ii6 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



est Congress, held in Washington, brought about 

 the Act of February i, 1905, which transferred the 

 National Forests from the care of the Interior De- 

 partment to the Department of Agriculture, and re- 

 sulted in the creation of the present United States 

 Forest Service. 



"The men upon whom the responsibility of han- 

 dling some sixty million acres of National Forest 

 lands was thus thrown were ready for the work, 

 both in the office and in the field, because they had 

 been preparing for it for more than five years. 

 Without delay they proceeded, under the leadership 

 of Pinchot, to apply to the new work the principles 

 they had already formulated. One of these was to 

 open all the resources of the National Forests to 

 regulated use. Another was that of putting every 

 part of the land to that use in which it would best 

 serve the public. Following this principle, the Act 

 of June n, 1906, was drawn, and its passage was 

 secured from Congress. This law throws open to 

 settlement all land in the National Forests that is 

 found, on examination, to be chiefly valuable for ag- 

 riculture. Hitherto all such land had been closed to 

 the settler. 



"The principles thus formulated and applied 

 may be summed up in the statement that the rights 

 of the public to the natural resources outweigh pri- 

 vate rights, and must be given its first consideration. 

 Until that time, in dealing with the National Forests 

 and the public lands generally, private rights had 



