CONCLUSION 371 



Hgent policy regarding the timber lands, is the inability of Congress 

 to pursue an intelligent policy regarding anything. Congress is not 

 usually interested in intelligent action, but is interested rather in 

 trading votes, and talking to the "home folks" in anticipation of the 

 next election. 



To what extent dishonesty and corruption have been responsible 

 for the attitude of Congress, it is impossible to say. The writer has 

 no disposition to attribute unworthy motives to most members of 

 the national legislature, however unwise their course may now seem. 

 Yet there is no doubt that if the whole story of forestry legislation 

 could be told; if all the inner secrets of timber statesmen could be 

 revealed; if all the collusion and vote trading with the railroads and 

 with other powerful interests could be brought to light, and all the 

 lobbies and secret conventions and bribe funds and committee machi- 

 nations could be exposed, it would make very interesting reading. 

 This is true not of the Federal Congress alone, for in some of the 

 states matters were worse. Politicians in Wisconsin still speak of the 

 "saw log dynasty" which controlled the politics of the state for nearly 

 a generation. Recently a student at the state university of one of 

 the other Lake states wrote a thesis on the history of the pine lands, 

 which he did not dare publish because of the light it threw on members 

 of the state legislature. The history of the wild lands of Maine would 

 doubtless make interesting reading if it could be written in full. It 

 has been stated that large tracts of timber lands in Maine were ac- 

 quired by men who held state offices at the time, and that the influence 

 of this timber ownership extended even to some of the members of the 

 state supreme court; although the writer is unable to vouch for the 

 latter statement.^ New Hampshire and New York have no reason to 

 be proud of their records in dealing with their timber lands ; and this 

 is true of most of the states which had any considerable areas of such 

 lands. 



THE ETHICS OF TIMBER STEALING 



Perhaps it may be worth while to point out once more that it would 

 be easy to exaggerate the moral turpitude involved in stealing timber 

 lands, or in passing a law to facilitate such stealing. Speculation and 

 frauds have always characterized the frontier; and of course moral 



1 New England Magazine, July, 1907, 515. 



