OCR Text |
Show 614 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT of the provision in the act which allowed states to choose not to have the act apply to them. It quickly became apparent to the planners that the limitation of 80 million acres which the Senate had insisted upon was unwise for it would leave outside the districts potentially good grazing land, would force the division of some ranges and would result in further overgrazing and destruction of those areas remaining uncontrolled. Consequently, in 1935 a measure was introduced to increase the maximum to 142 million acres. This gave Congressman Robert F. Rich, one of the ablest opponents of the new agricultural program and one who disliked the original Taylor Act, an opportunity to belabor it again by maintaining that when it was under consideration advocates of control by the Federal government had insisted that only one agency would be needed to administer the grazing on all the public lands, including the forest lands. He moved an amendment to have responsibility for the grazing administration on the public lands consolidated with that of national forests in the Department of Agriculture, but it was ruled out of order. One of the telling arguments in support of enlarging the area to be included in the grazing districts was that a ruling had been handed down which banned the use of the Civilian Conservation Crops on public lands not intended for inclusion in the districts. Their work in building reservoirs, fences, and trails, in erosion control, and in eliminating rodents and poisonous plants was most valuable and was needed as much on the lands outside the districts as within. But it had been held "unsound, economically, to include such work ... [outside the districts] in the absence of a satisfactory future control of the lands bene-fitted... ."15 The amending bill passed by both Houses reserved certain powers to the 14 Cong. Record, 74th Cong., 1st sess., May 23, 1935, pp. 8095, 8097, 8109; Foss, op. cit., p. 57. states which made it unsatisfactory to the President, who declined to sign it. In the following session of Congress a satisfactory measure went through virtually without discussion raising the maximum amount of land to be included in the grazing districts to 142 million acres and thereby enlarging the area in which the CCC could work.16 Officials of the Department of the Interior, in initiating control over the public lands, were most anxious to win the confidence of the stockmen and to gain their cooperation in improving the range, undoubtedly having in mind the many criticisms that both cattlemen and sheepmen had directed at the practices of the Forest Service. From the outset they were determined not to base fees for the use of public ranges within the districts on their economic value. Nor was there any intention of developing a bureaucratic organization centered in Washington; instead administration was to be decentralized, advisory boards with considerable authority were to be elected by permittees, and the Civil Service Commission in preparing criteria for positions in the Division of Grazing was to give consideration to practical range experience in the public land states. The Division of Grazing was to stand out among new Federal agencies in that its appointees were not drawn from the major universities and law schools. Its chief officers were selected from men who had been residents of public land states at least a year before receiving their appointments. To direct the new agency, Farrington R. Carpenter, a Colorado livestockman who specialized in purebred Herefords and was a Harvard graduate, was selected. Carpenter was not politically oriented, had the usual westerners' distrust of bureaucracy, and was convinced that the range should be administered by a system of local self-rule. A series of western regional and state meetings was held to establish good rela- 1«49Stat., Part 1, p. 1976. |