OCR Text |
Show USE AND ABUSE OF SETTLEMENT LAWS, 1880-1904 489 national resources. A detailed questionnaire was submitted to a number of stockmen asking about the use of the range, methods of improving its carrying capacity, and conflicts between users. Congress having declined to appropriate funds for the work of the commission, its members drew heavily upon the staff of the Division of Forestry, the Geological Survey, the Reclamation Service, and the Bureau of Plant Industry for aid in gathering data and preparing reports with recommendations for administrative and congressional action. A reading of the two reports of the commission suggests that it was created to give support to views already well crystallized in the minds of Pinchot and Newell. The commission, like all interested in the administration of the public lands, felt it necessary to defer to the supporters of homestead who maintained that the only correct way to deal with the public lands was to give them away to as many people as possible in tracts of 160 acres or more. It therefore declared as its basic principle that all lands should be held for "actual home builders." This called for classification of the remaining public lands to determine what parts could be disposed of for development as small farms, as dry farming tracts, or as grazing homesteads, and which parts should only be leased. Much the larger portion of the remaining public lands was suitable only for grazing. The open rangeland had become, in effect, a huge grazing commons, subject to use and abuse by stockmen and the object of bitter warfare between cattlemen and sheepmen and between them and settlers. Overgrazing and decline of the carrying capacity of the range had been the result; indeed some areas had been virtually destroyed for grazing. One of the most useful features of the commission's report was a 30-page analysis of the leasing policies of Texas, Wyoming, and of the Northern Pacific Railroad by Frederick V. Coville, a botanist of the Department of Agriculture. Among the advantages reported for these leasing systems were: (1) stockmen could plan their operations more carefully by knowing how much range capacity they could count on; (2) stockmen with range privileges would manage it prudently to conserve and develop it; (3) roundup costs were less within enclosed ranges; (4) supplementary feeding with dry land forage crops could be done more easily; (5) long drives of stock looking for forage would be less necessary; (6) water supplies could be developed with expenditures that were not justified on the open range; (7) breeding could be controlled and high grade bulls used, an expense only justified on enclosed ranges; (8) cattle stealing and range warfare would be eliminated or reduced.74 The Timber and Stone Act, long recommended for repeal, came in for a detailed examination as to the way entries under it were being abused in three counties in Oregon and Washington. Between 14 and 25 percent of the entries were made by women; in one county 44 percent of the entries were made by nonresidents; 50 percent of the entries were transferred to timber and mill companies at prices as high in some instances as $3,000 for a quarter-section or less. Although the act was framed for actual settlers needing a source of timber for fuel, fencing, and building, the agent who made the investigation stated that comparatively none of the land thus entered was used for farming. On the other hand it was brought out that parties entering land under the act and subsequently selling it used the proceeds to acquire either farm homes or town property. Entries reached their high- 74 Report of the Public Land Commission, S. Doc, 58th Cong., 3d sess., Vol. 4 (Serial No. 4766) , No. 189, pp. 44-46. |