86 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



excepted from the land grants, and therefore in no case open to ex- 

 ploitation by the railroad, but this exception was of no consequence, 

 since, the lands being unsurveyed, there was no way of telling what 

 particular lands were mineral. 



The Indemnity Act of 1874 was used by the railroad companies as 

 a means of exchanging their worthless lands for valuable timber lands, 

 one method of procedure being to hire men to file claims on the worth- 

 less tracts and then choose valuable indemnity lands elsewhere/^ At 

 one time, this seems to have been unnecessary, for, prior to Secretary 

 Schurz's administration, it was the practice of the Land Office to 

 allow selections of indemnity lands without any specification of losses, 

 but Schurz issued instructions requiring losses to be specified. Perhaps 

 an illustration of the influence which the Northern Pacific had in the 

 Land Office at Washington may be seen in the circular issued by the 

 commissioner in 1883, allowing that railroad to make selections with- 

 out designating any specific loss.^^ 



EFFORTS TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC TIMBER 



During the administration of Secretary Schurz this wholesale 

 timber stealing was in some slight measure checked.^* Secretary 

 Teller, however, seems to have been little interested in timber preser- 

 vation. He never mentioned the subject in any of his annual reports, 

 and his later record as a staunch anti-conservationist gives good 

 ground for the belief that he probably did as little as possible to dis- 

 courage timber stealing.^^ Commissioner Sparks, of the succeeding 

 administration, speaking of Teller's policy, said: "The widespread 

 belief of the people of this country that the Land Department has 

 been very largely conducted to the advantage of speculation and 

 monopoly, . . . rather than to the public interest, I have found 



T2 Report, Sec. of Int., 1885, 41 ; 1886, 29 et seq. The Great Northern Railway 

 Company, through its subsidiary, the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba, now 

 holds a timber reserve of about 50,000 acres of heavily timbered land in Washing- 

 ton, which it obtained as indemnity for lands not secured under its Minnesota 

 grant. There is no particular imputation of fraud in regard to these lands, how- 

 ever. ("Lumber Industry," I, 242.) 



73 Report, Sec. of Int., 1893, XIV, XV. 



74 Report, Land Office, 1877, 20. 



75 See, however, S. 914 ; 54 Cong. 1 sess. 



