16 BULLETIN 211, U. S. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



New Mexico has large areas of cheap land upon which these prod- 

 ucts may be grown and which are not well suited to any other busi- 

 ness. 



Naturally they have been occupied by stockmen, but the difficulty 

 of obtaining and maintaining control of the land has materially 

 retarded the natural growth of the industry, and to-day this lack of 

 legalized control of the land is not only reducing the output and 

 rendering the business precarious, but is causing marked deteriora- 

 tion of the range itself, besides causing great and frequent losses of 

 valuable property, to say nothing of the suffering of thousands of 

 animals that die of starvation. 



A careful examination into the conditions, laws, and customs now 

 controlling the business is here attempted. 



Under another heading attention has been called to the relative 

 areas of land held under legal tenure of one kind or another. It is of 

 importance to know how possession of the Government lands is 

 maintained and to understand how this form of tenure affects the 

 stock-raising industry. 



It must be kept in mind that only such land to which the claimant 

 has title or right or is in process of obtaining such title by the method 

 prescribed by the land laws may be inclosed with a fence. 1 To this 

 group belong (1) the patented homesteads, desert claims, timber 

 claims, lieu-land selections, or all Government lands that have been 

 filed upon according to some existing land law; (2) all railroad land 

 grants which have not been exchanged for lieu-land scrip; (3) all the 

 lands included in the old Mexican land grants that have been con- 

 firmed by the courts; (4) the State lands which have been given to 

 the State by the National Government as an endowment for its 

 educational, penal, and charitable institutions, 2 and (5) land held in 

 small areas under mineral claims, such areas being held from one 

 year to the next by performing the assessment work each year. It 

 goes without saying that all such lands may be fenced and con- 

 trolled according to the will of the claimants. 



All other lands, not including various reservations like national 

 forests, Indian reservations, etc., are Government lands and accord- 

 ing to the rulings of the General Land Office may not be inclosed 

 with a fence. They are public property and in the sight of the law 

 may be used by everybody in general and nobody in particular. 

 This situation arises as the result of lack of legislation concerning the 



1 Under certain conditions special permission to fence limited areas of Government land within the 

 national forests may be obtained. Recently the policy of building drift fences has been to some extent 

 adopted and is strongly recommended by the United States Forest Service. (See Graves, H. S., Report 

 of the Forester, United States Department of Agriculture, 1912, p. 69. Washington, 1912.) 



2 This area consists of four sections in each township for the grade schools and several kundred thousand 

 acres scattered over the State for the other institutions named. 



