INTRODUCTION 



THE first federal land I ever stepped foot upon, as 

 a small child, was probably the post-office in Newark, 

 New Jersey. No doubt the next was a lighthouse reser- 

 vation near Sandy Hook, and the third must have been 

 either the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the fort on Bedloe's 

 Island from which rises the Statue of Liberty. Later I 

 visited the Custom House because it was national. As 

 an older boy I hunted up all the forts around New 

 York, and on one of these Saturday explorations won- 

 dered why the great United States Government should 

 bother to own a tide-washed islet pointed out to me by 

 a fisherman. 



As a busy man I knew there were "public lands" 

 somewhere, and occasionally read of "land agents," 

 "land offices," and "land grabs" in newspaper des- 

 patches from Washington. I knew that people "took 

 up" land "out West," presumably for farming, but 

 under what conditions or precisely from whom I would 

 have been hard put to it to say. I had heard Yellow- 

 stone called " the national park," and supposed the Gov- 

 ernment owned the Indian Reservations, concerning 

 which scandals were occasionally alleged by excited per- 

 sons seeking names to petitions. Gettysburg Battlefield 

 in Pennsylvania was national, I somehow knew, and I 

 supposed that "national monuments" were other me- 

 morials to the historic dead. I had read of fires in 



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