66 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



The iniquitous effects of the law were pointed out from the very 

 first. Even before its passage, Commissioner Williamson wrote to Sec- 

 retary Schurz : "This bill is equivalent to a donation of all the timber 

 lands to the inhabitants of those states and territories. The machinery 

 of the Land Office is wholly inadequate to prevent the depredations 

 which will be committed. "^^ Secretary Schurz foresaw the same results. 

 "It will stimulate a wasteful consumption beyond actual needs and 

 lead to wanton destruction," he said, "for the machinery left to this 

 department to prevent or repress such waste and destruction through 

 enforcement of the regulations, will prove entirely inadequate, and as 

 a final result, in a few years the mountainsides in those states and 

 territories will be stripped bare."^® 



In his annual report the following year. Secretary Schurz said: 

 "The predications made last year by myself and the Commissioner of 

 Land Office have already, in many places, been verified by experience. 

 I repeat my earnest recommendation that the act be repealed."^" 



While Schurz thus complained of the disastrous effects of the law 

 on the public timber, his successor, Samuel J. Kirkwood, like the 

 Public Lands Commission of 1880, seemed concerned rather because 

 the act was not more general in its scope,^^ and the next Secretary of 

 the Interior, H. M. Teller, usually favored timber concessions of 

 every kind. 



EXTENSION OF FREE TIMBER PRIVILEGES 



Although the preservation of the public timber demanded the 



speedy repeal of this act, there was, during the decade or more fol- 



January, 1900, Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock ruled that the use of timber 

 for smelting was not permissible under the Free Timber Act ; but only a few months 

 later Commissioner Richards ruled that smelting was "manufacturing," and that 

 therefore timber might be taken under the Permit Act of 1891 — a second "free 

 timber" act, extending the provisions of the act of 1878. Thus it seems that, but for 

 a few months during the year 1900, free timber was available for use in smelters, 

 although the writer is not absolutely certain as to the status of the matter during 

 this time. A decision of a Secretary of the Interior would not ordinarily be reversed 

 by a later Commissioner of the Land Office. ("Land Decisions," XXIX, 572: Com- 

 pilation of Public Timber Laws, 1903, 91-93.) 



15 Report, Sec. of Int., 1878, XIII. 



16 Ibid., XIV. 



17 Ibid., 1879, 28. 



18 H. Ex. Doc. 46; 46 Cong. 2 sess., XXXII, XXXIII: Report, Sec. of Int., 

 1881, 13. 



