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Show 572 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT management of their forests. Numerous owners of large forests in the East and South called for this service, giving Pinchot and his staff a wide variety of practical experience in applying some of the theoretical learning they had acquired and at the same time showing the lumbermen that scientific forest management did not mean locking up the forest reserves. In 1901, for example, Pinchot made a personal examination of 14 timber tracts and three wood-lots in 11 states covering 788,000 acres, including a 100,000-acre tract of the Sawyer and Austin Co. in Arkansas, a 52,000-acre tract of the Deering Harvester Company in Missouri, a 60,000-acre spruce and hardwood tract of William Rockefeller in the Adirondacks in New York and 350,000 acres of the Great Northern Paper Company in Maine. Also, at least three states-Maine, New Hampshire, and California-voted funds to the Division of Forestry for studies of their forest conditions.20 Pinchot and his staff prepared working plans for the forest tracts they studied that called for the harvesting of mature trees, the elimination of dead and dying trees and of those species for which there was little demand. The reports of the office from 1898 to 1905, when it assumed charge of the forest reserves, provide information concerning the astonishing number of tasks in which Pinchot was involving his staff for private, state, and Federal forest lands. Congress obviously liked the type of leadership Pinchot gave with its noise, turmoil, excitement, and propaganda, though there was also some grumbling; it responded by increasing the appropriations for salaries and research from the $28,520 voted in 20 In 1902, 37 applications were made by large owners of timberlands for the professional assistance Pinchot offered to give. In his report for 1902 he listed seven such applicants to whom the assistance was given for a total of 535,000 acres in Tennessee, South Carolina, Michigan, New York, and Maine. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1901, pp. 327-28; ibid, 1902, pp. 113-16; ibid, 1903, pp. 508-509. 1897 to $425,140 in 1904. All of this was for research, investigation, and publication but not for practical forestry experiments, for the Bureau, as the old Division became in 1901, still had no responsibility for the administration of the national forests, though it was acquiring responsibility for administering the forests on certain Chippewa lands in Minnesota, as will be seen below. Meantime, in the Interior Department steps were being taken under the Forest Management Act of 1897 to provide management and protection for the forest reserves that had been set aside and to continue the earlier efforts to prevent timber depredations on the public lands. The appropriations for these activities show that Congress was receptive to the appeals from the Interior Department also. Until it began, in a rather sporadic way, to prevent depredations upon public forested lands in the 1850's, the General Land Office had been very largely absorbed with the work of preparing the public lands for sale or donation to the states, railroads, or actual settlers and to give them a secure and exact title. Withholding land for public purposes was not a part of its obligations and its officials, with some exceptions, had favored transferring the public domain to private ownership. By the seventies the General Land Office was making serious efforts to prevent trespass on the public lands but chiefly to make sure that the government secured the stumpage value of timber. Except for Bur-dett, Williamson, and Sparks, the Commissioners did not share the growing public concern for the preservation of areas of rare natural beauty and spectacular grandeur. Their attitude was in harmony with that prevailing on the cutting edge of the frontier in the Far West. Thus administration of the areas set aside for national parks showed no imaginative leadership, no effort to preserve and make available to the public the enjoyment of these areas. When, |