STORY OF OUR NATIONAL FOREST 99 



mischief. The Free Timber Act gave the people of 

 nine far western states the right to cut at will on 

 mineral lands for mining and domestic purposes, but 

 it did not define originally either mineral lands or 

 mining. In time any convenient forest anywhere 

 was assumed to grow on mineral lands, and smelt- 

 ing and manufacturing companies were assumed to 

 have the miner's right to free timber. For one ex- 

 ample, vast forest areas were burnt over to cheapen 

 the manufacture of charcoal, the enormous surplus 

 of which, over its use for smelting, being sold in 

 the open market as a by-product. 



The Timber and Stone Act confined timber 

 grants to 160 acres, inviting evasion because so 

 small an area could not be lumbered economically; 

 whereupon developed frauds of the most extraordi- 

 nary effrontery and extent. Besides, since home- 

 steading laws made no distinction between farm and 

 forest lands, many million acres of the finest forest 

 in the country were taken up under the Preemption 

 Act, the Commutation Homestead Act and the Des- 

 ert Land Act by dummies acting for lumber com- 

 panies. So demoralized did public sentiment become 

 in some of the forested states that acting as dum- 

 mies became practically a calling, while many no- 

 madic operators erected temporary mills wherever 

 conditions favored, without pretense of settlement 

 or purchase, and lumbered till they were stopped, 

 when they moved elsewhere. 



The fact is that appropriations for government 



