166 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



of Agriculture, who should ascertain the character of the land first, 

 and then formally open it to settlement. Most of the western men were 

 opposed to giving the Secretary any discretion in the matter, and 

 favored either a law compelling him to open up such lands, or a law 

 opening up the forest reserves to all who cared to make entry. 



Some reason and logic there was in the latter position. The western 

 men naturally chafed under the necessity of going to the Secretary 

 of the Interior or the Secretary of Agriculture every time they 

 wanted a tract of land opened up to settlement. There were consider- 

 able areas of land in the forest reserves which were susceptible of 

 cultivation, and any elimination of such lands was a slow process, 

 being dependent on the tardy and cumbersome movements of a Fed- 

 eral department. The western people, like frontiersmen everywhere, 

 were impatient of delay, and always wanted rapid development. Fur- 

 thermore, doubtless many of them feared that if discretion were left 

 with the secretary, some of the land, however good for agricultural 

 purposes, would never be opened to entry at all; and who could be 

 a better judge of its fitness for agricultural uses than the entryman 

 who was willing to try to make a living on it .'' 



This was a short-sighted view, however. Even though the Secretary 

 of the Interior might be very slow to open up lands, or might fail 

 altogether to open them up to entry, it was best for the future of the 

 reserves that he should have some discretion in the matter; and it 

 would have been a very serious mistake to throw the reserves open 

 indiscriminately to all who might want to make entries, for many 

 would have made entries with no intention of proving up, but merely 

 with the object of clearing off the timber, or perhaps with the inten- 

 tion of securing mineral deposits or other valuable resources. 



THE LACEY BILL 



Lacey of Iowa, of the House Committee on Public Lands, intro- 

 duced two bills in 1904, providing for the elimination of agricultural 

 lands in the forest reserves, and for their later disposition — both 

 measures strongly urged by the Secretary of the Interior ; but neither 

 of them ever became law, although one of them passed the House.' 



s Report, Sec. of Int., 1904, 27, 28: H. R. 13631, H. R. 13633; 5S Cong. 2 sess.: 

 H. R. 17576; 59 Cong. 1 sess. 



