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Show ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC GRAZING LANDS 617 Works, which might have taken the Bureau of Roads from Agriculture and the heavy construction work of the Reclamation Service from Interior. Interior, it was proposed, should become the Department of Conservation, "to administer the public lands, parks, territories, and reservations, and enforce the conservation laws with regard to public lands and mineral and water resources, except as other wise assigned." Under proposals for Agriculture nothing was said about the national forests. Ickes had thus gained a boost in the recommended change of name of his Department; though forests were not specifically mentioned Secretary Wallace could derive little comfort from the report. Brownlow, Merriam, and Gulick may have been thoroughly logical in advocating consolidation of all land management and conservation agencies in a transformed Department of Conservation but Roosevelt was well aware of how unpopular any action to transfer the forests to Interior would be, no matter what name the Department received. Support for the change of name withered away under the leadership of the National Grange, the Society of American Foresters, Ovid Butler, the able editor of American Forests, the schools of forestry, especially that of Yale led by H. H. Chapman, numerous groups interested in the conservation of wildlife, and Gifford Pinchot, all of whom joined in an active and well-managed campaign.20 As late as 1941 Ickes was still trying to get the 20 American Forests, 41 (March, August, 1935), 140, 386; 42 (January 1936), 41; 43 (March, June, August, October, November, 1937), 109, 282, 293, 397, 494, 519, 524, 545. Editors hostile to placing the Forest Service in Interior from papers in Bismarck, N.D.; Boise, Idaho; San Francisco, Portland, and Oakland are excerpted in American Forests, 43:545. Richard Polenberg has an able account of the opposition to the transfer of the forests to Interior in "Conservation and Reorganization: The Forest Service Lobby, 1937-1938," Agricultural History, XXXIX (October 1965), 230-39. President to order the transfer or to ask Congress to do so.21 Criticism Hampers Grazing Service Before the tempest over the proposed removal of the Forest Service from Agriculture to Interior had finally subsided-the issue was to crop up many times later22- another controversy broke out that was to do great harm to the Grazing Service and to the public rangelands. This had to do with the allocation of grazing rights within the districts. Section 3 of the Taylor Act provided for the allocation of such rights as follows: Preference shall be given in the issuance of grazing permits to those within or near a district who are landowners engaged in the livestock business, bona fide occupants or settlers, or owners of water or water rights, as may be necessary to permit the proper use of land, water or water rights, owned, occupied, or leased by them. . . . It was this provision that drove out of business the nomadic sheepmen who owned or leased little land but had grazed their flocks over the public lands and stripped it of its forage, thereby denying it to local ranchers who had a heavy taxable investment. Owners of a headquarters ranch, an important source of water, or other base property essential for the livestock industry who had used such property as a base while grazing their stock on the public lands were assigned high priority in the use of the rangelands in the districts commensurate with their base. This commensur- 21 Diary of Harold L. Ickes has many allusions to discussions with the President concerning the proposed transfer of the Forest Service and the change of name of the Department. The question of the position of the Forest Service in the Federal government is also discussed in Chap. XX, "Administration of the Public Forest Lands." 22 53 Stat., Part 2, pp. 1423-36. Despite his major defeat Ickes did secure the transfer of the Bureau of Biological Survey from Agriculture, the Bureau of Fisheries from Commerce, the Bureau of Insular Affairs from War, and a number of other minor offices. |