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trolling water powers throughout the West. Being a blanket 
order the total area necessarily included many small areas of 
private land, which being owned in fee simple by .individuals 
obviously could not be affected by the withdrawal, although em- 
braced within the total area covered by the order. Soon after 
coming into office Secretary Ballinger revoked this order and 
turned back into the class of land open for entry a considerable 
part of the area that had been withdrawn. This led to protests 
from the Forest Service and others, as the result of which, after 
some delay, a portion of the original area was again withdrawn. 
One of the contentions made in regard to Secretary Ballinger is 
that the opening up of these lands gave unnecessary opportunity 
to certain corporations to make filings on land controlling streams 
from which hydroelectric energy can be developed. About this 
time, too. Secretary Ballinger revoked an arrangement between 
the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Forest Service, whereby the 
forest lands belonging to certain tribes were being managed for 
the benefit of the Indians by the trained men of the Forest Ser- 
vice, under forest regulations. The Secretary claimed that this 
transfer of authority was not permissible, although it had previ- 
ously been approved by the Secretaries of Agriculture and of the 
Interior. This action led to more ill feeling between the depart- 
ments, which was still further added to by the charges made in 
August by Mr. L. R. Glavis, Chief of the Field Division of the 
Land Office, that the high officials of the Interior Department 
were unduly favoring the claimants of certain valuable coal lands 
in Alaska known as the Cunningham claims. The gist of this 
matter is that within the boundaries of one of the National for- 
ests of Alaska are highly valuable coal fields. Many of the 
entries made on these lands are suspected to have been fraudu- 
lent, through dummy entrymen and the like, but the claimants 
were pressing for the issuance of patents. Subsequent to his 
resignation as Land Commissioner and prior to his appointment 
as Secretary, Mr. Ballinger had been retained as counsel for the 
Cunningham interests. Briefly, Glavis’ charges are that on his 
return to office the Secretary unduly favored these claimants. 
Mr. Glavis submitted his charges directly to the President, who in 
a long and carefully worded letter, issued in September, stated 
tl'at he failed to find the charges substantiated. Accordingly he 
exonerated Secretary Ballinger of all blame. Glavis was there- 
upon dismissed from the public service. At the same time 
President Taft issued a letter endorsing the policy of Mr. Pinchot 
— Secretary Ballinger and Mr. Pinchot having crossed swords a 
few days earlier at the Irrigation Congress at Spokane and at 
other meetings. 
Ever since the early summer Collier’s Weekly, in company 
with two or three other magazines, had been waging a campaign 
of increasing hostility against Secretary Ballinger. This appar- 
ently culminated in an article by Glavis, published during the 
