tions and determinations with respect to this law. I have prepared a written document here for you. I should prefer to read it.

Mrs. Prost. You may proceed.

Mr. BETTWY. The time limitation imposed limits me to a few broad generalities. It is a matter of sincere appreciation that I may appear before you, recognizing the considerable inconvenience that all of you must suffer in order to present yourselves at places convenient for us to be able to express our viewpoints to you.

As the subject is of fundamental importance to us, since this planned legislation contemplates absentee management and control of local life on approximately three-fourths of Arizona land, your presence here must be valued by all the people of Arizona. The time limitation imposed this morning has caused me, as I have said, to limit my comments to broad generalities, and yet that is fortunate, as the issues are few and of most broad influence.

The matter of today is not purely an inquiry into the defects or merits of the proposed law, but equally an inquiry of what, if anything, is wrong with the old laws; consequently, cannot they be modernized with minor changes? Or, if the old laws must go, does it then necessarily follow that the new laws be more restrictive and more complicated.

I fear that to solely direct this hearing and your attention to the merits and defects of the proposed law would admit a very erroneous assumption that the old laws are obsolete, bad, unworkable, or otherwise undesirable.

Speaking as a native of Arizona and one who has had specialized practical experience in the public land field, both State and Federal, for over 10 years, I can summarize that the existing laws with minor changes and strengthened by more complete published administrative procedures and followed with strict time schedules represent fair and workable laws.

However, if that presumption is correct and the old laws are obsolete, then I feel the proposed laws clearly seek to give us even more obsolete and unworkable conditions. If there is obsolescence in the old laws, it is not due to the laws but it is due to changes that have occurred in Arizona during the life of those laws. One change is that Arizona as a member of the family of the United States has reached that point where it should be accepted into that family as an adult.

Arizona now looks forward with considerable pride and anticipation to its 50th birthday in February of next year. We also look forward to the maturity to which those years entitle us. The time is overdue for Arizona and its people to be emancipated from a guardianship that withholds 75 percent of the land assets from our control and administration and from conditions that under the proposed law would be equivalent to the most restrictive type of spendthrift trust. We have literally been treated as a second class State during all of these years, and it is clear that our maturity, progress, and national contributions entitled that that status also be changed. It is time to eradicate these inequities that exist among the States and to allow each State the full right to operate its own household.

The original and other subsequent States were sooner considered sophisticated enough to undertake the administration of their own land. Arizona and its people own approximately only one-fourth the

land area of our State; surely a State with only one-fourth land control is only one-fourth a State.

It is my opinion, and I believe that of many others, that the fundamental question before you is not whether new Federal land management laws are needed, but whether it is now time for legislation that would orderly and promptly transfer all unreserved Federal lands to the respective States.

Why not give us this universally accepted right of self-government and the right of administering our own lands as a gift on our 50th birthday? I can see no better time to recognize us as equals among our other United States.

Until such legislation can be effected, I personally beg of you to reject all proposals of new legislation that will saddle my State with any more restrictive laws. The proposed laws woud allow one office to plan, subdivide, forever lease, and naturally forever control every acre of now Federal ground. This is Arizona alone represents about a 54-million-acre potential. That over all the public land State that appointive officer would become landlord is probably without parallel in the free world.

In addition, the proposed law has departed from our equitable standard of the reasonable man and has put this imponderable task into the hands of one appointee with merely the standard of his personal opinion as to what in every case is practicable, feasible, and reasonable.

Such a man, which is not the case for us at this time, happily, need not even be a resident of the State over which he exercises that control, and what is even more ridiculous, he need never see it or be seen in it, and the whole program of planning, zoning, and perpetually controlling the growth in these States can be set up on a remote control pushbutton system which is several thousand miles away from the people being affected.

Such a law would obviously deny all but the very few who could afford it the opportunity to be heard, and it would deny us all of the right to look at, live with, select, and periodically reject the administrator most related to our daily life, that is, our landlord.

Surely no Governor of any of the States that would be affected by this legislation has equivalent powers, and this is most significant upon reflection: that the people of these States have the right to select that Governor by election, and all during his tenure they have the right to reconsider his qualifications.

