268 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Montana, Democrat, led a delegation to Secretary 

 Payne urging that a way should still be found, al- 

 though constitutionally too late, for the President's 

 signature. To this appeal the President yielded upon 

 assurances of leaders of both parties in both Houses 

 that a bill would be pushed at the next session to cut 

 National Parks out of the act. A precedent for de- 

 layed signature was dug up in the archives, and the 

 otherwise beneficent water power act began its 

 great career. 



But lost ground was not wholly recovered in 

 the following session. When the promised bill to 

 restore National Parks to sole authority of Con- 

 gress came before the House the following Janu- 

 ary, a representative of five far-western power 

 companies moved that its authority should be lim- 

 ited to parks already in existence. Otherwise, he 

 threatened, the bill itself would not pass. Rather 

 than subject all National Parks to further risk so 

 great, the government yielded, and to this day each 

 new National Park is subject to authority of the 

 Federal Power Commission unless its creative act 

 shall have specifically excepted it therefrom. 



The companies' reason for wanting this excep- 

 tion was to hold subject to their future grasp the 

 two tremendous Sierran Canyons of the Kings River 

 in the event of their some day being added to a Na- 

 tional Park. The struggle lasted, on the part of the 

 Park Service to include these valleys in the proposed 

 Roosevelt-Sequoia National Park, and on the part of 



