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ference, in August, 1904, at which meeting I was present. That conference 

 favored a classification of the public lands, and government control, by lease 

 or otherwise, of the public grazing lands through the Department of Agriculture, 

 Said commission rendered an exhaustive report along these lines, but no action 

 was taken by Congress. 



In January, 1908, our Association formulated a specific bill for the leasing 

 of the semi-arid, unappropriated, public grazing lands, fully protecting all the 

 rights of the homesteader. That bill, with some slight modifications, has been 

 introduced in both branches of Congress every session since 1908. None of the 

 bills were ever reported out of the committees to which they were referred. 

 In fact, there have been various bills designed to solve this land question 

 introduced at every session of Congress for the past fifteen years. Last sum- 

 mer lengthy hearings were held in May and July, before the Committee on 

 Public Lands of the House of Representatives, on H. R. Bill No. 19857, known 

 as the Lever Bill, and endorsed by this Association. Despite our efforts to 

 have this bill reported favorably, it still lies dormant in that committee, as 

 other bills have in previous sessions. In the past decade there have been land 

 conventions which have considered and resoluted on this question; governors 

 of the western states have conferred about it; and while many different rem- 

 edies were proposed, no definite action has been taken, although there seems 

 to be no division of sentiment on j;he point that some legislation must be had 

 for the live-stock industry to derive the full benefit of the open range. 



The great difficulty in securing this much-needed legislation lies in the 

 fact that the West is divided on the question. The majority of the stockmen 

 of the West favor a law similar to that formulated by this Association, and 

 those stockmen who oppose it are mostly nomadic stockmen who profit by pres- 

 ent existing conditions. Then there is the opposition of those who think all the 

 government land should be turned over to the state in which it is located. As 

 the states have always followed the plan of leasing state lands, they would 

 probably do the same with any open-range land turned over to them by the 

 government, the only difference being that the state would lease the land instead 

 of the federal government. Those who have had experience with both incline 

 to the belief that the federal government would more equitably handle the 

 land than the different states. However, the claim of those who want the land 

 turned over to the states need not be seriously considered, because there is no 

 likelihood of eastern legislators agreeing to such a disposition. Some others 

 insist that a lease law would impede settlement of the West, and interfere 

 with the rights of homesteaders. On the contrary, the history of the operation 

 of lease laws all over the world proves that they promote the settlement 

 and development of the country. That was true in Texas, and it will be true 

 of other states. 



In view of this varied opposition on the part of some of the people of the 

 West, it is not strange that western congressmen and senators should also 

 entertain divergent views; for, as a rule, congressmen try to please their con- 

 stituents and to offend none of them; so that explains their inactivity on this 

 question. 



The land problem is strictly a western one, and representatives in Congress 

 from all other sections claiming to have no direct interest in this matter have 

 always preferred that any measures concerning range legislation should ema- 



