84. UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



poses" applied not only to the roadbed proper but to station houses, 

 depots, snowsheds, etc.*'^ Some railroads went beyond all possible 

 cover of legality in their depredations. Thus the Union River Logging 

 Railroad Company in Washington was organized for the ostensible 

 purpose of engaging in ordinary railroad business, and application 

 was filed for benefits under the act of 1875, which the department 

 approved. The company built five miles of track into the thickest tim- 

 ber, using government timber in construction, and engaged for years 

 in the logging business, with no pretense of carrying passengers, or 

 any freight but their own logs stolen from the government lands.^* 



Of timber trespass under cover of unsurveyed land grants, the 

 Northern Pacific furnished the most flagrant cases. The work was 

 sometimes done by a subsidiary company, owned by the railroad and 

 operating by special concessions. In 1883, the Montana Improvement 

 Company, a corporation with capital stock of $2,000,000, mostly 

 owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was formed for 

 the purpose of monopolizing timber traffic in Montana and Idaho. 

 Under a twenty-year contract with the railroad this company ex- 

 ploited the timber on unsurveyed lands for great distances along the 

 line of the road.*'^ The government was always slow to survey the 

 railroad grants, and, until they were surveyed, there was no way of 

 distinguishing the alternate sections belonging to the railroad from 

 those reserved by the government. 



Just what were the rights of the railroad in these unsurveyed lands 

 was not made very clear by the decisions on the subject. The Supreme 

 Court of Montana seemed inclined to give the railroad unrestricted 

 rights in these lands. In a famous case in that court, the United States 

 brought suit for an accounting to recover $1,100,000 for timber and 

 lumber alleged to have been converted by the railroad, and for a 

 perpetual injunction restraining the railroad company from taking 

 more timber. The court, in a somewhat argumentative decision, held 

 that, although the United States and the railroad company had such 

 a common interest in the property as to enable either to protect it 

 against a stranger, yet the United States had no beneficial interest 



63 "Land Decisions," I, 610; Report, Land Office, 1889, 58, 59. 



«* Opinions, Attorney-General, 19, 547. 



65 Report, Sec. of Int., 1885, 234. See also Opinions, Attorney-General, 20, 542. 



