On May 16, 1912, George E. Chamberlain [Ore.] spoke in the Senate in connection with an appropriation bill for the Agricultural Department in defence of the conservation of natural resources by the nation, but against abuses that had grown up under it.

NATIONAL CONSERVATION AND ITS ABUSES

SENATOR CHAMBERLAIN

This should not be considered as a political question or as a partisan question. Both the great political parties of this country are committed to the question of the conservation of our natural resources. I will read the plank of the Democratic party adopted at Denver in its last national convention on this subject, as well as the plank adopted by the Republican party in its national convention at Chicago.

REPUBLICAN PLATFORM, 1908-CONSERVATION OF FORESTS

We indorse the movement inaugurated by the Administration for the conservation of the natural resources. We approve of measures to prevent the waste of timber. We commend the work now going on for the reclamation of arid lands, and reaffirm the Republican policy of the free distribution of the available areas of the public domain to the landless settler. No obligation of the future is more insistent and none will result in greater blessings to posterity. In the line of this splendid undertaking is the future duty equally imperative to enter upon a systematic improvement upon a large and comprehensive plan just to all persons of the country of the waterways, harbors, and Great Lakes, whose natural adaptability to the increasing traffic of the land is one of the greatest gifts of benign Providence.

DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM, 1908-NATURAL RESOURCES

We repeat the demand for internal development and for the conservation of our natural resources contained in previous platforms, the enforcement of which Mr. Roosevelt has vainly sought from a reluctant party; and to that end we insist upon the preservation, protection, and replacement of needed forests, the preservation of the public domain of home seekers, the protection of the national resources in timber, coal, iron, and oil against monopolistic control, the development of our waterways for navigation, and every other useful purpose, including the irrigation of arid lands, the reclamation of swamp lands, the clarification of streams, the development of water power and the preservation of electric power generated by this natural force, from the control of monopoly; and to such end we urge the exercise of all powers-national, State, and municipalboth separately and in coöperation.

We insist upon a policy of administration of our forest reserves which shall relieve it of the abuses which have arisen thereunder, and which shall, as far as practicable, conform to the police regulations of the several

States wherein the reserves are located, which shall enable homesteaders as of right to occupy and acquire title to all portions thereof which are especially adapted to agriculture, and which shall furnish a system of timber sales available as well to the private citizen as to the large manufacturer and consumer.

I take the position, Mr. President, that the forest service has been criticized, and very severely criticized, for a condition of things for which it is not at all to blame. I am willing to admit that in the administration of the land laws of the United States not only are the subordinate officers sometimes too arbitrary, but this criticism applies as well to the heads of the land and many other departments. Technical and arbitrary rulings not infrequently make it impossible for a man to perfect his title to public lands, where he is making an honest endeavor to acquire a home.

I am also willing to agree with the Senator from Idaho [William E. Borah] when he repudiates the suggestion that every man who attempts to secure a home in the West is a thief, and I only differ from him in this respect, that I do not think that that charge is generally made. Whenever and wherever it is made it is usually by persons who do not understand the situation in the West.

An investigation will disclose that where individuals have been guilty of fraudulently acquiring lands under either the homestead or preëmption acts, and in a great many cases under the timber and stone act, they have been the homeless hirelings and agents of timber syndicates or others in the East who have been interested in acquiring a part of the public domain for speculative purposes.

Now, Mr. President, I make the broad statement that the Forestry Bureau and the Agricultural Department are not responsible in the first instance for the wrongs which have grown up under the forest reserve system. Congress itself is and has been responsible, and it is responsible now, wherever these evils exist, for it has it in its power to correct them, and it ought to correct them. As a matter of fact, there has not been a single piece of constructive or corrective legislation suggested except on the floor of the Senate in the heat of discussion, and that has not had the consideration it ought to have had when it affects so great a national question.

The act authorizing the President by proclamation to create forest reserves was passed March 3, 1891. The creation of these reserves was recognized as almost a necessity at that time, and the President proceeded, in pursuance of the power vested in

him, to create these reserves in order to protect the great wealth of timber and mineral resources against monopolization by those who wanted to acquire them for speculative purposes.

In the creation of these reserves it became necessary, Mr. President, to include lands that were owned by entrymen under the several Federal statutes, railroad and wagon road grants, and others who had acquired holdings before the reserve was created. Now, let us note the evolution and development of a great national wrong under an act that was beneficent in its purposes.

Occasionally there would be a homestead near the top of a mountain or on a mountainside or in an isolated valley at the time of an executive proclamation creating a reserve. These holdings were, of course, not extinguished by the creation of the reserves, but where there was one private holder or one entryman under the land laws there were hundreds of thousands of acres that belonged to railroad and wagon road grant companies and others who, through mesne conveyances, had acquired title from them.

