192 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



reserves without consulting them first. Roosevelt of course saw the 

 possibility that advance information regarding the establishment of 

 reserves might be used improperly, and for that reason did not consult 

 the western politicians as much as politicians like to be consulted. 

 Heyburn and others complained of this apparent "distrust" of the 

 western men.^^ 



AN EXPRESSION OF THE WESTERN ATTITUDE 



It will perhaps be only fair to point out certain elements of sin- 

 cerity and justice in the western attitude of hostility ; and this cannot 

 be done better than by quoting from a western writer in the North 

 American Review of November, 1903: "Upon the proclamation of a 

 forest reserve, which cancels all rights of further entry thereupon 

 under the general land laws, land holders and mine owners who reside 

 in the reserved region suddenly find themselves in a new and unex- 

 pected environment. They are bound hand and foot to strange general 

 rules and special orders, under formal authority of the Secretary of 

 the Interior, but administered primarily by bureau and division offi- 

 cers of the Department of the Interior through local supervisory 

 officers of several grades, some of whom may be non-resident. No 

 longer a free agent, as an American citizen should be, the settler is 

 called upon to submit his avocation and daily acts to the control of 

 personal authority, exercised without form or force of law. ... In a 

 contest with authority, the settler's only recourse is to a United States 

 District Court, and in most of the Western States such recourse can 

 be had only at a single point, often remote from the settler's residence. 



"True, the settler may surrender possession, including all incre- 

 ment of value in buildings, irrigation, fences, or other improvements, 

 in exchange for 'lieu selections' of unimproved vacant lands in still 

 unreserved parts of the public domain, wherein desirable selections 

 have come to be few and far between. Whatever the increment, the 

 rate of value per acre of lieu selections can rarely exceed the current 

 negotiable value of Land Office scrip. Accretion to local possessions 

 is no longer practicable. One of the greatest incentives to exertion is 

 therefore hopelessly removed. Thousands of worthy settlers within the 

 borders of territory summarily set aside for forest reserves at a stroke 



71 S. Doc, 68; 55 Cong. 1 sess. 



