Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1913-04-16
THE GAME FOR THE
NATIONAL DOMAIN

Most Of the public lands alaska ex.
cepted) are in the eleven western states
Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho,
Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon,
Utah, Washington and Wyoming. These
states have about 6,S74,0OO population,
or l4.4 per cent of the population of
the country. Today these public lands
belong to the people of all the states.
The nation is asked to turn them over
to this 14.4 per cent of the present own.
ers, says Judson c, Welliver in May
Technical World Magazine
This demand is made, not by the peo.
pie of these eleven states, but by an
array of private interests, which think
they could get the lands away from the
states more easily than from the nation.
The nation has been aroused to realize
what these lands are worth, what they
mean to the future, what ought to be
done with them. The nation has squan.
dered so much of its riches that it is
getting rather less liberal. Therefore,
it is proposed by the plunderers that we
turn the lands over to the states; these
would be more easily managed, more
readily induced to part with their rich
es. 1t is so much easier to buy q legis.
lature than to corrupt whole congress
and a national administration! 1t is
possible to frame up so many different
kinds Of pretexts, to insert so many diff.
ferent sorts of jokers, to control minor
committees, to enlist officials in sup.
port of our "little bill, " when. you are
handling legislature
When all that has been accomplished,
who will at last own the empire that
now is the public domain
The Lumber Trust; the Oil Trust; the
Steel Trust; the Coal Trust; the Fertil.
izer Trust; the Copper Trust; the Smell.
ter Trust; the Railroads; the Water
Power Trust; the cattle and sheep bar.
ons of the plains states; and, in gener.
al, the grasping, grabbing, grating in.
terests that are always looking out for
their own profits, while the friends Of
the people are trying to convince the
people that the plunderer's hand is in
their pocket.
Already, these and other private in.
terests have seized a large part of the
cream of the public domain, But they
are not satisfied. They never will be
till the last acre, the last stick of tim.
ber the last mining prospect the last
water power possibility, the last coal
mine, the last deposit of coal or copper
or what not, is in their possession.
State lines do not bound problems of
this sort, Nature laid out her forests,
her watersheds, her mountain areas, and
her vast plains, without thought of the
artificial limitations that men might
afterward impose. William Jennings
Bryan, than whom there is no more ar.
dent advocate of the proper and prac.
tical rights of the state in a recent
speech pointed out this conclusion with
his wOnted clarity, He showed that the
flow Of streams is no affair of state
lines. The condition as to the forest
stations in one state may affect the
condition as to water power and annual
floods in a state a thousand miles away.
The immediate valley of the Mississippi
| is profoundly concerned with conditions
that must be made for it in the far
away regions that comprise the headwa.
ters of the Ohio, the Mississippi and all
the great tributaries of the "Fatber Of
Waters" The question, then, is obvi-
ously national one; nay q view broad
enough to encompass its true situation
would make il a continental question