58 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Northwest of the Ohio River. I am quoting the ex- 

 act language of the ordinance dealing with this 

 question : 



: 'The legislatures of those districts, or new 

 States, shall never interfere with the primary dis- 

 posal of the soil by the United States in Congress 

 assembled, nor with any regulations Congress may 

 find necessary for securing the title of such soil to 

 the bona-fide purchasers/ 



"To give to States the public land within their 

 boundaries would be a complete reversal of the pol- 

 icy of this Government from its beginning, a prece- 

 dent not set by any other nation, and a step which 

 should not be inadvisedly taken. 



"Five years in the midst of Government opera- 

 tions have convinced me that the Federal Govern- 

 ment is administering more, and the States less, of 

 the activities of Government than they should. It 

 would be agreeable to recommend from an adminis- 

 trator's point of view that States might own and 

 control the public lands. That would, of course, re- 

 lieve the Government of the labor and expense of 

 administering them and would relieve the taxpayers 

 of an annual deficit in its net operating expenses. 

 The Department of the Interior expended last year 

 (1925) the sum of $2,949,337 f r tne administra- 

 tion of the public domain, $2,370,170 of which was 

 spent by the General Land Office and $579,167 by 

 the Geological Survey. It collected $9,844,831, ex- 

 clusive of Indian land sales, and other public land 



