86 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



that which to-day should be the nation's dependence, 

 lies the tragedy. Its history, culled from the enact- 

 ments of Congress, the speeches there made, and the 

 records of administrative bureaus of government, is 

 almost unbelievable as seen in the perspective of to- 

 day. It is a story of utter blindness, of ignorance of 

 startling facts, of passionate greed, of frauds on a 

 gigantic scale, of interests combining and competing 

 for the common spoils, of the complete subordina- 

 tion of national interest to sectional, local, partisan 

 and even personal interest. It constitutes one of the 

 darkest chapters of our national history. 



It is not as if we had had no precedents. Eng- 

 land had directed her American colonists to con- 

 serve mast pine for her navy, imposing a fine of five 

 pounds for cutting trees under a foot in diameter. 

 The colonial governor of New York had charged 

 every person cutting a tree to plant five others. In 

 1736 Plymouth Colony passed a law against export- 

 ing lumber, and New Haven ordered that no trees 

 should be cut without magistrates' permission. The 

 young nation passed numerous laws protective of 

 the forest. In 1795 a Massachusetts society studied 

 and reported methods to increase timber growth. In 

 1799 Congress appropriated $200,000 for the pur- 

 chase and conservation of timber lands for Naval 

 use, and in 1831 a law was passed, which no attempt 

 was made to enforce, prohibiting lumbering of all 

 kinds in national lands. 



The wasteful destruction which had inspired 



