68 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



tions of to-day, the Secretary of the Interior has 

 called for revision also of an enormous accumulation 

 of laws. It is eloquent of the tangles of past years 

 that one revision specially suggested was authoriza- 

 tion to enable the Secretary to sell and issue patents 

 for lands which have been occupied and used for 

 many years, perhaps sold and resold in good faith 

 under the belief that the title was good, whereas the 

 land still vested in government. 



In particular, the Secretary desired that graz- 

 ing should be placed on an entirely new footing. 

 "We have no laws to conserve the native grasses on 

 public lands and protect their grazing values," he 

 stated recently, "The Public Domain is an unre- 

 stricted range for those who desire to use it. The 

 pre-empting of water holes and the fencing of 

 streams excludes range men who do not control these 

 first essentials for range stock. This situation in 

 many instances resulted in the conversion of this 

 theoretical grazing common into a private preserve. 

 With no tenure save force, the first to arrive with 

 his herd or flock, if sufficiently powerful, takes all 

 and moves on to other areas." 



IV 

 ENTER: THE AUTOMOBILE 



Into the huge, wide scattered, somewhat in- 

 choate empire of lands, the much-vaunted Era of 



