POSSIBLE REMEDIES FOR MONOPOLISTIC CONDITIONS 31 



and justice if nothing more, the large holders might be shorn 

 of some of their power. In the first place we must recognize 

 that no labor is required to discover standing timber, as con- 

 trasted with such natural resources as iron ore, coal, or petro- 

 leum. The search for minerals is a real public service; but 

 timber is conspicuous upon the surface, and could never fail 

 of being turned to account for lack of knowledge of its exis- 

 tence. 



Not only have timber owners as a class rendered no particu- 

 lar service in "finding" and appropriating timber lands, but 

 many of them have given no equivalent in any other way for 

 the valuable resource they now hold; many of them have 

 merely stolen their lands. As indicated in previous chapters, 

 many of the railway grants were not really earned; the two 

 great timber owning railroads, the Northern Pacific and the 

 Southern Pacific, presenting notable examples of bad faith in 

 their disposition of their grants. Various other railroads fur- 

 nish examples quite as bad on a smaller scale. Swamp lands 

 were often, perhaps usually, acquired fraudulently, and the 

 terms of such grants were not often complied with. Most tim- 

 ber lands acquired under the Timber and Stone Act, the Com- 

 mutation Homestead Act, the Preemption Act, and the Desert 

 Land Act, were acquired fraudulently ; indeed there was about 

 one general public land law under which large holdings could 

 be honestly taken up, and that was the Cash Sale Law, and 

 even under that law the payment for the lands was of course 

 grossly inadequate. 



Since so much of the timberland was stolen in the first place, 

 there might seem to be special reason why a few holders should 

 not own it all, special reason why the Government might try 

 to regain control over more of this resource, or might try to 

 secure a more equal division, perhaps break up some of the 

 large estates in some way. In judging of the wisdom of any 

 such plan of procedure it will of course be proper to consider 

 that a vested wrong may in time become a vested right; that 

 much of this land is not now in the hands of the original hold- 

 ers; that some of it is now owned by holders who have paid 

 full value; and that the proportion of such holders will grow 

 from year to year as more of this land changes hands. 



