occupants. It is further true that large quantities of vacant land are for sale by the railroads and other grantees. There is no immediate danger of a land famine. There is abundant cause for criticism of the system adopted by the United States, but it should rightfully be directed rather against the manner in which the laws have worked than against their purpose. Since 1841 the lands have nominally been reserved for actual settlers; but practice has shown grave defects in the settlement lawsdefects which Congress has no will to remedy. No man can legally preempt land or take up a homestead more than once; but this limitation is very difficult to guard, and perjury and fraud are alarmingly frequent. No one man can legally acquire more than 1120 acres of land from the government, if any one else wants the land; 160 acres as a preëmption, as much more as a homestead, another quarter section as a tree claim, and a section of 640 acres as a desert-land claim. Actually, single individuals and companies own large estates, which a few years ago were in the hands of the government. The accumulation of the large tracts is often brought about by fraud, but much oftener through the mistaken generosity of the government or through defective land laws. It is not always necessary to hire men fraudulently to take up land for the company. In Texas, the state has sold its lands in its own way, often in large blocks. The school lands and the scrip for bounty warrants have legally been used for locating wide extending estates. The railroad lands, although not in compact tracts, can be used as a nucleus for a large accumulation; and, in a country where land is cheap and money dear, the patient, long-headed capitalist can buy up valuable claims in a legitimate manner. The chief source of the present trouble in the West lies in the fact that the government never recognized that grazing land must be sold and occupied under different conditions from ordinary arable lands. The first comers have been allowed to take up the water fronts. Any comprehensive system of irrigation of large areas for the benefit of future land seekers has thus been forever prevented. The possessor of the rivers and water-holes has gained control of the country behind his claim. In such a contest, the largest and richest concerns have a great advantage. There was a time when the government might have laid out, for sale or lease, large tracts of grazing lands, each with a sufficient water front. It is now too late. The fundamental criticism upon our public-land policy is, not that we have sold our lands cheap, not that we have freely given them away, but that the gifts have in too many cases inured to the benefit of those whom the government meant to ignore. The "land grabber " is, in most cases, simply taking advantage of the chances which a defective system has cast in the way of shrewd and forehanded or unscrupulous men. The difficulty is certainly not in the land office, which, in the midst of perplexing complications, has striven hard to protect our lands. The fault lies at the door of the Congress of the United States, which has the power, but not the will, to correct notorious defects in our system. Still farther back, the fault is with the free citizens of the Republic, who have been too much occupied to insist that there should be a comprehensive land policy, providing for the equitable disposition of all classes of the public lands. 15. The Case of Forests. It is now generally admitted that public ownership of forests stands upon a very different footing from public ownership of agricultural land. Leroy-Beaulieu, for instance, who supports strongly the view that public ownership of agricultural domains is unwise, holds that the case is otherwise with forests. He says:1 Up to this point we have studied only the agricultural domain of the state, but the greater part of the land owned by states consists of forests. These differ very greatly from agricultural holdings. They are much better adapted for state management because they have to be administered on a large scale, methodically, and by scientific rules. The ability of the state to manage forests is better established than its ability to administer agricultural properties. In the former case the state. seems to have the natural mission to preserve this form of wealth, which is so necessary to the country and so likely to be destroyed by private individuals. The state, since it is in 1 Traité de la science des finances, Pt. I, Bk. 1, ch. 4. Reproduced by per mission of the author. modern societies the only immutable thing, the only agent to represent posterity and to guard the interests of coming generations, does not depart from its legislative functions when it preserves forest property the maintenance of which is considered advantageous to the prosperity of the country. At this point we should not take the purely financial, what the Germans call the "cameral," point of view. Although forests may be a source of revenue to a state, and, as we shall show, a source of increasing revenue, this is merely an incidental consideration; it would not be enough to justify state ownership of forests. And it is no longer necessary to consider the question from the administrative point of view, with reference to the needs of the public service. Formerly one of the reasons assigned for state forest preservation was that the navy needed the most perfect ship timber, which could with difficulty be found in private forests. But now that ships are built chiefly of iron and steel, this argument has lost its force. In truth it never had much weight, since a state could always purchase abroad, by offering a suitable price, the ship timber which it needed. And, finally, the subject should not be studied from what may be called the "democratic" point of view. Sometimes state