CHAPTER III 



'HE FOREST RESERVES FROM 1891 TO 1897: NEED OF 

 PROTECTION AND ADMINISTRATION 



THE SITUATION IN 1891 



Iefore proceeding to a consideration of the period following the year 

 l891, it will be profitable to halt and take an inventory of results 

 tccrued at that date — note just what had been accomplished in the 

 )eriod since 1878. There had been, in the first place, a notable im- 

 )rovement in some of the laws not specifically applying to timber on 

 the public domain. Public sale and private entry had been abolished. 

 *erhaps more important, the repeal of the Preemption Law and the 

 imendment of the Commutation Homestead and Desert Land laws 

 lad been accomplished, and more liberal appropriations made to pre- 

 sent fraudulent entries ; although these gains were in some degree 

 >ffset by the act allowing affidavits and proofs to be made before 

 commissioners of the United States courts, etc., and by the provision 

 imiting the time within which suits must be brought for cancellation 

 )f patents. 

 As to the laws specifically applying to timber lands, the situation 

 1891 was not so favorable. Appropriations for forestry investiga- 

 tions had been greatly increased, but the Free Timber and Timber 

 ind Stone acts were still in force, while a still worse free timber pro- 

 ^yision had been added in the Permit Act of 1891. (Only a year later 

 the Timber and Stone Act was extended to all public land states.) 

 ls has been shown, neither of these acts provided for the honest 

 icquisition of timber for general commercial purposes, and the exten- 

 sion of their provisions was merely a legalization of plundering which, 

 rith the larger sums available for protection, might otherwise have 

 )een prevented. Thus the laws for the disposal of timber on the public 

 iomain were worse in 1891 than they had been in 1878, just as they 

 lad been worse in 1878 than ever before. Congress had shown utter 



