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Show ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUBLIC FOREST LANDS 601 33 million acres, 4 million of which were classified as commercial forest lands and 29 million as "woodland." Pilferage on these lands as well as licensed cutting continued, and to prevent illegal cutting of timber or illegal entries it was necessary to continue the staff of investigating agents. Timber and Stone Act entries continued to be so large that local officers either could not or would not give them the proper critical examination to make sure they were not being filed by dummies for large investors or lumbermen. In addition the Land Office was charged with responsibility for the management and sale of large acreages of forest lands-or of timber upon them -belonging to various Indian tribes. The first year after the adoption of the Transfer Act of 1905, 324 cases of timber trespass were reported on the public lands involving a total value of $397,178. Sixty-three civil suits and the same number of criminal prosecutions were recommended to the Attorney General's office, and compromises were made with other offenders.101 Whatever the preference of its higher officials and of Congress, the Department of the Interior, while primarily concerned with making possible the alienation of the public lands to private ownership, was still, notwithstanding the transfer of the forest reserves, involved in managing forest lands. Richard Ballinger, who became Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1907, in his first report said that he was making "the most rigorous effort" to restrain unlawful cutting on public timberlands but the field force was totally inadequate to reach all such offences and was therefore concentrating on the more gross violations. During the single year he administered the office, the number of timber and stone entries more than doubled, possibly because some land held for forest reserves was released and opened to entry under this act. Fred Dennett, who followed him in 1908, determined that the $2.50-an-acre price established in the Timber and Stone Act should be the minimum price and that the timber on land sold under the act should be appraised and sold at the value thus determined. As the accompanying table shows, this brought about a somewhat better price but since the best of the timber-lands were either in reserves or had been sold it was too late for the government to benefit much from this decision. Furthermore, certain kinds of scrip like Valentine, Soldier's Additional Homestead, and Forest Lieu could still be used without the payment of any additional amount because of the high appraisal.102 It is not easy to reconcile the fact that in the years of the Theodore Roosevelt administration, when there was so much talk about forest conservation and saving the public lands for actual settlers, some of the greatest abuses of the public land system occurred, and 61 percent of the entries under the Timber and Stone Act were made. This is the more difficult to understand in the light of the frequently reiterated statements by the Commissioners of the General Land Office, the Secretaries of the Interior, and the Public Land Commission of 1904 that the act had no justification and should be repealed. Lands which an investigating agent declared were worth $20 an acre at the time they were entered brought only $2.50 until 1910.103 In 1906 Congress appropriated $250,000 for protection of timber on the public lands and for detecting fraud in the administration of the entry laws. This sum was clearly inadequate but was only slowly increased, since the need was less, the better lands that might invite fraud having already been alienated. Other appropriations brought 101 H. Doc, 59th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 14, No. 5, pp. 341, 345, 381. 102 Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1909, pp. 68-69. 103 Bureau of Corporations, The Lumber Industry, Part 1, p. 265. |