I have one further point to plead. I plead most urgently against your setting the precedent that the enactment of this law will establish. Once it becomes common practice to wipe out overnight 75 to 100 years of law and to destroy with it all of the traditions, judicial interpretation, the dependency upon the reliability and continuity of our laws, we will begin to live like and do business like a tiny banana republic. Such conduct can only destroy the domestic tranquillity. I have had the opportunity to live in a land where such procedure has been common, and it cannot be expressed too repeatedly how such practices destroy initiative, vigor, and stifles long range plans. Many capable observers have found that as a fundamental reason for the stagnation of otherwise bountifully endowed lands.

Arizona, the growing State in the Union, must not want to live in a banana republic atmosphere. The existing laws are traditional with our vigor and our enterprise; they are time tested, debated, and supported by generations of interpretations. They are basically good laws and they are allied closely with the character of the people who have long done the impossible in the West.

Consequently, in closing, I repeat that if any major overhaul of the law is due at this time; its purpose should be to emancipate us as children and give us our birthright as a State to control our own lands and our own destinies. We welcome these responsibilities and accept the challenges which they offer. [Applause.]

Mrs. Prost. Thank you very much.

Are there questions of Mr. Bettwy?
Mr. DOMINICK. Madam Chairman.

Mrs. ProST. The gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. DOMINICK. I want to compliment Mr. Bettwy on a very eloquent statement. But, Mr. Bettwy, the public lands do not belong to Arizona; they belong to everybody in the country. Granted that Arizona has the right to certain public lands which have been established and set up for it by statute; nevertheless, the amount of public land within Arizona is far in excess of those.

So I do not think we can properly say that they are Arizona's land any more than I can say, which I often do, and should not, that they are Colorado's lands in Colorado.

This is the problem we have.

Let me ask you a couple of questions. We have now acting as the landlord for all of the public lands the Bureau of Land Management. I have found at least the Bureau of Land Management is a most responsible agency and tries to take care of these lands. I have my difficulties with them and I suppose everybody else does, but they have done a good job, by and large.

I would presume under this law, if we get it through, what we are trying to do is to enable the disposal of some of the excess public lands to the people in the area where they are located. So again, presumably this would be of some assistance to Arizona rather than not being of assistance to it because it would give more land to the people in Arizona for development purposes.

Do you have any objection to this kind of principle?
Mr. BETTWY. No, sir; not at all in principle.

Mr. DOMINICK. Is your fear then the power that is given to the Secretary of the Interior with regard to classification in this bill?

Mr. BETTWY. My primary fear of this law is that this section 6(a), which I would like to read, it is very short-I am sure you are aware of it:

Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, the Secretary, with concurrence. is hereby authorized, by contract or otherwise, to cause subdivisional plans to be prepared for and to have subdivided any public lands which he may classify under this Act as chiefly valuable for urban purposes or occupancy purposes. I think fundamentally, Mr. Congressman, this gives the power for any Secretary to end up being a third planning and zoning commission in every county we have and we we will have to go to Washington and talk to him about it.

Mr. DOMINICK. You are, then, against the Federal Government entering into the subdivision or development business?

Mr. BETTWY. Yes.

Mr. DOMINICK. If the lands could be sold to the State or to a municipality, do you feel the same way about those organizations taking on those responsibilities?

Mr. BETTWY. No; subject to the restrictions that are imposed, I am in favor of the land ultimately being received by the individual and owned by the individual as freely as it possibly can be given. Whether it would be transferred down through the State through local municipalities, I would see no objection to that if there weren't strings held back on these lands.

Mr. DOMINICK. Mr. Bettwy, I am not attempting to attack you in any way, but are you active in subdivision work in any way yourself? Mr. BETTWY. Not at all. I wish I were.

Mr. DOMINICK. That is all I have.

Mrs. ProST. Are there further questions of Mr. Bettwy?

Thank you very much, Mr. Bettwy.

Our next witness was to be Mr. Edward Kuykendall, of Phoenix, Ariz. However, Mr. Kuykendall could not be here so he has asked his wife to give his statement for him, and she will be accompanied to the witness stand by Mr. Moses Campbell.

