320 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



The unusually high degree of concentration of ownership shown 

 here was the result of the grossest frauds under the public land laws, 

 since in this region there was no great Federal land grant such as 

 tended to increase concentration of ownership in northeastern Cali- 

 fornia, western Oregon, and southwestern Washington. 



In the white pine and western pine region of north central Idaho, 

 almost all of the timber was found to be in the hands of a very few 

 large holders. Seventy per cent of the unreserved timber was owned 

 by seven holders — in fact, the Idaho white pine belt was so largely in 

 the hands of these seven holders, that an outsider would have found it 

 difficult to assemble a holding of as much as a quarter of a billion 

 feet against their opposition. This is especially significant in view 

 of the fact that three of these seven holders were interrelated by 

 minority interests. Over half of the unreserved timber was in the hands 

 of three holders — the Potlatch Lumber Company, the Clearwater 

 Timber Company, and the Milwaukee Land Company. The first two 

 mentioned were at least in some measure controlled by the Weyer- 

 haeuser interests, and the Milwaukee Land Company was owned by 

 the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company. The inter- 

 ests controlling the situation in north central Idaho were also closely 

 connected with important interests in the southern part of the state. 



Two holders, the Northern Pacific and the Amalgamated Copper 

 Company, together with four relatively small holders, owned 79.3 

 per cent of the non-reserved timber in Montana. The total area inves- 

 tigated in this state was about 3,000,000 acres, and the Northern 

 Pacific and the Amalgamated Copper each had over a million acres 

 of this, the Amalgamated Copper having secured its holding by pur- 

 chase from the Northern Pacific, which originally owned almost all. 

 Smaller holders played a very unimportant part in this region. 



THE THREE BIG HOLDINGS OF THE NORTHWEST 



The three greatest holdings in the Pacific Northwest, or indeed in 

 the United States — those of the Southern Pacific, the Weyerhaeuser 

 Timber Company, and the Northern Pacific — merit a little further 

 consideration. The total acreage of timber land owned by these three 

 corporations in 1914 was over 9,000,000 acres; of which the South- 

 ern Pacific had over 4,500,000 acres, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Com- 



