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Show EARLY EFFORTS TO PROTECT PUBLIC TIMBERLANDS 555 for which judgment had been obtained but which was not yet collected, and he showed that the total was far greater than the appropriations for investigating agents. At the outset of Schurz's term as Secretary, the export trade in timber cut on public lands from the Gulf ports, the Columbia River, and Puget Sound was enormous. By 1880 it had been materially reduced. He warned that the evil would spring up again if efforts to arrest it were in the least relaxed. Schurz reiterated his earlier recommendations that the government be authorized to sell timber "at reasonable, perhaps even at merely nominal, rates to supply all domestic needs and all the wants of local business enterprise, as well as of commerce" and that all timber sales be so controlled "as to preserve the necessary proportion of the forests on public lands from waste and indiscriminate destruction."69 Schurz and Williamson were lonely reformers calling for the protection of the public lands. Against them was arrayed an almost solid representation in Congress from the states, West and South, where there were extensive areas of public timber-lands; and only three Senators defended their policies.70 Some of the bitterest attacks upon Schurz and Williamson came from members of their own party. Era for Decision When Chester A. Arthur replaced Gar-field in the White House and Henry M. Teller became Secretary of the Interior in 1881, there was a marked relaxation in the "Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1880, pp. 26-37. Schurz also stressed the need for a law against the willful setting of fires upon public timberland. 70 Schurz's order of 1878 debarring 127 land attorneys from practicing before the Department for questionable practices did little to win political support for him. Harold Hathaway Dunham, Government Handout, A Study in the Administration of the Public Lands, 1875-1891 (New York, 1941), p. 139. Department's attitude toward the right of railroads, under the Right-of-way Act of 1876, to take timber for a distance of 50 miles from their lines and an inclination to patent land to the railroads, under what some thought was questionable procedure.71 However, Teller retained as Land Commissioner Noah McFarland who had been appointed by Garfield and he did not relax efforts to prevent illegal appropriation of timber from public lands. Congress became more generous in voting funds for investigation, increasing the amount from $5,000 in 1877 to $75,000 in 1882. This made possible the appointment of more field agents and the accumulation of more evidence of trespasses for presentation to the courts. The results were disheartening. It was becoming increasingly apparent, said McFarland, that almost every restriction and limitation in the public land system was threatened by a "flood-tide of illegal appropriations" that was sweeping over the West and threatening to engulf the entire public domain. The time had come, he said, when either the United States must make a "complete radical change in public land laws and administration, or some better means must be found for enforcing the present laws." The enlarged appropriation for investigating agents was still altogether inadequate, as $150,000 would be, but he hesitated to ask for more. The evidence McFarland presented in a special report of 1883, showing widespread violations of the land laws was most depressing. Teller sent it along to the President, ignoring the violations in Colorado but calling attention to abuses in California and Dakota Territory.72 It is possible to show statistically something of the size of the questionable operations being conducted on the public lands "Dunham, Government Handout, pp. 10 ff. 72 S. Ex. Doc, 47th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 3 (Serial No. 2076) , No. 61, pp. 2, 4-5 ff. |