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Show 526 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT identified with conservation; Elwood Mead, Commissioner of Reclamation; and Mary Roberts Rinehart, writer; with 12 other less well-known men, including state land commissioners of Montana and Idaho. The Committee's report was submitted on January 16, 1931. Its statement of general policies reflected a marked belief in the policies of conservation and efficient utilization previously advocated by Gifford Pinchot. "All portions of the unreserved and unappropriated public domain should be placed under responsible administration or regulation for the conservation and beneficial use of its resources." Areas important for national defense, reclamation, national forests, national parks and bird refuges should be reserved, i.e., retained by the Federal government. The balance of the public domain useful for grazing should be given the states if and when they were prepared to accept it and provide administrative control of use. Lands not accepted by the states should be placed under organized management by the Federal government. The committee obviously had its greatest difficulty in framing a recommendation for the mineral reserves. It finally suggested that when the states had developed a program of mineral land conservation and utilization uniform with that of the Federal government, including the payment into the Reclamation Fund of 521/2 percent of the proceeds of their use, the reserves should be transferred to them, but until that time the reserves should remain in the central government. Where states did not move to take over the surface rights to the public lands the committee recommended that on approval of a properly authorized state officer the President should extend over the public lands the controls and regulations of the national forests and if state action was not authorized in 10 years Congress might direct the President to accomplish the same end without state action. In the light of many and long sustained conflicts over proposals to consolidate all the land administering agencies in one department the committee's recommendation to achieve that end was a daring proposal, but one quite in line with President Hoover's views respecting the unnecessary overlapping and duplicating of services within government.75 Public lands shown on a map, drafted by the Forest Service, as desirable for addition to existing forests or creating into new ones were to be excepted from cession to the states. The committee recommended the creation of state boards of five members, one to be named by the President, one each by the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, and two by the state in which the lands were located. These boards were to decide what portion of the withheld lands should be added to the national forests, and what lands within the forests should be eliminated and restored to the public domain. The boards also should be authorized to select additional public lands for national defense, reclamation, parks, and bird refuges. States not accepting the cession might select and have patented to them isolated tracts of public lands up to 2,560 acres that when consolidated with state lands would make possible better management of the total. The last two recommendations were the most debatable. The committee thought private ownership of agricultural and grazing lands, "except as to such areas as may be advisable or necessary for public use," should be the objective in the final use and disposition of the public domain. No one objected to this recommendation with re- 75 The Report of the Committee on Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain was published in 1931 and was reprinted in Hearings Before the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, on Granting Remaining Unreserved Public Lands to States, United States Senate, 72d Cong., 1st sess., March 15-April 5, 1932. For convenience I have used the copy in the Hearings. |