THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



71 





EDITORIAL NOTES. 



BY Q. L. SHUMWAY. 



tain the voluntary sworn respect of his neighbors? If 

 so, then put the spies on oath in their reports, and under 

 bonds to tell the truth. 



GOVERNOR BRYANT B. BROOKS, of Wyoming, has 

 joined issues with President Roosevelt, and with such 

 Trojans as he and Senator Heyburn, of Idaho, in arms, 

 we may see some sparks fly before the dawn of many 

 days, and the President will find them foemen worthy 

 of his steel. 



THE President has stirred the giant spirit of the 

 West, of which they are prototypes, by persistently fol- 

 lowing policies which are deemed detrimental to western 

 development, and by inferences, and otherwise, assailing 

 western character. The statements of Governor Brooks 

 ought attract the executive's attention, provoke investi- 

 gation, and inspire our President to recede from some 

 of the positions which subordinates may have pushed 

 upon him. 



THE governor states that while 20 per cent of Wyo- 

 ming's public grazing land is embraced in forest pre- 

 serves, only 2 per cent of the range stock is found 

 therein. If the range under federal supervision has 

 only 10 per cent of its efficiency, if open, federal aggres- 

 sion has wrought enormous losses to the West. 



MR. BROOKS further states that after 40 years' oper- 

 ation of all the land laws pre-emption, homestead, tree- 

 claim, desert, Carey, timber and stone, mineral, and land 

 grants about 10,000,000 acres of Wyoming's area has 

 passed from government control. To acquire all of the 

 state's mineral and timber lands, he estimates by the 

 rate of past acquisition, will require approximately 

 8,000 years. In the few recent years, the government 

 has included as much as 10,000,000 acres of the state 

 in forest reserves. By the executive's recent mineral 

 land order about 16,000,000 acres more are in the ex- 

 clusion. About half of the public lands of the state 

 are denied to entry. 



THE aggrandizement of our federal government is 

 seriously affecting our public schools. Isolated school 

 sections embraced in forest and other reserves, cease to 

 contribute to our state educational institutions, because 

 without other range they are useless to stockmen. The 

 meager earnings of lands exploited by Mr. Pinchot, and 

 the small allotment which the Forest King allows the 

 states as a sop to induce silence, while he rims and 

 trims the state schools, is wholly out of proportion in 

 the light of justice. 



A RECENT message of the President contains the 

 statement that he has directed the Secretary of the In- 

 terior to issue no more patents of land, until a personal 

 examination of the land is made to ascertain if the law 

 has been complied with. In other words, all claimants 

 are presumed to be thieves, and with their witnesses, 

 perjurers, until some special agent drifts around, and 

 makes a written assurance that they are all right. 



THE law outlines specifically various methods of se- 

 curing patents. Can the President annul specific law? 

 Shall special agents' reports have more potency than a 

 strict compliance with law? Must claimants curry and 

 incur the good will of spying strangers, rather than ob- 



HONORABLE homemakers in the West protest against 

 this accursed spy system it is an intrusion of unbidden 

 eyes, inspecting personal and private altars. It is for- 

 eign to American ideas and ideals, and belongs not to 

 free America, but to crumbling dynasties of the past. 

 The West will never knuckle down to these migratory 

 persecutors, and the President is wrong in his order. 



No doubt a general opinion exists in the east, that 

 there have been enormous land frauds all over the west. 

 It is one of the idiosyncrasies that has arisen from this 

 wave of reform, and it will require long and tedious 

 effort to obliterate it, but the President of the United 

 States could better employ his time than to inflame a 

 slander upon our people. 



THERE is a great noise if there is a petit larceny of 

 a few acres of inferior land it diverts public attention 

 from enormous inroads on the treasury, like that $25,000 

 a year expense item for the President. This one item, 

 in one administration, will amount to more in cold cash 

 than the value of a hundred sections of public grazing 

 lands. Why, bless you, I could designate 100,000 acres 

 that would sell under the hammer for less than the 

 amount which Congress recently presented to the mem- 

 bers of the President's cabinet. And alleged conspira- 

 cies relating to small fractions of the area are sending 

 men to the penitentiary and involving expenditures in 

 federal prosecutions of more than the land is actually 

 worth. 



THAT the administration can err is emphasized by 

 the land unit regulation under irrigation projects. 

 Every developing locality is calling for settlers, and the 

 inducement of a mere living is not sufficient to attract. 

 The Truckee- Carson project, for instance, has only 

 about 20 per cent of the lands occupied that are ready 

 with canal and laterals. Call it gambling instincts, 

 speculation, or whatever you will, but the fact remains 

 the water is there and the settlers are not, and the west 

 will not fill up until that extreme interpretation is 

 abandoned. 



THE administration is wrong in other matters. Ac- 

 tual service to the grazing districts of the west will re- 

 quire something besides forest and grazing reserves, 

 which relegates areas embraced into hopeless wilderness 

 forever. No question is ever settled until it is settled 

 right, and no home is ever a home until the title to the 

 home is vested in the homemaker. My letter to the 

 President, dated Nov. 20th, which I referred to in 

 December IRRIGATION AGE, outlines a plan for provi- 

 sional ownership to prescribed range units by actual res- 

 idents, and will solve the problem in the interests of 

 the actual home-builders. 



PARTS of the President's "land" message sounds like 

 a voice from the past. It speaks of range conditions 

 which existed five to ten years ago, as though they ex- 

 itsed now. Range controversies were practically elim- 

 inated by those fences which Mr. Roosevelt says must 

 go. His orders will be obeyed, but since the message, 



