THE PERIOD OF BEGINNINGS 59 



The Public Lands Commission of 1880 favored the sale of timber 

 lands, like Secretary Delano, on the ground that private ownership 

 would provide the best protection.^"^ Even the committee of the Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science appointed in 1873, reported: 

 "We do not recommend the undertaking of this industry by the gov- 

 ernment;" although they added qualifications that could fairly be 

 interpreted to favor a system of national forests. F. B. Hough of 

 that society, in his first report on forestry in 1877, also said that our 

 government could not undertake the management of forests, because 

 the officers would be politicians instead of foresters; yet he spoke 

 favorably of the Canadian system of retaining the land and selling 

 stumpage.^°^ In the debates on the bill for opening up the lands of the 

 South, almost everyone favored sale of the lands, as the best means of 

 securing protection. Secretary Schurz was always in favor of gov- 

 ernment reservation of timber lands, but he said little about it, per- 

 haps realizing that there was no possibility of such a policy being 

 adopted.^'* 



It is not really surprising that in the seventies, sale should have 

 seemed the only practicable policy in dealing with timber lands. The 

 public domain covered an immense area of over a billion and a quarter 

 acres, more than a billion acres of it unsurveyed.^^^ No surveys having 

 been made, there is no record of the amount of timber land included 

 in this total, but the fact that about 150,000,000 acres of forest 

 reserves were later carved out, after private individuals had taken the 

 best land, indicates that there was a vast area of timber land at this 

 time. The wisdom of government management of such an enterprise 

 might well be questioned, especially since Congress had never evinced 

 the capacity to deal efficiently and intelligently with the lands, while 

 various scandalous exposures since the Civil War had shown a low 

 standard of political morality which promised little for Federal man- 

 agement of anything. With public opinion almost everywhere favor- 

 ing the policy of sale, and only a few doubtful voices opposing, a law 

 to carry out that policy was inevitable. 



102 Donaldson, "Public Domain," 542. 



103 Hough, "Report on Forestry," I, 194. 



104 CoTC^. Rec, Feb. 2, 1876, 816-818; Feb. 7, 906; Feb. 8, 936; Feb. 15, 1083- 

 1090; Apr. 13, 2461; Apr. 19, 2603 et seq.: Report, Sec. of Int., 1877, XVI, XIX. 



105 Report, Sec. of Int., 1878, 5. 



