds sterling, which had hitherto 

 been illegally acquired at from five 

 shillings to four pounds per acre. This 

 economic work of the administration, 

 on the basis of the actual field investi- 

 gation of the coal geologists of the 

 Survey, has not only increased but has 

 multiplied many times the return to the 



