168 



THE IRBIGATION AGE. 



This special rate will apply to all material shipped to 

 points on the Southern Pacific lines, traversing Pacific 

 coast states and territories, provided the exhibits are 

 returned to the original shipper at the original point 

 of shipment. 



Mr. W. A. Beard, chairman of the executive com- 

 mittee of the congress, informs us that money is being 

 contributed by the citizens of Sacramento in a very 

 satisfactory manner, and a fund of $75,000 will easily 

 be raised to defray the expenses of the congress. The 

 citizens of Sacramento are noted for their liberality 

 and it is reasonable to suppose that the congress at 

 Sacramento will be the greatest ever held, in point of 

 attendance and attractions for visitors. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



BY G. L. SHUMWAT. 



Most of the great land steals of America have been 

 brought about by legislation, in which well-meaning 

 but hysterical men have over-ridden the protests of the 

 statesmen whose location and environment gave a thor- 

 ough understanding. Sentimentalists are preyed upon 

 by designers. Theorists possess a positiveness born of 

 ignorance, and the preponderance of our population 

 having little direct knowledge of local conditions, are 

 likely to cause injustice and force upon communities re- 

 strictions and conditions not conducive to their best 

 welfare. 



The remarkable editorials that appeared in some 

 of our eastern contemporaries commending the late ex- 

 ecutive action of thwarting the will of congress, is an 

 example. So long as writers carp in ignorance of im- 

 agined things, so long as publications of the prairies 

 attempt to mold the policies of the mountains and the 

 forests, there is liable to be a confusion of tongues, 

 and radical mistakes of legislation occur. The gov- 

 ernment could better cede to the various states the pub- 

 lic lands within their borders and permit each to work 

 out its own destiny. 



But few people question the honesty and sincerity 

 of the President, but if he does not shut his ears to 

 some of his present advisers he will work intolerable 

 hardship upon the West. His appended reasons for 

 creating those thirty new forest reserves show evident 

 reluctance and indicate doubt of their necessity or de- 

 sirability. We are led to the hope that a sort of con- 

 sciousness of the intense earnestness and sincerity of the 

 builders of the West is beginning to percolate through 

 that bureaucratic barrier built by the bigots of the 

 Pinchot type, and that it will eventually reach the 

 central heart and intelligence of our chief executive. 



The whole object of all our land laws is utimately 

 to make homes for the homeless. This original purpose 

 is being perverted, and Mr. Bishpan, an attorney of the 

 government, confided recently that in his opinion a 

 strict interpretation of the law would prove this an 

 erroneous conception, and that only under the most fa- 

 vorable circumstances could a poor man hold a homestead 

 and comply with the law. Now if that is the condition 

 according to the standpoint of the government, it is 

 better that we get along with fewer lawyers in the serv- 

 ice, and more of the old-fashioned common sense. 



Settlers may be driven from their homesteads by 

 these new ideas and persecution of spies, but we need 

 them in the West. We need their industry and enter- 

 prise. American citizens are departing daily for the 

 Canadian Northwest and the Old Mexico Southwest. 

 Thousands and thousands are going two to each one 

 that settles upon our own domain. Mr. President, is it 

 not time to call a halt ? Nine-tenths of this noise about 

 land frauds in the West is bombast; it is calculated to 

 deceive the public and to deceive you. Your order re- 

 voking the order to inspect before patents shall issue 

 indicates that you personally do not wish to injure 

 actual home-makers, but that you have an impression 

 that considerable more fraud exists among the people 

 of the West than is apparent to us, who have no in- 

 terests at stake save the welfare and reputation of the 

 communities in which we dwell. 



Why this vigilance, this spying, this nauseous es- 

 pionage, that begets a furtive citizenship, when the 

 government records themselves show only a fraction 

 of one per cent of homestead proofs that have ever 

 been attempted have been fraudulent.? Why not go, 

 Mr. President, into that little office in St. Paul, where 

 that vast forestry fraud was conceived? Why not try 

 to discover the origin of the "lieu lands" clause? It 

 would be well to have the public understand why our 

 chief forester was not alive to the interests of the peo- 

 ple when that clause was attached to an appropriation 

 for the forestry service. 



It would require 25,000 claimants to accomplish 

 as much toward plundering the public as that one little 

 insignificant provision. Mr. President, we of the West 

 are accused, and now in turn request, nay, it is our 

 privilege to insist that you turn the searchlight of in- 

 vestigation upon those near to you who have pointed 

 accusing fingers at us. 



The trial of Benger Hermann brings out the fact 

 that government attorneys Heney and Burns have at- 

 atempted to coerce witnesses to testify to things which 

 the witnesses say were not true, the penalty being a 

 threat of a severe jail sentence if they refused, Mr. 