Then began to be heard a plea in behalf of the poor entryman, who had a home in the center of a reserve without possibility of having any neighbors or churches or schools; that he ought to be protected, and allowed to surrender his little holding in the reserve, which could never be otherwise than isolated; and that he should be permitted to select in lieu thereof other lands outside of the reserve, where he would have the benefit of neighbors, schools, and churches. That was a plausible plea for the entryman, and nobody on earth could object to allowing that entryman to release his land to the Government of the United States and to select in lieu thereof an equal area in some other part of the public domain. The same plea is being made for the poor settler now as a reason for abandoning the forest reserve policy. It looks ominous, Mr. President. The unwritten history of that plea is that it originated, not by the fireside of the poor entryman, but in the office of a great railroad company in the Middle West; it was gotten up, not for the benefit of the small holder, but for the purpose of enabling the big grant corporations, railroads, and others, and their successors in interest to release their holdings within the forest reserves, and to take up in lieu thereof other vacant Government lands in other sections of the country, which were far more valuable for all purposes than were the lands within the reserves. This was the origin of the indemnity selection or lieu land law. It was conceived in iniquity and resulted

in robbing the people of untold millions in land and money. On June 4, 1897, Congress passed what was known as the indemnity selection law, ostensibly in the interest of the entryman who had his home within the forest reserve, allowing him and incidentally all others who had holdings within the reserves to release their holdings to the Government and to take up lands elsewhere in lieu of the lands which they might surrender to the Government.

Bear in mind that this law, ostensibly in the interest of the settler, was not confined to him. It would have been harmless with such a limitation. But it applied to the grant companies of all kinds and their successors in interest and millions of acres of land in these reserves, consisting of lava beds, denuded forests, and rugged peaks, were released under the act of 1897 to the United States, and lands valuable for agricultural purposes, for timber, for minerals, for coal, and for oil, surveyed and unsurveyed, were taken up in every State in the Union where there were vacant lands by these companies that hastened to surrender their holdings within the reserve and to take advantage of a law which it was pretended was in the interest of the settler.

REED SMOOT [Utah].-Mr. President, I know in some of the States, after the law was passed and was in operation perhaps for four years or more, there was a move made by men to enter lands and to make selections in forest reserves under State selections that were not agricultural in character, and the selections were made with no other view than to have them turned back to the Government, and in lieu of them to select lands outside.

JAMES P. CLARKE [Ark.].-I think it would tend to a clearer understanding of just how this abuse came about to repeat a brief statement made by the late Senator from Montana, Mr. Carter. He said that in the construction of the act of 1897 the Secretary of the Interior made a ruling that was obviously correct, that it never was the intention of Congress that the railroads holding arid lands under their early grants should be permitted to surrender them wholesale and to take certificates that would enable them to file on better lands elsewhere in the United States. That ruling was accepted by the railroads for a number of years. Subsequently, Mr. Hitchcock, of Missouri, came to be Secretary of the Interior, and, without any sort of foundation for his action, he reversed that ruling and permitted the surrender of the railroad grants and the selection of lands elsewhere. Arkansas fell a victim to the

extent of 270,000 acres of land to that ruling made by Mr. Secretary Hitchcock.

SENATOR CHAMBERLAIN.-This thing had become so notorious and so infamous in every Western State that a demand went up everywhere that this old indemnity selection law should be abolished and repealed. What happened? On the 3d of March, 1905-I want the Senate to notice the wording of this repealing clause there was passed and approved "An act prohibiting the selection of timber lands in lieu of lands in forest reserves," which is as follows:

Be it enacted, etc., That the acts of June 4, 1897, June 6, 1900, and March 3, 1901, are hereby repealed so far as they provide for the relinquishment, selection, and patenting of lands in lieu of tracts covered by an unperfected bona fide claim or patent within a forest reserve.

If they had stopped there the act would have repealed the indemnity selection acts and would have stopped the looting of the public domain, but it goes on:

But the validity of contracts entered into by the Secretary of the Interior prior to the passage of this act shall not be impaired: Provided, That selections heretofore made in lieu of lands relinquished to the United States may be perfected and patents issued therefor the same as though this act had not been passed, and if for any reason not the fault of the party making the same any pending selection is held invalid another selection for like quality of land may be made in lieu thereof.

Here was a qualified repeal of the indemnity selection acts that were on the statute books at that time, but it excepted from the effect of the repeal contracts which had been made by the Secretary of the Interior in the face of all sorts of protests, whereby the railroad and lumber companies and others surrendered to the Government of the United States lands which, in many instances, were absolutely denuded of timber, and got the right to select other lands out of the public domain in lieu thereof. The repealing clause did not name these companies. It would not have been policy to have named them in the repealing clause, because it would have aroused a protest in and out of Congress against legislation which had for its purpose the protection of the Santa Fe Railroad Co. and others instead of the protection of the citizens of the country.

DUNCAN U. FLETCHER [Fla.].-I think, under the circumstances, it would be a little bit enlightening at least to know who was Secretary of the Interior at that time, and whether