CHAPTER VIII 



HOSTILITY TO THE NATIONAL FORESTS IN RECENT 



YEARS : OPPOSITION TO THE GENERAL POLICY 



OF RESERVATION 



Hostility toward the national forests, in recent years, has arisen 

 from somewhat the same causes that were operative in earlier times ; 

 yet it will be appropriate at this point to note briefly the various 

 grounds of opposition. These grounds of hostility may be classified 

 into: first, those which rest on the assumption that the policy of 

 reservation is fundamentally wrong in principle; and second, those 

 which pertain not so much to the general policy of reservation as to 

 the manner in which the Forest Service has carried out that policy.^ 



OPPOSITION TO THE GENERAL POLICY OF RESERVATION: INTER- 

 FERENCE WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST 



The general policy of reservation has been opposed for various 

 reasons, but probably no reason has been advanced more frequently 

 than that this policy "interferes with the development of the West." 

 This line of reasoning, as old as the forest reserves, is still heard fre- 

 quently in Congress. Some western senators have been wont to en- 

 large upon the "civilization" the western people have built up — a 

 civilization which would of course have been impossible "if Mr. 

 Pinchot's system of managing the forests had existed." Representa- 

 tive Johnson of Washington once complained that the people of his 

 state were "literally being conserved out of existence." There has 

 been a general argument that the "farmer, the home builder, the tiller 

 of the soil," rather than the "coyote and the panther and the bear," 

 are the real "foundation of our growth and development." As a west- 

 ern writer in the North American Review (191, 474) once expressed it : 



1 For a good statement of the reasons for opposition to the reserves, see memo- 

 rials of western states presented in Congress. Cong. Bee, Dec. 5, 1907, 167; Apr. 

 28, 1909, 1567; May 14, 1909, 2019. 



