176 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



and enterprise, and intelligence enough to push ahead without waiting 

 for any signals from Congress. Congress had seldom evinced any 

 capacity to deal intelligently with the timber lands, or with most other 

 natural resources — in fact, some very discerning students of Ameri- 

 can government are inclined to doubt whether it is generally possible 

 for Congress to deal intelligently with any sort of problem. Certain 

 it is that most intelligent legislation is to be credited not to the 

 initiative of Congress itself, but to outside influence — often the 

 pressure exerted by an "autocratic" President. ^^ 



THE FOREST LIEU ACT 



In order to understand the attitude of the West during these years, 

 it will be necessary to look into yet another matter, however — into the 

 operation of the Forest Lieu section of the act of 1897. This section, 

 which may be designated as the Forest Lieu Act, provided that where 

 an unperfected claim or patent was included within a forest reserva- 

 tion, the settler or owner thereof might relinquish the tract to the 

 government, and select another tract of land outside of the reserve. 

 The abuses arising under this provision were conspicuous features in 

 the history of forest reserves during this period, and without doubt 

 played an important part in determining the fate of the reservation 

 policy in the critical days of 1907. 



The Forest Lieu Act, like the Railroad Indemnity Act of 1874, was 

 manifestly unfair to the government. It permitted an exchange in 

 which it was certain that the government would lose, for no owner of 

 land would relinquish it and select other land unless he could gain by 

 the transaction.^* Worthless land of all kinds was relinquished, in 

 some cases land naturally valueless, in some cases timber land 

 stripped of all merchantable timber. Entrymen under the Timber and 

 Stone Act, for instance, would sometimes cut all the timber from their 

 lands, and then relinquish them and select other tracts of valuable 

 timber land under this law.^^ 



The Forest Lieu Act provided for the selection of a "tract of vacant 

 land open to settlement." Secretary Bliss held in 1898 that this did 

 not permit the selection of unsurveyed lands, since it was a general 



27 Cross Reference, p. 143. 



28 Report, Sec. of Int., 1903, 321. 

 "i^ Report, Land Office, 1899, 115. 



