36 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



There are a great many other things that may be said along 

 these same lines, but there are a number of specialists to speak 

 to you this afternoon on these other topics, and therefore I will 

 simply thank you for your attention, and wish you success in 

 your great constructive and patriotic task. (Prolonged applause.) 



The Cut-Over Land Owner's 



Responsibility — His 



Opportunity 



By Hon. Clay Tallman 



Commissioner, General Land Office United States 

 Department of the Interior 



I want to say first that I am very appreciative of the oppor- 

 tunity to come here and contribute a little, if I can, to the 

 development of a national resource, particularly a basic resource 

 like the land, to see if we cannot find a way to make it produce 

 a little more and add something to the upbuilding of the nation. 

 At the outset, I should say that so far as the public land in 

 the South is concerned, for the purpose of this discussion, it is 

 altogether negligible. The problems we are working on every 

 day concern the lands of the Western states, where the great bulk 

 of the remaining public lands are ; there we are working out 

 South's Prob- problems and overcoming obstacles not altogether unlike those 

 lems Not Un- you have here, and problems in which, I believe, the general 

 ' ^ 9^^ principles — the controlling principles — are very much the same. 

 I feel in a way, so far as I am personally concerned, as if this 

 program is a little bit wrong end to ; not that I want to be 

 critical, but just because, in attacking a land problem of this 

 sort, when we take it up in the Western states, we first like 

 to learn as much as we can about the subject ; we want to know 

 that in as much detail as possible ; and I can only wish that 

 before I came on this program there had been some speakers 

 — as I understand there will be — who had already given us the 

 facts more in detail before we take up the problem with a view 

 to its solution. 



