156 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



certain to cause great hostility to the reserves, and ultimately to 

 result in the overthrow of the reservation policy ; yet it was the only 

 policy the Land Office could well follow. 



The necessity for some kind of a change was early recognized, and 

 in 1901, President Roosevelt, following the recommendation of Pin- 

 chot, urged the transfer of the entire care of the reserves to the 

 Bureau of Forestry. In response to this. Representative Lacey, chair- 

 man of the House Committee on Public Lands, introduced two bills in 

 Congress,^^ but one of these was never reported, and the other was 

 reported with such an incubus of amendments that its passage was 

 not to be hoped for, or even desired.^'^ A majority of the committee 

 reporting the latter bill favored the transfer, but a few western men 

 opposed — Mondell of Wyoming, Jones of Washington, and Shafroth 

 of Colorado, and also Fordney of Michigan. These men, in their 

 minority report, advanced a number of reasons for their opposition, 

 and some of the reasons were logical and valid enough ; but they did 

 not mention one consideration which doubtless had a great deal of 

 weight with some of the western men — the fact that the Department 

 of Agriculture was known to favor considerable restriction on grazing 

 in the forest reserves.^^ 



Opposition to the Lacey bill did not come entirely from the West, 

 however, and, in the debates, the most violent hostility, not only to 

 this particular bill, but to the Bureau of Forestry and its investiga- 

 tions generally, was shown by "Uncle Joe" Cannon of Illinois. Cannon 

 was a conservative of the old school, and very hostile to Pinchot and 

 his work, perhaps recognizing in Pinchot a menace to some of the 

 interests which he himself had always guarded zealously in Congress. 

 Cannon was always very suspicious of the "college professors, stu- 

 dents, wise men and so on and so on throughout the length and breadth 

 of the country, who investigate," and it was his motion to strike out 

 the enacting clause that finally cut the bill off "right close up behind 

 the ears," by a vote of 66 to 47.'' 



Pinchot, with the help of the Secretary of the Interior and the 



36 H. R. 10306, H. R. 11536; 57 Cong. 1 sess. 



37 H. Report 968. 



sscong. Bee, Feb. 11., 1901, 2247. 



39 Cong. Bee, June 9, 1902, 6509-6526; June 10, 6566-6573: Beport, Sec. of Int., 

 1904, 28, 380. 



