The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-02-08
Report Made By Giff,rd Pin- chOt on Conservation Tells
 What Country Needs
CONGRESS- SHOULD PASS
 TIE NECESSARY LAWS
Nh. Piuchot Urges Members of Na- taoaaI Conservation Association to Take Up the Matter With
 Congress Without Delay. 

Washington February 7.-The necessity for the passage at the present session Of Congress of good laws for the pro- lection of the natural resources of the United States is the keynote of a report just made to the National Conservation association by Clifford Pinchot, the re- gently chosen president of the assocla- ton.
 Mr. Pinchot takes up in what he calls ga spirit of constructive criticism the nine bills relating to the conservation of natural resources introduced into Congress on January IS on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior, one of which had been reported from the Senate pub lie lands committee, while the other eight are still in the hands of the com nittee,
 Mr. Pinchot calls. upon the members Of the association to put forth their strongest efforts to have enacted into law the bill on the withdrawal of lands which has been reported from the commit tee by Senator Nelson. This bill, MT. Finchot thinks, should have the ''un- qualified support of the members of the association"
 Of the other eight bills he believes that some merely need amendment while oth- CTS must be recast altogether. The coal bill and the phosphate. oil, asphaltum and natural gas bills, he reports are Fundamentally sound in principle, but need some amendment.
 s-1s Disposal of Minerals.
 They wisely separate he says, the sur fnce of the land from the underlying minerals and provision for the disposal of sbe minerals by lease and not by sale
 But the coal bill, he objects, ''con- tains no sufficient anti-monopolyi clause The clause which purposes to regulate rates to be charged the public is so framed that it may be evaded with case
 Another clause of the bill, he adds, may reduce the standard of mining to the wasteful level of the prevailing com msrce practice
 In regard to the bill for the sur vey of railroad land grants he ex- presses the opinion that 1t will en- able the railroads properly to perfect titles to their lands, but 1t overlooks the long g-pending understanding be- tween certain of the roads and the forest service for the return of rail- road lands within the national forests to the United States in return for the right to cut in one body an amount of timber equal to that on the lands re- turned"
 This understanding, he says. requires only. legislation to make it effective.
 Water Power Bill.
 Speaking on the water power bill, Mir. Pinchot declared that Tit repeals -s1z- - law and curtails the already ample power now exercised with the ap- provai of a former attorney general, by the department of agriculture"
 The provision in the bill for the compensation to the government by the companies, he holds, is good. Wa ter power sites should be protected from private appropriation unuer the land laws, he says, and it should oe made possible to issue to the com panles permits good for and definitely terminating at the end of 50 years.
 The fault found by MT. Pinchot with the reclamation Is that it opens lands to absentee landlords and to specula tors. The worst feature of the bill for the sale of timber and timber lands. he declares is that 1t replaces the objectionable feature of the tim ber and stone act, which was the in- ducement to speculation in government timber with provisions which promote speculation and retard the development of agricultural and mineral lands far beyond the act it repeals
 In falling to separate the surface from the underlying minerals the biI | for the classification of public lands is with the coal bill, he finds. | "The withdrawal bill as amended and reported by Senator Nelson makes easy" says MT. Pinchot. "the protec ton of all natural resources on the public domain until good laws can be passed" |
 The whole influence of the associs- ton, he declares, should be thrown be hind this bill