Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1878-04-10
Timber Thieves.

There is law prohibiting the whole
sale organized ravage of the government
property in timber, and the Secretary
of the Interior has very properly sought
to enforce it. For this performance of
plain duty he has been scurriously
attacked in the Senate, and the appro-
priation for the due enforcement of the
law, has been reduced to $5OOO AS
the Secretary truly says:
"What the act really does is to render
the government unable to execute the
law, the validity and justice of which
have never been questioned until the
present time. Such an act will be con-
sidercd as virtually a proclamation to
timber depredators IN all the length
and breadth of the country now to 60 in
and make themselves comfortable, as
they are assured that the government
will no longer have the means to inter-
fere with them"
The Secretary adds that the time will
come when the indiscriminate destruc-
ton of the forests in the mountain re-
gions of the Territories will be sorely
regretted by the inhabitants. for it can
hardly fail to be attended with disastrous
consequences.
| There has been an effort in connec-
ton with this debate to cover the neces-
sary agents Of the government with
odium as spies and pimps and inform
ers. Nothing is more evident than
that if the property of the government
in the remote territories is to be pro-
tected, there must be local watchmen.
There must be agents who see the theft
in question, and who report it to the
proper authorities, and nothing is clear
er than that if they are denounced and
stigmatized IN congress as an odious
class, they will certainly be considered
and treated as an Odions class by the
timber thieves. When these gentry
States considers the secretary of the in
terror to be the real offender, and that
they are poor innocents trying to pick
up scanty living, they will give the
agents of the government an exceeding
| ly warm welcome.
| This is not an agreeable illustration
of the wisdom Of the senate at time
when there is an evident disposition to
array the poor against the rich and la
Dor against capital We have all be-
come familiar with that Outcast the
"bloated bondholder," the wretch-gen-
orally a widow or an orphan-who holds
the promise of the United States,
and insolently expects it to be faith
fully and fully redeemed. And this
senatorial sympathy for timber thieves
and organized depredators upon the
public property will but tend to
strengthen the feeling that property is a
very questionable affair and that as to
stealing, it is a virtue much maligned
by "reformers" and "idealists" The
attempt to convict the secretary Of the
interior of harshly expressing the
starving frontiersman who takes a
handful of the public wood to boil the
domestic pot, while he is loftiIy bearing
the flag to the Pacific shore, was a
ludicrous failure The secretary in
stantly showed that he had not only
not laid his hand upon the honest
settler, but that in arresting the whole
sale spoliation Of timber lands he was
simply enforcing law of congress.
Nor has anybody. who has read the de-
bate the least doubt that the whole
affair is simply disgraceful attempt to
discredit the secretary-an attempt,
happily which has totally failed, and
which has only served to show that he
is diligently and efficiently doing his
duty, an otfense for which he is assailed
by republican senators.-Harper's Week