American Forest Congress 341 



In other words, as a result of the deHberate delay 

 of the Public Lands Committee of the House, instead 

 of having the value of the stumpage from that 3,000,- 

 000 acres of timber in the national treasury, we have 

 parted with the timber and the land and the young 

 growth and everything for $2.50 an acre. 



Taking the value of that timber at what the stumpage 

 actually sold for upon some of the Government land 

 in Minnesota, $15.06 an acre, the Government has lost 

 $40,000,000 by that proceeding. But the stumpage on 

 the 3,000,000 acres located during the last two years 

 was much more valuable than that. And if the Gov- 

 ernment had managed its timberland business as any 

 business man or any man of sense would have managed 

 it, we might just as well as not have realized $70,000,- 

 000 from that stumpage, and have had our young 

 forest trees planted in southern California and the 

 surplus left over. 



We are told that there is going to be a deficit this 

 year in the revenues of the United States of $22,000,- 

 000. If we had not thrown away that $70,000,000 

 we could have covered that deficit at least twice over 

 and still have had money left in the treasury. In other 

 words, the Public Lands Committee of the House has 

 thrown away over $70,000,000 of the people's money 

 in the last two years. If we should put this total loss 

 at only $50,000,000 for the two years it has amounted 

 to over $2,000,000 a month, or about $70,000 a day. 



Now suppose some enterprising and ingenious per- 

 son had succeeded in tunnelling under the United 

 States treasury and cut a hole into the vaults and was 

 carrying ofif $70,000 a day. Don't you suppose we 

 could get the people of the United States to wake up 

 the Public Lands Committee if it required some action 

 by them to stop the stealing? That is exactly what is 



L 