STATEMENT OF MRS. EDWARD KUYKENDALL, PHOENIX, ARIZ.

Mrs. KUYKENDALL. I am Mrs. Edward Kuykendall of Phoenix, Ariz. My concern in connection with the change in the law of our Federal lands is primarily connected with the Homestead Act and the elimination of the moratorium that has been placed on the Homestead Act in the State of Arizona and possibly all over the United States.

I have a few written statements. I am not an attorney. I do not know that much about the laws, but I do know, as a citizen of this country, that the Homestead Act has helped build our country and it was not removed from the books. Yet the Bureau of Land Management in recent years has taken unto itself to make it impossible for the citizens to acquire this large amount of land that should be available to the ordinary citizen. They will not let him qualify to acquire land under the Homestead Act.

Very recently in this particular community here in Arizona over around 600 of us were denied the privilege of trying to comply with the Homestead Act. And although they let us file and pay a filing fee, up to 600 or more of us, then within a 30-day period they refused and gave us the privilege of appealing. Then they waited about 18 months and turned around and said, "Because of the water situation, you can't have it, and we don't think it is worth your while to bother any further." Then they sent us back our money.

I feel like this segment of our population has been deprived of our heritage and, for that reason, I am here today to speak in connection with our laws and see if, in making the changes that we can, if we can give back to our segment that particular right or heritage.

The few statements I have are not very long. I will read them at this time.

Mrs. ProST. You may proceed.
Mrs. KUYKENDALL (reading):

1. I object to the provision in H.R. 7788 that would permit the Secretary of the Interior to sell to individuals at public auction tracts of land up to 1,280 acres chiefly valuable for urban or business purposes. Before the moratorium, there were many better ways of putting the land into private use under the existing laws.

2. The Department of the Interior U.S. Bureau of Land Management has refused to let qualified citizens homestead the land under the existing homestead law because they would draw down an excessive amount of water. Under the proposed provision which will let tracts up to 1,280 acres be made available for urban and business proposals, this will use a much greater amount of water than the few homesteads which cover only 160-acre tracts.

3. The water supply is not critical in these areas, and the Bureau of Land Management admits this fact by offering this land for sale at public auction, in tracts up to 1,280 acres.

4. Have we forgotten the record and history of those who settled the West, under the laws that we are now trying to eliminate? The heritage of our people is in the land and the people have been made strong when they are attached to the land.

5. The idea of selling the land at auction creates a great possibility for graft, windfalls, favoritism, scandals, and embarrassment to our Federal Government. If there is good feeling for the general welfare of the common man in the effort to change the law, why not allot the land to the large number of persons on the welfare of our country, who would be willing and able to develop the land-if our Government would arrange an acceptable method by which these people could become attached to the land and become landowners.

6. We as citizens of the United States should study our existing laws with the thought in mind that if a change is to be made, it should be done for the good and the welfare of the masses and not with the idea of favoritism to any particular group.

Mrs. ProST. Thank you very much, Mrs. Kuykendall.

Are there questions? Thanks again.

Our next witness is Mr. Walter E. Dial of Phoenix, Ariz.

STATEMENT OF WALTER E. DIAL, PHOENIX, ARIZ.

Mr. DIAL. Madam Chairman, I have requested my appearance, and thanks very much for allowing me to come here today to discuss just small tracts, why I feel the Small Tract Act should not be repealed in its entirety.

As my statement to you folks here will show, I have applied for small tracts in my name, many of my friends, and several clients.

The reason I feel the Small Tract Act should not be completely done away with, there are many fine things to be brought out. It should be modified and changed by all means. We have allowed land to get out of our hands and it made an eyesore to some communities and it has been a terrific asset to others. By the changing of it and by the changing of the method in applying for these small tracts, I think we would see a terrific change. In other words, any man that worked like I did as a land locator or worked for a filing fee should be licensed by the Bureau. In other words, he must be able to pass a test or go through some strenuous checking before he is entitled to go out and squander the Federal land and get a bunch of people involved.