THE STORY OF OUR PUBLIC DOMAIN 55 



vention. Its sources are traceable to the royal char- 

 ters of the colonies, which usually reserved for the 

 crown a fifth of the gold and silver in grants of 

 land. The Virginia charter of 1606 reserved cop- 

 per, also, and the Massachusetts Bay charter of 1691 

 reserved certain oak groves for ship timbers. Prob- 

 ably none of these provisions ever produced prac- 

 tical results in colonial times, but it is important to 

 note so early official recognitions of the principle 

 which was to play so important a part in the nation. 



Authorization to the President to create forest 

 reserves, which slipped through Congress in 1891 as 

 a rider to a bill of an entirely different purpose, en- 

 abled forest conservation to start on a large scale a 

 few years later through action of three consecutive 

 presidents. An act of 1902 authorized withdrawal of 

 lands for irrigation, beginning our great work of 

 reclamation. 



At this writing, renewed demand for local pos- 

 session of the nation's natural resources is marching 

 steadily toward what looks like a new war in Con- 

 gress. Dangerous as the looming movement now 

 appears, it will be trifling in comparison with the 

 similar demand which, for some years before Roose- 

 velt, bent Congress to lavish distributions of our 

 national wealth, especially of forest lands, which at 

 times amounted practically to confiscation. It was 

 public revolt, in the closing years of the last century, 

 against wholesale looting of national possessions by 

 local interests which resulted in the creation, first, 



