American Forest Congress 329 



promptly secures absolute control of it. These specu- 

 lative entries place the legitimate miner at the mercy 

 of the unscrupulous holder of the title. One or two 

 alternatives the miner must adopt: either to sell out 

 and practically abandon his property, or else to pay an 

 exorbitant price for the timber his tormentor controls. 

 Usually it is the object of the speculator to force the 

 former; sometimes the latter is sufficient to satisfy 

 his greed. In either case rascality triumphs, and the 

 man whom the Government would assist and encourage 

 is victimized and his meritorious enterprise embar- 

 rassed or defeated. Further tham this, in certain cases 

 where formerly there was an abundant supply of timber 

 available from the forest reserve, since eliminations 

 have been made, residents find themselves unable to 

 secure timber for domestic and other purposes without 

 infringing the law ; and it has been demonstrated that 

 ordinarily where a tract of timber land in a mining 

 region, once included in a forest reserve, has later 

 been excluded from it, the honest miner and prospector 

 not only had little to do with securing the elimination, 

 but is now anxious to be again within the reserve ; 

 while the purely speculative individual, whose schemes 

 were formerly circumvented by forest officers, and 

 through whose efforts the eliminations were made, 

 instead of being thwarted, may do whatever his sinister 

 motives may pernjfit. 



It is commonly supposed that the conservation of 

 the water supply and the maintenance of an equable 

 flow in the streams of the country are of interest chiefly 

 to the irrigationists ; the placer miner in this connection 

 is forgotten. But he is an important factor in the 

 nation's prosperity. Without an adequate water sup- 

 ply, he cannot conduct his operations successfully, no 

 matter whether his work be done with the primitive 



