140 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



claim or patent" included in a forest reserve the right to relinquish 

 and select in lieu thereof "a tract of vacant land open to settlement," 

 free of charge, and allowed credit on the new claim for any time spent 

 on the relinquished claim. This substitute was taken from the McRae 

 bill, which had been before Congress for some time ; and it differed in 

 two important respects from the clause in Pettigrew's amendment. 

 In the first place, instead of giving the settler a patent to his lieu 

 selection, it gave him only the same claim, right, or title as he had 

 in the forest reserve before, and in the second place, it allowed lieu 

 selections, not only to "persons," but also to "owners" generally.** 



The report of the conference committee to which the bill was re- 

 ferred followed the provisions of the Lacey substitute, and this 

 caused many of the western men to oppose the adoption of the report, 

 although in all other important respects the Pettigrew amendment 

 had been adopted without alteration. In the Senate, White of Cali- 

 fornia, Cannon of Utah, and Shoup of Idaho were strongly opposed 

 to the conference report ; and Rawlins of Utah offered several amend- 

 ments before he was reminded that amendments to a conference report 

 were out of order. Pettigrew announced that he felt it his duty to 

 insist upon the absolute revocation of the proclamation of February 

 22, even if it involved the defeat of the Sundry Civil Bill. Thus it 

 appears that the lieu selection clause was very important to him, for 

 in his amendment as originally presented he had not called for revoca- 

 tion at all; and the conference report followed his own ideas except 



4* Some of the changes made in this amendment during its passage through 

 Congress throw a rather interesting light on the "manners and customs" of poli- 

 ticians. The amendment Walcott prepared and gave to Pettigrew contained a 

 provision that the "settlers" "miners," "residents," and "prospectors" mentioned as 

 entitled to free timber, should include only individual settlers and not corpora- 

 tions. Before introducing it, however, Pettigrew consulted ex-Senator Moody of 

 South Dakota, counsel for the Homestead Mining Company, and Moody eliminated 

 this provision to "improve its phraseology." He also erased the provision giving 

 the Secretary of the Interior power to establish rules and regulations for giving 

 free timber. When Walcott saw what had happened to his amendment, he imme- 

 diately called upon Pettigrew; and Pettigrew promised to reintroduce the un- 

 altered amendment. This he did on April 8, and it was referred to a committee 

 for consideration. On May 5, Pettigrew submitted the amendment in the Senate 

 again, but again the clause limiting free timber to individual settlers was omitted, 

 and another clause, suspending the new reserves, had been added. Both these 

 changes appeared in the bill as finally passed. 



