The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1913-04-16
The Game for the National Domain.

Most of the public lands alaska eN-
Iceptedl are in the eleven western states
Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho.
Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon,
Utah, Washington and Wyoming. These
states have about 6,s47 900 population,
or l4.4 per cent. of the present owners,
saws Judson c. Welliver in May Techni-
cal World magazine.
This demand is made, not by the people
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 lone
with them. The nation has squanderad
so much of its riches that it is getting
| rather less liberal. Therefore, it is pro-
posed 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 riches. 1t is
so much easier to buy legislature than
, to corrupt a whole congress and a ma
| tional administration 1t is possible to
frame mp so many different kinds of pre-.
texts, to insert so many different sorts
Of jokers, to control minor committees,
to enlist officials in support of your
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 combination; the
fertilizer trust; the copper trust; the
smelter trust; the railroads; the date-
power trust; the cattle and sheep barons
Of the plains states; and, in general, the
grasping, grabbing, grafters interests
that are always looking out for their
own profits, while the friends of the PEG.
pie are trying to convince the people that
the pmderers hand is in their pocket.
Already, these and other private ia
terests have seized 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 timber, the
last mining prospect, the last water pow
er 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, AMI
her vast plains, without thought of the
artificial limitations that men might aft
erward impose. William Jennings
Bryan, than whom there is no more ard.
ent advocate Of the proper and practical
rights OF the states, in 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 int
mediate valley of the Mississippi is pro.
foundly concerned with conditions that
must be made for it in the far away e.
gions that comprise the headwaters Of
The Ohio, the Missouri and all the great
tributaries of the Father of the Waters
rhe question then is obviously national
3ne; nay, view broad enough to en-
compass itstrue situation would make
t a continental question.