58 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



timber protection was very closely circumscribed in its use. The effect 

 of the proviso was clinched by another provision, that all moneys col- 

 lected for depredations should be covered into the treasury like other 

 public land receipts. Money thus collected from the sale of stolen 

 timber had long been a fund for the prosecution of trespassers. 



There was much justice in the demand of the western states for free 

 timber. In many parts of the West there were apparently inexhaust- 

 ible forests, some of the timber ripe or rotting, and with no apparent 

 probability that the government would soon, if ever, make any use of 

 it. In some sections, too, coal was not mined and was very expensive. 

 Under such circumstances there was little apparent justice in deny- 

 ing the miners and settlers the use of some of the timber. Further- 

 more, the people of the West felt that the timber growing in the West 

 was their own timber, and many of them were unable to see why they 

 should not do with it as they pleased, just as the people of the East 

 had done in an earlier period. 



Had there been a law permitting the sale of timber on the public 

 lands, by means of a system of licenses, there would have been no real 

 need for legislation at this time ; but no such policy had ever received 

 serious consideration in political circles in the United States, and 

 when Congress acted, it produced on the same day, June 3, 1878, the 

 Free Timber Act just described, and the Timber and Stone Act, the 

 latter of which launched the United States definitely upon the policy 

 of turning over timber lands to private ownership. 



Considering public sentiment, and even scientific opinion, as it was 

 in 1878 and previously, it is not surprising that Congress should have 

 provided for the sale of timber lands. It seems strange rather that the 

 law should not have been passed sooner, for the policy of sale had been 

 recommended by almost all writers on the subject. In 1870, R. W. 

 Raymond, Commissioner of Mining Statistics, in his complaint re- 

 garding timber depredations, said: "The entire standing army of the 

 United States could not enforce the regulations. The remedy is to sell 

 the lands.""'' In 1874, the Commissioner of the Land Oflice, S. S. Bur- 

 dett, recommended in his annual report that the lands should be sold ; 

 and in this recommendation the Secretary of the Interior concurred.^"^ 



100 H. Ex. Doc. 207; 41 Cong. 2 sess., 343. 



101 Report, Sec. of Int., 1874, XVI, 6. 



