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Show 534 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT between 1837 and 1844, three in 1845, five in 1857, and probably the same number in the intervening years. He concluded that they accomplished "precious little"; "the looting of the public live oak . . . was never lessened to any appreciable extent. . . ." Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, in 1866 characterized the reservation policy as a "costly failure"; almost every stick the government had used for the Navy had been purchased from men who had cut illegally on the reservation. He recommended that the agents either be dropped or that Congress made a direct appropriation for them (they had been compensated in the past from funds appropriated for other purposes). In 1871 Congress appropriated $5,000 for the support of the agents. Why, is not quite clear, for the day of the wooden ship was passing and live oak timber was no longer important to the Navy. In 1879 and 1894 the reservations-at their height they had amounted to some 264,000 acres in five southern states, including Georgia-were restored to the public domain. The purchased land was made use of by other agencies of government. The reservation system had been a failure on "a colossal scale."8 It should be added that these efforts to preserve the supply of live oak for the Navy were not an indication that the government was aware of the danger of depleting the supply of the major building timber-white pine. Everyman's Timber When settlers began to penetrate into the treeless prairies of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa the wooded tracts along the streams drew their attention. If they were vacant and unimproved and either owned by the government or by absentees, the settlers helped themselves to whatever timber they needed, paying no attention to ownership, for it was considered common 8 Cameron, op. cit., pp. 68-99, esp. 93. property. Local authorities understood the settlers' need of lumber and winked at their trespasses if, indeed, they were aware of the degree to which cutting on public lands by settlers was proceeding. Rarely were farm makers badgered by inquisitive agents. Absentee owners, however, who suffered from such pilfering could neither understand nor appreciate the conception of public or "common" ownership of timber. The western point of view about growing timber on public lands was consistent with that section's view that unimproved land on the outer edge of settlement had no value until it was improved by the labor of man in clearing, fencing, building, draining, road building, and establishing social facilities. It was the labor of man upon the land that gave it value. Timber groves near prairies were quickly cleared of their trees by the early settlers. Later comers had to bring in lumber from the pineries of the Lake States. At the same time from the fast growing cities of Milwaukee, Chicago, Peoria, Dubuque, Des Moines, and St. Louis there was an increasing demand for lumber. To the pineries came the more venturesome of the Maine loggers, and lumbermen like the Stephensons, the Luddingtons, and Mori-sons, the Coburns, who brought with them some capital, great skill, valuable experience, and entrepreneurial ability. They were to make fortunes from speculating in timberlands and in logging and milling operations at Saginaw Bay, Green Bay, Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, and Minneapolis. These Yankee lumbermen came to share the western attitude toward government-owned timber. Taking a few trees from public lands for fence rails, fuel, or house construction would not have brought protest but when small scale commercial lumbering got under way officials began to think of their obligation to protect government property. One type of trespass that was difficult to |