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Show 620 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Grazing Service and the Secretary of the Interior a vendetta that is reflected in two reports of the subcommittee and the apparent refusal of the Secretary to communicate with the chairman. The subcommittee report of 1944, which is listed as a "Second Partial Report," quoted from the testimony of Secretary Ickes before the Senate Committee on Public Lands in 1934 in which he was pleading for the adoption of the Taylor bill. Ickes, as we have seen, had tried to convince the Senators that no new agency would be necessary and that the General Land Office could manage the grazing lands for no more than $150,000. This was now thrown back at him to show either how far wrong he had been or that he had failed to live up to his promises. The report elaborated on the grievances of the stockmen in an effort to discredit the Grazing Service. The committee disregarded the testimony which showed that many grievances resulted from inadequate staff. At great length the report detailed the growth of personnel in various ranks, the rapid increase in the number of higher officials and in their salaries, and criticized the Service's "attempts to nullify or modify the acreage limitation," first, by inducing Congress to change the maximum from 80 million to 142 million acres; second, by procuring the issuance of Executive orders withdrawing all public lands from entry; third, by having 16,258,132 acres of land previously withdrawn for power sites, proposed monuments and parks, stock driveways, reclamation, or soil conservation included within the districts. This, it was made to appear, was evidence of bureaucrats grasping for power rather than of officials anxiously trying to conserve and improve the usefulness of the range. It was not brought out that the salaries of the high officials of the Reclamation Service, the Geological Survey, the Forest Service, and the Fish and Wild Life Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Mines were from 12 to 30 percent greater than salaries of like officials of the Grazing Service. A sum 20 times the original estimate for managing the grazing lands was being spent. In the hearings there had been some indication that other elements than livestock interests, notably the wildlife groups and the big game hunters, had some interest in the public lands, but the Partial Report was solely concerned with the livestock interests. The major question to which attention ought to have been paid, the effect of 9 or 10 years of controlled management on the rangelands, was ignored in the report.28 Secretary Ickes was not one to try to sidestep a quarrel. His reply to the subcommittee's charges and innuendos was clear and reasonably effective. The estimate of $150,000 was made when only 50 million acres were to be given management status. The district advisory boards were later added to the plan, calling for $100,000. Above all, once the Department began to apply effective management, it was seen that the size and cost of an adequate staff were much greater than anticipated. The 5-cent fee was only intended to be temporary. Ickes reminded Congress that in 1933 it was estimated that the value of the forage on the public range was $10 million and might be substantially increased with controlled management. A reasonable fee, he maintained, was one that "represents the fair value of the forage obtained by the user." Finally, the Secretary pointed to the preamble of the Taylor Act which placed emphasis upon stopping injury to the public lands by "preventing overgrazing and soil deterioration, to provide for their orderly use, improvement and development, to stabilize the livestock industry dependent upon the public range . . ." These 28 Senate Reports, 78th Cong., 2d sess., No. 404, Part 2, (Serial No. 10,841) |