9 



Are there not too many sheep and cattle on the government 

 lands even now ? 



What will this lead to twenty years from now ? 



How can the past injury be repaired and how can further 

 damage be prevented ? 



When the open range grows poorer every year, the stockmen 

 are brought face to face with the situation. Perhaps they meet 

 and agree to divide the range, each man to keep his cattle on his 

 own land, the sheepmen to stay in their own division and the 

 cattlemen in theirs. By this unlawful arrangement new r men are 

 to some extent kept out of the business; and just so long as the 

 agreement is held to, there is not so much reason for great over- 

 stocking of the range. A sort of order thus grows out of chaos. 

 A kind of government replaces anarchy; but it is a government 

 by the strongest, and there is sure to be strife among the strong 

 ones. Perhaps one group of men holding one portion of the 

 public range by force of arms or by force of agreement may 

 decide also not to overstock their range and to improve it by 

 sowing the seed of valuable grasses and forage plants. 



This is not likely to occur, because the reseeding of a large 

 tract is a costly undertaking, and one still so largely an experi- 

 ment whose results cannot clearly be foreseen that no stockman 

 will be likely to undertake the reseeding of lands not his own. 

 How, then, shall the open ranges of the public lands be made 

 fully productive again ? 



A socialist has suggested that this should be undertaken by 

 the general government as a public work to be paid for by taxa- 

 tion of the whole people; that seed should be collected, enormous 

 grass farms planted, and that the seed raised on these farms 

 should be sown far and wide on the ranges, and that the cost of 

 all this enormous undertaking should be borne by the general 

 government. 



It has also been suggested that the government should reseed 

 its lands and then rent them or lease them for enough to cover 

 the cost of reseeding. This plan, like the Socialist's dream, is 

 open to many and conclusive objections. In reseeding by the 

 socialistic method, the cost would be so stupendous and the 

 opposition on the part of taxpayers so strong and so well founded 



