158 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



special fund for the protection, administration, improvement, and 

 extension of the reserves. This provision slipped through Congress 

 because no one in Congress had any idea that the receipts would ever 

 amount to much. At the time, it was too small a sum to be of great 

 importance, and it had not been growing much from year to year. 

 Immediately after the transfer, however, the imposition of a charge 

 for grazing in the forest reserves increased the receipts very greatly ; 

 and for two years Pinchot had funds for building up rapidly an effi- 

 cient system of administration, without interference from Congress. 

 This special fund was abolished in 1907 — as soon as Congress realized 

 how much power it placed in the hands of the forester — but in the 

 meantime it had served an extremely important purpose. 



Under the Department of Agriculture, the forest reserves received 

 what appeared to he increasingly generous appropriations. The 

 Bureau of Forestry became the Forest Service, and received in one 

 sum the appropriations which had hitherto been made in two sepa- 

 rate items — to the Bureau of Forestry for investigations, and to the 

 Department of the Interior for protection and administration of the 

 reserves. The sums appropriated by Congress after 1905 were very 

 large, compared with appropriations of earlier years ; but the forest 

 reserve receipts also increased very greatly, and in 1907 and 1908 

 even exceeded the cost of administration.*"^ 



OPPOSITION TO INCREASED APPROPRIATIONS 



These increasing appropriations were not secured without some 

 opposition, but by no means all of the opposition came from the West. 

 In 1903, for instance, it was the Senate, the stronghold of western 

 sentiment, that raised the House appropriation for the Bureau of 

 Forestry nearly $85,000;** and in the discussion in the Senate there 

 was no particular opposition from the West ; in fact, it was Rawlins 

 of Utah who seemed most anxious for better protection of the for- 

 ests.*^ In the Sundry Civil Bill of the same year,*^ a Senate committee 



i^Stat. 33, 872; 34, 685, 1269-1271: S. Doc. 141; 59 Cong. 2 sess.: H. Doc. 681. 

 62 Cong. 2 sess.: Forestry and Irrigation, Jan., 1907, 14: Fernow, "History of 

 Forestry," 419. 



46 Cong. Bee, Feb. 24, 1903, 2548. 



47 Ibid., 2547. 



48 H. R. 17202; 57 Cong. 2 sess. 



