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Show 560 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT as to how such a policy could be made to function. Though his views on the Timber Cutting Act were not clearly stated, Groff was convinced that the Timber and Stone Act should be repealed."1 He suggested that if public timberlands were to be retained by the Federal government, state and territorial legislatures might be invited to draft plans looking to the protection of the timber "from waste and destruction or from being removed or monopolized for purely speculative ends." His proposal included "concurrent action of State and Territorial legislatures" but does not appear to have included joint action with the Federal government. The West always preferred local control to Federal administration.82 The West was neither ready for the repeal of the Timber and Stone Act nor for the modification of the Timber Cutting Act. In fact it wanted legislation that would relax even more the controls on the public lands and extend the privileges of the Timber Cutting Act to lands not classified as mineral. Furthermore, when the outcry in the older states against the flagrant and widespread misuse of the Timber Culture Act became so strong as to impel Congress to provide for its repeal on March 3, 1891, Congress included in it a clause that made more difficult the enforcement of the Timber Cutting Act and prosecutions for cutting on public lands. This was done by providing that in any civil or criminal action for trespass it should be a defense for the defendant to show that he was a resident who had cut the timber for farming, mining, manufacturing, or domes- tic purposes and that it had not been transported out of the state. The act extended the free timber privilege to Colorado, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, and the Territory of Utah and 2 years later its provisions were extended to New Mexico and Arizona. Residents were privileged to cut timber free of cost from both mineral and nonmin-eral land on any scale they wished for purposes of sale or other traffic, as long as it was not destined for export from the state or territory of origin. Actual settlers, miners, and farmers could procure timber they needed without permit. No provision was made for compensating the government for the millions of feet of lumber great mining and lumbering companies took from the public lands in the next few years.*43 Though the futility of the fight against timber depredations in the face of this and earlier legislation was apparent and admitted, Congress went on spending annually $100,000 or more for the maintenance of investigating agents and $100,000 to protect the public lands from illegal entry in the hopeless task of trying to make people stop utilizing the loopholes in the legislation for which Congress itself was responsible. Radical reformers thought it sl GLO Report, 1890, pp. 80-86. Two years later the Timber and Stone Act was extended to make it apply to all the public land states. s»Ibid.,p. 81. K< GLO Report, 1891, p. 90, H. Doc, 55th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 12, No. 5 (Serial No. 3640), pp. 75-79. Commissioner Binger Hermann called the free timber provision of the Act of 1891 "fatally defective because it provided no return to the government and rankly discriminated in favor of those lumbermen who cut on public lands, as against those cutting on private lands. He reported in 1897 that nearly 300 permits had been issued for a total cut of 300 million feet, the majority being to "small sawmill operators" for 500,000 board feet, but great corporations such as the Big Blackfoot Milling Company, the Bitter Root Development Company and the Anaconda Mining Company, each of Montana, had gained far larger privileges. Other large commercial operations on the public lands are depicted by Hermann. |