The San Francisco call., 1908-04-09


remote as compared to the private
holdings. Indeed. although the ra-
pacious ones would have IL tnouSht
that the withdrawal of the national
forests took the bulk of the coun-
try's timber supply, the fact is that
over four fifths of the forests now
standing are in private hands 1t
follows, then, that sales are not
now as great as they will be when
the more accessible holdings prove
unequal to the demand. Neverthe-
less, the receipts from this source
jumped from $4,000 in 1905 to
$750,000 in 1905.
But, 1t is argued, 1t often has
happened that the forest products
are not the most valuable the soil
can produce. Most of the fertile
farms Of the east have been hewn
from the forest. 'Tt is better TO
have men than trees" roar the
rapacious ones.
This is quite true. Therefore, 1t
comes about that If any man can
anywhere find, in a national forest.
land suitable for agriculture, he can
on it establish his homestead. In
time, and by the usual formalities,
he becomes sole owner of that land
If he discovers mineral land in his
prospecting, he can stake his claims
under the mining laws. The lands
are today as open to genuine set
tlsment as ever, just as are the
forests to genuine use.
We are today spending some fifty
million dollars of the nations
money in big irrigation projects to
reclaim the arid west. What good
are irrigation projects without
water? And whence is the water
coming once the forests are de-
stroyed? Vast electric power pro-
jects are afoot. In California they
take thousands of horsepower
across and up and down that huge
state to the cities lying near the
coast. It is as though Chicago
tapped the Appalachians. And the
source of 1t is in the Sierra re-
serves. All UP and down the noun
tains of the west these private.
public and quasi-public projects are
under way, involving untold mill
lions of dollars, every cent of which
is dependent on water power, and
every drop OF the water power is in
turn dependent on the forest cover.
Last winter in congress there
arose wild and clamorous howl
against the forest policy OF the gov
ernment. All sorts of epithets few.
Evidently somebody's toes had been
trodden upon. The first shrek has
to do with the misnomer reserves"
Senators Hepburn, Clark, Fulton,
Carter and a chorus of less vocifer-
Gus voices mournfully called atten-
tion to the vast solitudes" with
drawn from settlement and from
progress, forever to remain unpro-
ductive. "They will come.'' said
Hepburn, and deliberately sur
round you with one of these beau
tiful estates-this waste of idleness
this game reserve" In this SEN
tence there are FIVE statements, four
of which are wholly false The
national forests are not estates;
they are not wastes they are not
idle; they are not game reserves.
These empty solitudes'' contain
thousands of ranches, villages,
towns, lumber camps and mines. To
herd the seven million cattle that
last season grazed in them was
gathered a multitude of cowboys
In southern California alone fifty
thousand campers enjoyed the ma
tional forests in 1906. Every acre
of agricultural land in the national
forests is open for settlement un-
der the homestead laws.
Temporarily abandoning this ar
gument, the wise ones then
brought forward the undeniable
fact that much land in the ma
tional forests is not timbered.
Call these forest reserves they
cried There's not a stick of
timber on them" Then followed
the usual eloquence. Mr. Hepburn,
the indefatigable, brought forth as
exhibit A a map of Idaho shaded
black and white. The black por-
tions were those included in the
national forests. He called atten-
tion to the large proportion and
wanted to know If it was fair to
"ravish from the settlers so much
of their own domain. Whereupon
Mr. Beveridge of Indiana produced
another map in which the shading
had been carried a little farther
into details. That which on Hey
burns map had been black was
here colored green and brown.
The green represented valuable
forest land; the brown indicated
the burned over districts, abso-