History of public land law development

page 510

510 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT reform of the land system through classification. In the 1909 report of Director George Otis Smith, it was brought out that it was the data which the Survey had been gathering for years which had permitted designating 162 million acres as nonirriga-ble and therefore open to entry under the Enlarged Homestead Act of that year. "No principle is more fundamental to real conservation," said Smith, "and at the same time more beneficial to the mining and other industries than this of giving preference to the highest possible use for the public lands. . . . With classification data at hand the principle of relative worth can be further developed."34 Two years later Smith made stronger statements concerning the need for classification, advocating the separation of the surface from the subsurface mineral rights, and "disposition of the lands on terms that will secure the highest use, enforce development, and protect the public interest." Legislation based on these principles will, he added, secure the benefits of immediate utilization and "avoid the evils of speculative holdings of lands by fictitious or by admitted nonuse for the future enjoyment of the unearned increment or of the profits of monopolization." Smith favored the economic development of the public land resources for which there was an existing demand, but favored the "retention of such control as may insure against unnecessary waste or excessive charges to the consumer, and second, the reservation of title in the people of all resources the utilization of which is conjectural or the need of which is not immediate." Not since the days of William A. J. Sparks had such an effective and rational proposal been advanced by a government official for further changes in the land and mineral laws to achieve the high- 34 Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1909, Vol. I, pp. 177-78. est possible use of the remaining public lands.35 It should be added, however, that the classification which the Geological Survey made for lands subject to entry under the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 was relatively simple, being based primarily on whether or not there was access to water for irrigation. The Geological Survey was not in a position, nor, in fact, was it asked, to give consideration to any other criterion (except rainfall) in classifying land. By 1917 it had classified 275,633,861 acres of public land as unsuitable for irrigation. These constituted a large part of the remaining unappropriated public lands.36 A major difficulty in framing legislation for the public lands which were at all useful for arable, dry or irrigation farming, or grazing was that the government Department best able to provide advice on agricultural land use prior to 1900 had no part in the administration of or shaping of policy 35 Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1911, Vol. 1, pp. 247-55. One may compare the reports of the GLO Commissioner for the same years and find them concentrating on details of work done and showing little vision of leadership in achieving improvements in public land policy. In the annual reports of the two agencies for 1912, for example, the Commissioner advocated legislation to regulate the "professional locators and pernicious literature in relation to the public lands," and to improve the requirements concerning the attendance of witnesses at land trials; Smith included a nine-page analysis of the bad working conditions of his staff which impaired their efficiency and again made an effective presentation of the case for classification work being done and for expansion. Report, 1912, pp. 144-48, 247-55, 260-62. Commissioner Clay Tallman's remark is interesting: "Registers, receivers, and surveyors generally are getting out of the habit of viewing those offices as political sinecures and are doing real substantial work, in many instances of a high order." Secretary of the Interior, Report, 1914, p. 170. 36 Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1917, p. 520. Actually, there were only 230,657,755 acres of public lands unsold, surveyed and unsur-veyed, in the same year. This is exclusive of Alaska. Ibid., p. 293.