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Show 726 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT the real objectives of the Pinchot-Roosevelt conservation program. Whether it was part of the total drive against monopoly or whether it was motivated by a sincere desire to obtain the most effective utilization of resources is a matter over which historians have disagreed. Donald C. Swain points out that the two objectives were not always compatible.191 In any event the political aspects, at least, involved a life and death struggle between the West and the science-oriented eastern conservationists. The Coal Land Withdrawals. In 1906 Theodore Roosevelt was seriously concerned with the administration of the Federal coal lands in the West. The Oregon timberland fraud had only recently been uncovered,192 and there were more than rumors of abuses under the coal laws. The acreage limitations in the 1873 statute were generally acknowledged to be an impediment to the effective development of certain types of coal fields. The result was that many coal and railroad companies sought to evade these limitations either by dummy entries or by entries processed under the agricultural land statutes. An Interstate Commerce Commission hearing in Salt Lake City in 1906 uncovered many such "fraudulent" entries,193 and in Wyoming, the Federal officials brought suit against the Union Pacific Railroad and a number of coal companies which were charged with evading the 1873 Act.194 181 See Swain, Federal Conservation Policy 1921-19)3, 76 Univ. Cal. Pub. in Hist. I, 5 (1963). The author refers to Bates, Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement 1907 to 1921, 44 Miss. Valley Hist. Rev. 29 (1957); and Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (1959). 192 See Callaghan, Senator Mitchell and the Oregon Land Frauds 1905, 21 Pac. Hist. Rev. 255 (1952). 198 41 Cong. Rec. 4666 (1907) (Remarks of Mr. Lacey). 194 Larson, History of Wyoming 378-79 (1965) (2d printing 1966). The President and the Interior Department undoubtedly considered the possibility of a sweeping withdrawal of the coal lands from entry under all the public land acts. The probable reaction of Congress to such a move was not exactly an "imponderable" at the time. Nevertheless, on June 20, 1906,195 Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin sent up a trial balloon. He proposed a concurrent resolution to the effect that the Secretary of the Interior be requested to investigate the coal, lignite, and oil deposits of the United States and to report to Congress on the extent of, and the least wasteful methods of mining, such deposits. He also proposed that the President be authorized to withdraw from entry and sale all lands which in the judgment of the Director of the Geological Survey contained these minerals. The preamble recited that this was necessary to prevent private corporations from acquiring a monopoly in the coal lands and to conserve the supply of these minerals for the benefit of the whole people. When Congress did not respond, the Senator apparently sought out the more sympathetic ear of the President. Beginning on July 26 and continuing through November 12, 1906, the Acting Secretary of the Interior, at the request of the President, issued orders withdrawing from all forms of entry approximately 66 million acres of land where "workable coal is known to occur."196 The land involved 195 40 Cong. Rec. 8763 (1906). 198 The original order as well as the two modifications mentioned in the text appear in 41 Cong. Rec. 2614 (1907) (remarks of Rep. Mondell) . The estimates as to the number of acres withdrawn vary considerably. The figure in the text is taken from the reliable source, Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain 69 (1951) . Other extensive withdrawals occurred between 1907 and 1909, but "for the most part these were only from entry under other than the mineral land laws." Peffer, 108. Peffer concludes that these later withdrawals were designed to protect prospectors from entries under the Homestead, the Desert Land, and the Building Stone Acts of land suspected of containing oil. |