The Sentinel=record., 1911-07-27

| preferred to make a much larger elimination of a tract facing the en. tire channel, and with sufficient room Tor terminal railway town. I was Willing to do this because I found the restrictions in the law sufficient to prevent the possibility of any
 monopoly of either the upland or the narbor or channel by the Controller Hallway and Navigation Company. or any other persons or company. Be- cause of a lack of time sufficient to draft memorandum myself, re- quested the Secretary of the Inter Tor, who. with the Secretary of Agri- culture, after full discussion, had agreed in my conclusion, to prepare a letter setting forth the reasons for
 making the larger elimination. so that 1t might become part of the record.
 I am strongly convinced as any, lone of the necessity for the conserva- ton of our national resources" says the President. "and as much opposed as any one to their monopolization by large corporations, but my con- yictions on this point did not deter
 ne from taking the step which hop led might lead to encouraging the Iconstructicr of a railway from Con- troller Bay to the Boring coal fields. l thought the pairing down of the amount of public land to be acquir- ed for terminals by tho railway company proposing to build the rail. road was a poor policy and one not calculated to secure investment or |speedy construction
 "The whole contention that the ex- |ecutiv1>0fder and the opening to set- tiement of the shore of Controller Bay grants a monopoly to the rail way company" he resumes, rests lon claim that it has given an op- |portunity to persons using scrip to appropriate the coNtrol of the only available and practicable parts of the channel by the location of the scrip opposite to those parts. If now the location Of the scrip opposite to the harbor gives no right to readh the harbor except as Congress may. ex- pressly give it, clearly the Controller Railway and Navigation Company has not the slightest opportunity for ex- elusive appropriation of the harbor facilities unless Congress shall by future act deliberately and volun- tariIy confer it..
 As to the charge made on the floor of the Senate that the order was se- cret, the President says, This was utterly unfounded." In support of this, he says that ten days before the order was made the details of Ryan's application and the probability of it's being granted were given wide publT- city. He cites in this respect that The Associated Press carried an ac- count Of the matter October 2Sth 1910, as taken from a typewriter statement issued by the Interior De- partment.
 Tine order has also been criticised, he says, on the ground that it did not contain provision delaying it's taking effect for thirty days after it's publi- cation, as orders restoring land to settlement by homesteaders frequent ly do In this respect the President lsays "An examination of the record furnishes an explanation of this fea- ture of the order as made. When In October the two departments had agreed with my aequiesence hat the order should be an elimination of only 320 acres. it was deemed wise to spread on the face of the cIder a specific declaration that 1t was made to afford terminals for the Controller Railway and Navigation Company and as no one else was expected to intervene and take up any part oi | tine eliminated tract, the restoration was made immediate. The form thus amended was submitted to the Secre-
 tary of Agriculture, who expressed
 his preference for the immediate re
 storation order. When I directed the lstriking out of the reference to the railway company and the enlarge lment of the area from 320 acres tc I12.S00 acres, the form of the order lin it's provision for immediate re- lstoration was not changed. have no doubt that this was the reason
 why the order issued took the form lit did Had the postponeemt clause been suggested. would. doubtless have directed it to be embodied 1T lthe order. But the event has prov len that it was really not importan lin this case, for in now nearly hint months only the Controller Railwa, land Navigation Company has made
 any scrip entries on the eliminated lfract. '