I 



THE PERIOD OF CONSERVATION 157 



Commissioner of the Land Office, continued his campaign to secure 

 the transfer of the forest reserves, however, and early in Roosevelt's 

 administration, Mondell brought in a bill to make the transfer.*" The 

 Senate committee reporting the bill loaded it down with such a mass 

 of provisos that the original purpose was somewhat obscured,*^ but 

 this measure finally passed both houses without much opposition/^ 



Thus the transfer of the forest reserves to the Department of Agri- 

 culture was finally effected by a western man, Mondell, whose name, 

 in the year just previous, had headed the list of signatures to a House 

 report which asserted the impracticability of any such transfer.*^ In 

 the Senate, another western man, Warren of Wyoming, introduced 

 two bills in the fifty-eighth Congress, providing for the transfer of 

 the reserves to the Department of Agriculture. Warren later devel- 

 oped into a moderate conservationist on forestry questions, and, per- 

 haps even at this time, a regard for the forests might explain his 

 action, but Mondell was always an active enemy of the forest reserves, 

 and his action must be explained differently. The explanation is per- 

 haps indicated in a memorial of the Idaho Wool Growers Association, 

 which in 1903, prayed Congress for a law transferring the reserves 

 to the Department of Agriculture because the Department of the 

 Interior was shutting many of the stockmen out.** The Department 

 of the Interior, under Secretary Hitchcock, was developing a policy 

 too vigorous to suit some of the western men, and it seemed to be 

 thought that a change could at least make matters no worse. The 

 Department of Agriculture, under Pinchot's influence, was turning 

 to a more liberal policy in grazing matters. 



The act of 1905 contained several provisions besides the one shift- 

 ing the forest reserves to the Department of Agriculture. The western 

 men secured a little political concession requiring the selection of 

 forest supervisors and rangers, when practicable, from the citizens of 

 the states or territories in which the reserves were located; while the 

 conservation forces secured a provision requiring that money received 

 from the sale of timber should, for a period of five years, constitute a 



40 H, R. 1987; 58 Cong. 1 sess.: H. R. 8460; 58 Cong. 2 sess. 



41 S. Report 2954; 58 Cong. 3. sess. 



42 Stat. 33, 628. 



43 H. Report 968; 57 Cong. 1 sess., Pt. 2. 



44 Cong. Rec, Dec. 17, 1903, 312. 



