tl ANTI-CONSERVATION ACTIVITY 165 



Forest Service, but of course they lacked incentive to improve their 

 homes, because they could not obtain title, and the forester might at 



I any time revoke their permits/ 

 It is not to be supposed that all of the western men who railed at 

 the reserves, and at the inclusion of agricultural lands, were inspired 

 entirely by sympathy for these settlers. Some of them disliked the 

 reserves anyhow, were always quick to seize any pretext for an attack 

 upon the forest reserves or upon the Forest Service, and the "hard- 

 ships of the settlers" served excellently for debating purposes. Later 

 developments in certain sections indicate that many of the complaints 

 regarding the inclusion of agricultural land, probably most of them, 

 really arose from the fact that the creation of forest reserves pre- 

 vented speculators from acquiring land which was not really fit for 

 agriculture.^ 



There was no dispute in Congress as to the desirability of opening 

 up agricultural lands to settlement. All agreed that this should be 

 done, but there was a clear division on the question as to how it should 

 be done. The conservationists wanted the opening up of such lands left 

 to the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior — later the Secretary 



''■Stat. 30, 34: "Land Decisions," 29, 593; 30, 44: Forestry and Irrigation, June, 

 1906, 267: Report, Sec. of Int., 1902, 321, 322. 



2 Thus over 400,000 acres were eliminated from the Olympic National Forest 

 in 1900 and 1901 on the ground that the land was chiefly valuable for agriculture 

 and that the "settlement of the country was being retarded." The land thus elimi- 

 nated for agricultural use was largely taken up under the Timber and Stone Act, 

 which requires oath that the land is "valuable chiefly for timber but not fit for 

 cultivation." Three companies and two individuals later acquired over 178,000 acres 

 of it, in holdings of from 15,000 to over 80,000 acres each. Of timbered homestead 

 claims on this eliminated area, held by 100 settlers, the total area under actual 

 cultivation in 1900 was only 570 acres, an average of but 5.7 acres to each claim. 

 In 1906, petitions were presented to the President and the Secretary of Agriculture 

 asking that certain lands in the Bitter Root Forest Reserve should be restored 

 on the ground that they were unusually well adapted to apple orchards. Exami- 

 nation proved that this land was covered with a fine growth of pine, so the Forest 

 Service decided that the land would not be opened until the timber had first been 

 removed. This was not at all satisfactory to the applicants, who said the timber 

 should be left as a bonus to the homemakers. 



In one case the Forest Service received fifty-nine applications for eliminations, 

 and three of these were found to be bona fide. In another case where land was 

 given to "settlers" for agricultural purposes, the timber was merely cleared off 

 and not one acre in thirteen was ever cultivated, ("Lumber Industry," I, XIX, 

 267: Forestry and Irrigation, Feb., 1907, 60, 61.) 



