The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-06-03

claims from obtaining them, and, in this way preventing competition, con trol the market for the timber which the government presents to them.
 The largest and wealthiest mining corporation in Montana is now supplied with timber cut principally under the ufactured from trees cut under its au- provisions of this act, and lumber man. thority is sent by 1t to many parts of that state. The bounds of the lands on which authority to cut timber under this act is given are never clearly marked, and there are reasons for be- lieving that little attention is paid to them in actual practice. The act and It's working has favored wealthy cor porations able to pay the government for all the timber they require. It is unjust in its discrimination against the residents of those states and territories which are not included in it's provisions and in its gifts to the competitors of in- dividuals and firms who have acquired timber by the purchase of lands under the timber and stone act of June 8, 1878, or otherwise.
 | The act of June 3, 1878 (20 Stat. L., S9), known generally as the timber and stone act, authorizes the sale of urre- served surveyed but unoccupied timber lands in California, Nevada Oregon and Washington in quantities not ex- ceeding 160 acres to one person or asso- citation of persons at $2.50 an acre, and by the act of August A. 1892 (27 Stat. L., S48), the provisions of this act are ex- tended to embrace all the public land states. Under the workings of these acts great bodies of valuable timber lands speedily passed into the hands of individuals and of corporations and syndicates, domestic and foreign, for purposes of speculation, the govern ment obtaining only small percentage of the actual value of the standing tim | Der. It has been made use of by cor porations and wealthy individuals to secure fraudulently, for the purpose of | manufacturing lumber, or to hold for l speculative purposes, most of the valu- able redwood lands of the California | coast region and great bodies of the se- quoia and sugar pine forests of the Si- erra Nevada and much of the best tim | Der land on Puget Sound has also been taken from the national domain under authority of this act
 Some of the most valuable timber land in the world has thus been ac- quired at mere nominal prices through the medium of dummy entries, for it is a notorious fact that the greater part of the entries under this act have been made in the names of poor and ignor- ant people who have never seen the ! Y.x, IL .,,l.1 T; &pI., fta,> In issuance of the final certificates have transferred their claims to corporatio or individuals dealing In lumber or tim Der lands; and it has been shown that at one time in California regular agents employed by lumbermen were author l ized to offer men fifty dollars apiece to make entries of land covered with red wood timber and deed them to their employers. Similar frauds have been 1 practlced in Oregon and Washington, and in other states, since the extension of the law. This act has robbed the | government of the United States of it's most valuable timber land, worth at market prices many millions of dollars, i for which it has received no adequate return, and has demoralized and degra- ded whole communities.
 By the act of March 3, 1875 dS Stat. L., 492), right of way through the pub | lie lands of the United States is grant ! ed to any railroad company which had filed with the Secretary of the Interior due proof of it's organization. etc, and also the right to take, from lands adia- cent to the line of the road timber ne- cessary for it's construction. Such loose and ambiguous terms as adjacent | lands" and "construction purposes used in this act have served as a cover for illegal speculation in public timber and have fostered it's unlicensed waste and destruction.
 Under the provisions of this act large quantities of timber from the public do- main have been cut and removed for export and sale. Corporations have been formed in which the railroads
 were the principal owners for mnnopo- lizing the timber traffic in the northern
 Rocky Mountains, and these corpora
 tions have cut timber from unsurveyed
 public lands far from the right of way
 of, any railroad and have shipped the product to distant markets. Millions of
 feet of public timber have been unlaw- 1uIly dpprUpEldteu ullueI tllS dCt, IuS elastic term adjacent to the line of railroad having been held to extend to
 any distance where timber could be
 found, and the term construction pur- poses" to- apply not only to the road bed, to to station houses, depots, snow
 sheds, and even to rolling stock
 | The attempts made by the Depart
 ment of the Interior and the courts to
 properly construe the terms adjacent and construction" have resulted in conflicting rulings, and the question is
 still undecided whether adjacent timber
 lands means one or one hundred miles
 from the road, whether it lies laterally
 from the line of the road or from its
 terminus, or whether 1t means land
 conveniently accessible by railways or | waterways; while the term "construc-
 tion" Is held by some authorities to ap- ply only to the roadbed proper and the
 first laying of the tracks, and by others to extend also to subsequent changes of
 gauge and to the construction of
 bridges, snowsheds, stations and
 freight houses. The timber taken from
 the public domain for railroad purposes
 under the provisions of this act has re.
 suited in an enormous waste and the
 unnecessary devastation of forests