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Show DRY FARMING AND STOCK RAISING HOMESTEADS, 1904-1934 511 for the public lands. Scientists of the Geological Survey in the Department of the Interior could roughly classify land according to a simple criterion of adequate rainfall or available water for irrigation but the Department of the Interior had no agronomists, no agricultural economists, no authorities who could speak on the forage value of native and imported grasses, no informed leaders on irrigation (until after 1902) and no livestock specialists and marketing experts. Measures that called for the most careful consideration by a combination of such experts-the Timber Culture and Desert Land Acts, the Carey Act, the Reclamation Act, the Kinkaid Act, and the Enlarged Homestead Act-had been drafted and adopted without the intensive analysis they needed and which technical experts available in the Department of Agriculture could have supplied. It was to be many years before the technically competent agricultural experts in Agriculture were to be called on to testify on land settlement bills. These were the responsibility of Interior. But when the forest reservations were transferred to the Department of Agriculture in 1905, the gap between the Departments was slightly bridged. Included within the forest reservations were many millions of acres of fair to good forage land which, like the public lands, had at one time been overgrazed, their carrying capacity reduced. These lands provided summer forage for ranch owners at lower elevations Avho liked to drive their cattle or sheep up into the mountains with the coming of hot weather, by which time the grass on the public lands had been depleted. The Forest Service working closely with the stockmen had given permits to local ranchers for modest fees and had permitted homesteaders to graze their work horses and milk cows free but had shut out stockmen with no local base. It had permitted the erection of drift fences, improved water sources, and con- ducted experiments with new and imported grasses. The remarkable esprit de corps which Gifford Pinchot had established within the Service and the able staff he had built up were all in line with the nonpolitical character of many of the activities conducted by the Department of Agriculture. Henry S. Graves, Forester, summarized these achievements in 1914 as follows:37 1. The ability of the ranges within the forests to carry livestock had been increased. 2. Cattle fed in the forests emerged fat and ready for market in contrast to the poor condition of those grazing on public lands outside. 3. The improved condition of the cattle was due to better distribution of the livestock, herding, erection of drift fences, development of additional water sources, predator control, fencing and better breeding practices of stockmen using the forests. 4. Range conflicts had been eliminated. 5. Farm and ranch property adjacent to the forests had increased in value. 6. Homesteaders within the forests had acquired grazing rights. 7. Nomadic herders no longer encroached on the ranges and small settlers' improvements. 8. Grazing receipts amounted to $1 million, 35 percent of which directly benefited the states. This array of accomplishments was becoming increasingly apparent to many stockmen. Forest Homestead Act Another measure which aided in bridging the gap between experts in various agricultural fields and land administering agencies and in providing the Department of Agriculture with an opportunity to ex- 37 House Committee on Public Lands, Hearings on Grazing Homesteads and the Regulation of Grazing on the Public Lands, 1914, p. 31. |