I 



THE FOREST RESERVES 186 



to the effect that he has great concern for the preservation of the 

 forests of the distant state of Washington 5000 miles from the place 

 where he lives. Yet neither he nor the people who may live in the State 

 where he now resides can by any conceivable possibility, be affected 

 one way or the other by this legislation. It is a high tribute which the 

 gentlemen of the East pay to the intelligence, the sense of fairness, 

 the foresight of the people in the West and the men whom the people 

 of that section have sent to represent them in the Halls of Congress, 

 that there should be any quibble raised in respect to the enactment of 

 this legislation." 



Wilson of Washington appealed to history to show that a great 

 injustice was being done to the West. "It would seem," he argued, 

 "that it was impossible for the people west of the Missouri River to 

 develop their own domain and their own country in their own way. 

 We have never had that opportunity. The people who first settled in 

 New England came and took thousands of acres of land and developed 

 them as they saw fit, and the people who passed from New England 

 across the Alleghany Mountains and settled in the Mississippi Valley 

 took up their lands at a dollar and a quarter an acre without those 

 restrictions required under the homestead act of 1860. . . . Our 

 people have had to go forward and develop their country by law, and 

 they have observed the law in so far as it has been possible for any 

 citizen to do so. They do not complain of this. It is right and proper 

 and just. What they do complain of is that their material interests — 

 those very things that affect their prosperity and advancement, nay, 

 their very existence as Commonwealths — shall be disposed of by the 

 stroke of pen, as though we were mere provinces and not sovereign 

 States of this great Union." Wilson spoke bitterly of the "eastern 

 friends, who are so extremely solicitous for our happiness and our 

 prosperity, and our growth and development, who control our incom- 

 ings and our outgoings with such a delightful liberality upon their 

 part." "Why," he asked, referring to the commission of the National 

 Academy of Sciences, "should we be everlastingly and eternally 

 harassed and annoyed and bedeviled by these scientific gentlemen from 

 Harvard College.''" 



Like almost all men from the West, Wilson was very anxious that 

 nothing be done to interfere with the development of the West. "We 