preservation of forests has been urged in the interests of the consumers, especially of the lower classes, to whom wood is an article of prime necessity, the price of which ought not to be too high. But the state is no more bound to insure to consumers a reasonable price for wood than for grain; and, besides, it could be argued that while the state reduced the price of wood by preserving a large forest area, it was raising the prices of grain and meat by reducing the area devoted to producing these commodities. The true point of view is that of the influence of the forests upon the climate, the flow of rivers, and the general conditions of production. If it is demonstrated that the complete disappearance or the serious diminution of the forests results in more frequent drouths and turns rivers into devastating torrents, it is evident that the important interest of the regulation of the water supply justifies state ownership of forests. The disappearance of these forest reserves, which regulate naturally the flow of the rivers, would injure the surrounding country, ... deprive it of part of its productivity, and decrease its salubrity. Now these facts have been established conclusively. . . . They have been observed in France, particularly in Provence, in Algiers, in various European countries, such as Austria and Italy, and in America also, especially in Brazil. Experience proves that private owners generally are very much inclined to cut trees, and very little inclined to plant them, at least in large quantities. Forest destruction offers the allurement, often deceptive, of great increase in the value of the land when it is transformed into open fields; and a great number of landowners are seduced by this prospect, especially peasants. Upon the other hand, tree planting and sowing upon a large scale, since they entail an immediate expense which will yield no return until the end of a long period of years, are undertaken only by men of foresight and of easy circumstances.1 - The con 16. National Forest Reserves in the United States. ditions just described have led the United States to establish national forest reserves of which the following brief account has been published by the Forest Service: 2 Forest reserves are for the purpose of preserving a perpetual supply of timber for home industries, preventing destruction of the forest cover which regulates the flow of streams, and protecting local residents from unfair competition in the use of forest and range. They are patrolled and protected, at government expense, for the benefit of the community and the home. builder. 1 At the present day the forest area of the German Empire is about 13,956,000 hectares. Of this 33.3 per cent belongs to the royal or state forests and 15.6 to various local governing bodies. Private owners, individuals, or associations hold 51.1 per cent. Elster, Wörterbuch der Volkswirthschaft, I, 737- In France the forest holdings of the central government amount to about 1,070,000 hectares, and those of the communes amount to about 2,058,000 hectares. Bastable, Public Finance, 171. From a financial point of view, income from forests is generally not important, except in some of the German states. The Prussian budget for 1903 estimated the gross receipts from forests at 106,854,000 marks, and the net receipts at 60,000,000 marks. Bastable, 172. — ED. 2 The Use of National Forest Reserves, 7-11. Published by the Forest Service (1905). We know that the welfare of every community is dependent upon a cheap and plentiful supply of timber; that a forest cover is the most effective means of maintaining a regular stream flow for irrigation and other useful purposes; and that the permanence of the live-stock industry depends upon the conservative use of the range. The injury to all persons and industries which results from the destruction of forests by fire and careless use is a matter of history in older countries, and has long been the cause of anxiety and loss in the United States. The protection of the forest resources still existing is a matter of urgent local and national importance. This is shown by the exhaustion and removal of lumbering centers, often leaving behind desolation and depression in business; the vast public and private losses through unnecessary forest fires; the increasing use of lumber per capita by a still more rapidly increasing population; the decrease in the summer flow of streams just as they become indispensable to manufacture or irrigation; and the serious decrease in the carrying capacity of the summer range. It cannot be doubted that, as President Roosevelt has said, "the forest problem is, in many ways, the most vital internal problem of the United States." As early as 1799 Congress provided for the purchase of timber lands to supply the needs of the navy, and in 1817 further legislation directed the setting apart of public lands for the same purpose, and provided penalties for the unauthorized cutting of any public timber. Other acts, from time to time, made similar provisions for setting apart forest land for specific purposes, but the first attempt to secure a comprehensive administration of the forests on the public domain was in 1871, by a bill introduced in the Forty-second Congress, which failed of passage. In 1876, $2,000 was appropriated to employ a competent man to investigate timber conditions in the United States, and on June 30, 1886, an act was approved creating a Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. On July 1, 1901, this division became the Bureau of Forestry (now the Forest Service), employing practically all the trained foresters in the United States, and engaged in almost every branch of forest work in every state and territory, except the actual administration of the government forest lands. These remained in the Department of the First Reading |