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stead entries made by their employés and afterward assigned to the companies. 
Steam saw-mills are established promiscuously on public lands for the manufacture 
of lumber procured from the public domain by miscellaneous trespassers. Large 
operators employ hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of men cutting Government 
timber and sawing it up into lumber and shingles, which, when needed and _ pur- 
chased by local citizens, can only be obtained by them at prices governed by tie 
market value of timber brought over expensive transportation routes from points of 
legitimate supply. 
Under cover of the privilege of obtaining timber and other material for the con- 
struction of “right-of-way ” and land-grant railroads, large quantities of timber have 
been eut and removed for export and sale. Immense damage is also inflicted by the 
destruction of small growing trees and the spread of forest fires, resulting from a fail- 
ure to clear up the land and dispose of the brush from felled trees, even in the cases 
of authorized cutting. 
And in regard to the timber-land act of June 3, 1878: 
It has operated simply to promote the premature destruction of forests, the ship- 
ment of their products out of the country, or for holding lands and the lumber needed 
by the citizens at the speculative prices demanded by foreign and domestic corporations 
acquiring a monopoly of the timber lands of the Government at nominal rates through 
easy evasion of the terms of the law. 
Why, as a mere business proposition, timber lands worth at lowest averages from 
$10 to $25 per acre for the standing trees or, according to accessibility and class and 
quality of timber, worth $25 to $100 per acre should be sold by the Gayernment fur 
$2.50 per acre it is not easy to perceive. ; 
The evils developed in its practical operation are inherent in the system and can 
be cured only by a repeal of the law by which they are propagated. 
And, further, in enlarging upon the importance of forest preservation 
in the mountains, he says: 
The Government is now expending large sums of money in attempts to substitute 
by artificial means the regulation of the flow of the Mississippi River which nature 
had provided in the dense woods originally surrounding the sources of its numerous 
tributaries. 
That wise and speedy measures should be adopted for the preservation of forests on 
the public domain is in my opinion an incontrovertible proposition. To this end 
I recommend the immediate withdrawal from appropriation, sale, or disposal of all 
the public forests and oflands valuable chiefly for timber, subject to future legislation 
for the permanent reservation of designated areas and a more economically-goverved 
disposal of such timber lands or timber as it may not be necessary indefinitely to re- 
serve. 
In 1886: 
Depredations upon the public timber by powerful corporations, wealthy mill-men, © 
lumber companies, and unscrupulous monopolists are still being committed to an 
alarming extent and to the great detriment of the public at large. 
An immense pressure is brought to bear upon the legislative and executive branches 
of the Government to the end of securing immunity for past and unlimited privileges 
for future spoliations of public timber lands, all ostensibly urged in the interest of 
bona fide ‘‘agriculturists” or ‘“‘miners,” but notoriously in fact to forward gigartic 
schemes of speculation and monopoly in the remaining forests of the United States. 
Replying to a request for a change of construction, so as to permit 
mill-owners to cut timber for their mills on land that might be mineral, 
the Commissioner writes: 
The act itself is injudicious and entirely too broad, and its repeal or modification 
has been recommended by you (the Secretary) for the reason that its provisions ig- 

