History of public land law development

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626 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT cost of administration of the public domain only. It opposed the creation of national monuments by Executive order, advocated the repeal of the Antiquities Act which allowed the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw "tremendous acreages" for parks, monuments, or other recreational areas, and requested that the national parks and monuments be opened to grazing.45 It was ambivalent on the use of Federal powers and subsidies, taking a strong position in opposition to the latter and to government controls but at the same time favoring a protective tariff on wool. In later platforms the National Wool Growers advocated the cession of the rangelands to the states, the return of the rangelands in the national forests to the public domain and either the sale of the surface rights of all the public rangelands or their cession to the states. American Cattle Producer, the organ of the American National Livestock Association, while allotting less attention to the land question because of its absorption with eliminating controls on livestock and meat, took a harsher position. It allowed nothing favorable to the administration of the two agencies regulating grazing to appear. It gave full support to the proposal to allow the permittees in the grazing districts to purchase the land they were allotted and scoffed at the propaganda of the Association enemies as "the most vicious we have ever seen." The appointment of Julius A. Krug as Secretary of the Interior to replace Harold Ickes-the man the livestock people most hated-appeased the livestock industry to some extent. American Cattle Producer then turned its batteries against the Forest Service, giving much attention to hearings held in 1947 on that agency's administration of its range-lands. Among the issues brought out in the hearings were the seriousness of the cuts the Forest Service was requiring in 46 National Wool Grower, 36 (February 1946), 51-56. the number of livestock on its ranges, the rapid increase of its personnel, the limited attention paid to improvement of the ranges, the insecurity of the permittees, the indifference of the Service to the destruction of the range by big game, whose numbers were rapidly increasing, and the complaint that the advisory boards were little more than window dressing.46 American Cattle Producer charged that all the attacks upon proposals to convey the rangelands to the states or to sell them to permittees or to freeze established range customs on the public lands into law were inspired by and the data were prepared by the Forest Service.47 Under the caption "A Freer Range" it welcomed the new administration which it anticipated would halt the "endless stream of capricious and arbitrary rules which strike at the ranchman's security," the frequent orders reducing the number of stock allowed in the forests, the numerous trespass cases brought for minor infractions, the lack of appeal from the Forest Service decisions. Three Association Goals Attained The representatives of the livestock associations obtained three changes. The first came through an Executive order, Reorganization Plan No. 3, issued by President Truman, providing for the consolidation into the new Bureau of Land Management of the Grazing Service and the General Land Office, the latter now having lost much of its previous workload as a result of the withdrawal of most public land from entry. The positions of land office registers 46 American Cattle Producer, 29 (August, October, 1947), 22, 9-10. The Producer gave much attention to the hearing at Grand Junction where between 700 and 800 persons jammed the meeting with many standees (picture was included), 317 of whom were permittees. The writer hoped for a housecleaning in the Forest Service. 47 American Cattle Producer, 34 (October 1952), 9; 34 (February 1953), 19-22, and 36 (September 1954), 23.