
87 
It is difficult in a thinly-settled country to get proof that will convict of setting 
forest fires. 
In discussing the question of forest management, European examples are not al- 
ways valuable to us; the conditions are very different and our difficulties are greater. 
The Government should take care of the forests on forest principles. 
In portions of the mountain region every alternate section should be reserved for 
forestry purposes, including the planting of forest trees. 
All timber lands at the heads of streams capable of furnishing sufficient water for 
irrigation should be withdrawn from market, and religiously preserved, protected 
and, when necessary, replanted. 
One-half of the public forest lands should be sold to settlers, and the other portions 
placed under the care of experienced foresters and held by the Government forever, 
Local forest officers should be appointed, with power to quell fires, make arrests, 
ete. 
All timber lands should be sold, or else donated to the State, to be disposed of or 
protected under the State laws. 
In the arid regions timber lands should be donated to the respective States. 
The entire control of the forest growth (not the land) should be conferred upon the 
State. The State, being more directly interested in the subject-matter, would be 
better able te adopt such measures as would conserve its forest resources. 
There should be State reserves, with foresters who live in the forests and guard 
them from fires and depredation. The timber should be disposed of under regulation, 
and for the use only of the people of the State, regard being had always for the pres- 
ervation of the forest, so that it be not denuded. 
Timber on public lands should be free to settlers, and no restrictions placed upon 
lumbermen who cut timber only for home consumption. 
Settlers upon the public domain should be allowed to use timber from the pnblie 
lands for their homes and farms before and after perfecting their titles under the 
homestead or pre-emption laws, regardless of the fact that the timber land may be 
designated as “ mineral” or “non-mineral.” This distinction is generally imaginary 
and fictitious and has no value in point of fact. 
Land should be granted to actual settlers only under the homestead law. Al! other 
laws for the settling or disposal of the public domain, including the act relating to 
placer-mining claims, should be repealed. 
Every settler upon the public domain, when he shall have perfected his title to a 
pre-emption or homestead entry, should be allowed to enter at Government price not 
more than 40 acres of timber land in the same district, provided his pre-emption or 
homestead entry shall not have a natural growth of timber upon it sufficient for its 
necessities. 
Repeal the pre-emption law, and make it a misdemeanor for a homesteader to seli 
timber, or suffer it to be cut, more than is absolutely necessary for domestic purposes. 
A system of leasing the public timber lands within clearly-detined boundaries, with 
specific rights and liabilities, under penalties, guarantied by bonds of forfeiture in 
case of non-compliance with the terms of lease, wili prove the most efficient means of 
promoting the interests of American citizens seeking homes in the Rocky Mountain 
region. ; 
Persons cutting Government timber should be required to obtain a permit from the. 
local land office, with safeguards and restrictions to prevent waste or trespass. 
It would be better to allow charcoal-burners and the cutters of mine timbers to 
take living timber from the public domain under proper restrictions, than to encour- 
age the destruction of the forests by fire, in order that they may cut the deadened 
timber as they please. 
Railroads should be required to use dead timber if possible; no question of mere 
convenience should be considered. Some method of chemical preservation should be 
required where ties and bridge timbers are obtained from the public lands. 


