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Show 570 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT against fire and depredation and to sell "dead, matured, or large growth of trees" at their appraised value but not for export from the state or territory in which they were cut. Bona fide settlers, miners, residents, prospectors were permitted free use of timber for firewood, fencing, building, mining, and other domestic purposes.14 This last provision retained the possibility of the same confusion and uncertainty of the past concerning the right of miners, for example, to take timber. Did it allow the Anaconda to continue to take the millions of feet it needed for its continued operations or was it intended to apply only to individual miners who needed just a small amount of timber? Other provisions allowed the President to reduce the area of reserves, change their boundaries or vacate them entirely, and permitted land primarily of use for agriculture or for mining, and not for forestry, to be eliminated from the forests. Most unfortunate was the inclusion in this act of the famous Forest Lieu Section allowing settlers or owners of unperfected or patented lands within the reserves to relinquish their tracts and to select in lieu, vacant land open to settlement in amount equal to that relinquished. In view of the scandals that emerged from the use of this Forest Lieu Section it is interesting to find that Senator Pettigrew of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Committee on Public Lands, claimed that he had inserted the original provision allowing actual settlers the right of exchange but that when the bill was reported back from conference, it had been changed from "the settler" to "the settler or owner" which made it applicable to the land grant railroads. Pettigrew noted that the chairman of the Senate members of the conference was William B. Allison, long known for his close relations with the Union Pacific Railroad, and the chairman of the House members was Joe Cannon, one of the most conservative and pro-railroad members of the Lower House. Pettigrew says the conference report came to the Senate on the day before the session was to end, was not printed, and was rushed through after a hurried reading, and he did not notice the change. His account, written in 1922, is in error in that the conference report was read and acted upon in the Senate on May 27, or 8 weeks before the end of the session, and Pettigrew did find time to accuse those who had drawn up plans for the forest reserve proclamations of 1897 of extravagantly devoting their time to a pullman tour of the West, and not to any careful examination of the forests.15 Pettigrew's recollection that it was the railroad-oriented Senator William B. Allison and Representative Joseph G. Cannon who were responsible for making the Forest Lieu Section applicable to them on its face is not improbable but his memory played him false on some details.16 He greatly exaggerated, in 1922 when he said this 14 30 Stat. 34-36. Western opponents of the Proclamations of 1897 tried to include in the Pettigrew amendment a section narrowly defining the purposes for which reserves might be created but it was too general to have any important limiting effect. 15 Cong. Record, 55th Cong., 1st sess., May 27, 1897, p. 1284. 16 An able graduate student tried to determine whether the Santa Fe or the Northern Pacific, two of the major beneficiaries of the forest lieu provision, could have had any part in influencing the Congress in its behalf. After a careful reading of the debates and other documents and a consideration of the position of the two railroads as of 1897 he concluded the Santa Fe officials were not aware of the possibilities of the bill for some months after its enactment and that the Northern Pacific officials were well supplied with timber, a good part of their alternate sections being within the forest reserves (exclusive to the Mount Rainier National Park) had sufficient timber on them not to justify relinquishing them for land elsewhere. Gary D. Fenstermacher, "More Incongruity. The Forest Lieu Land Act of 1897," (1963). |