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Show ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC GRAZING LANDS 619 classified as marginal without due regard to previous leasing arrangements? To what extent have administrative rules and regulations under the Taylor Act resulted in extending the authority of the administrator and evading limitations and restrictions in that act? To what extent has administrative authority been abused to circumvent the jurisdiction of the courts or to coerce the courts? To what extent have representatives of the Department of the Interior through coercive tactics attempted to reverse views expressed in meetings of the grazing districts? To what extent have long-established principles relating to the supervision of the livestock industry as applied by government bureaus been disregarded? When the resolution was reported back from the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, couched in more appropriate language, it called for a "full and complete investigation of the purchase, withdrawal, and allocation of lands and the administration and use thereof" by any agency of the Federal government.27 A year later, after considerable preliminary work, the subcommittee of the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys began its hearings on June 24, 1941, in Ely, Nevada, under Senator McCarran. Over the next 41/2 years it toured the range states, holding meetings in 18 communities for a total of 62 days of which 14 were in Nevada (including three different appearances in Ely, two in Reno, the home of the chairman), eight in Wyoming, nine in Arizona, seven in Utah, five in New Mexico, and four each in Oregon and Colorado. The hearings cover 6,053 pages of testimony and documents. Members of the subcommittee were drawn entirely from the western states except for one Senator from 27 Cong. Record, 76th Cong., 3d sess., May 24, 1940, p. 6797. Florida who did not take his obligation seriously. All Senators and Representatives participating were unanimous that state ownership and utilization of the public lands were preferable to Federal control and that private ownership should be the objective for the rangelands. Their questions indicated a deep suspicion of the activities of the officials of the Grazing Service which they saw as a struggle for power, unfairness in deciding between contestants, manipulation of the advisory boards, and erection of a political following. Niggling complaints of officiousness, arbitrary action, unfairness to sheepmen and to those who had no important base property or who had not been in the stock business for the base years 1929-34 were welcomed by the subcommittee, but members of the advisory boards who were generally friendly to the administration were on occasion given a hard time. Much attention was given to the expansion of the number of employees of the Grazing Service from 36 in 1936 to 248 in 1942, and the increase in appropriations from $250,000 to $800,000. Officials of the Service frequently managed to get into the record their inability to handle many of the problems that were constantly coming up because of insufficient staff, but to no good effect. Over and over again persons testifying compared the experience of the Grazing Service to the early history of the Forest Service. There had been many complaints about the fees, the reduction of animals allowed within the forests, and the arbitrary actions of officials of that Service but these complaints had been gradually resolved and now the Forest Service was given a clean bill by most commentators. The Grazing Service would go through the same experience, it was thought. Meantime, there seems to have developed between the chairman of the subcommittee which was making the investigation of the |