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Show 578 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT new division orderly management of the reserves. It proved impossible, however, for Roth to work with Hermann and he left to head the new School of Forestry at Michigan. Politics won out over professional forestry. Pinchot meantime had been pressing for the transfer of the reserves from Interior to Agriculture; a bill for that purpose was given serious consideration in Congress in 1902. Though it was strongly endorsed by President Roosevelt and Secretary Hitchcock and its friends counted on its enactment, the measure was defeated by Joe Cannon's action in holding that it would increase the cost of administering the reserves.39 Having failed in his frontal attack upon the absurdity of keeping the theoretical and practical responsibility in forest management separated, Pinchot came up with a new plan to draw attention to the need for scientific management of the reserves and the desirability of having them placed in Agriculture. He persuaded President Roosevelt in 1903 to appoint a Committee on the Organization of Government Scientific Work and a Public Lands Commission, on both of which he became a prominent member. The former committee, among other recommendations, urged the concentration of all responsibility for the forest reserves and the national parks in Agriculture. It might not have been wise for two groups to make the same report on the reserves, so the Public Lands Commission was more guarded. It recommended: (1) repealing the Timber and Stone Act, (2) authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to sell timber on the public lands at carefully 39 Filibert Roth described some of the innovations he introduced into the Division of Forestry in three articles in Forestry and Irrigation, VIII (May, June, and July, 1902), 191-93, 241-44, and 279-82. For comment on the defeat of the move to transfer the reserves see ibid., pp. 226, 270. The American Lumberman of Chicago is quoted as strongly criticizing Cannon for his opposition. Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, pp. 138, 196-97. appraised values, (3) allowing free use of timber in limited amounts by settlers and miners, (4) excluding lands suitable for agriculture from the forest reserves or making them available for forest homesteads of up to 160 acres, (5) giving the President authority to set aside as grazing districts land suitable for pasturage by livestock and to impose fees for the privilege of grazing on lands and to regulate the use of the lands, and (6) repealing the forest lieu provision of the Act of 1897. The commission recommended that where the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior so recommended, the latter should be authorized to accept private lands within existing forest reserves in exchange for which it could convey nonmineral land of equal value and acreage outside the reserves, but within the same state. If it was impossible to arrange for such an exchange officials should be permitted to buy the desired lands within the forests.40 Opponents of Pinchot, and they were rapidly coalescing, could well have maintained that the Public Lands Commission of 1903-1904 was a hand-picked trio consisting of W. A. Richards, former Governor of Wyoming who had replaced Binger Hermann as Commissioner of the General Land Office and unlike the latter was quite susceptible to Pinchot's dynamic personality; Frederick H. Newell, in charge of the reclamation work and an ardent conservationist; and Pinchot. What better device was there to bring forth the views of Pinchot? It has been shown that several of the early forest reserves were created as a result, at least in part, of local pressures in the West for protection of the watersheds of streams and for protection from fire, but hostility to the rapid expansion of reserves was strong, both in 1897 when Cleveland's proclamations were issued, and again dur- 40 Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, pp. 240-50; S. Doc, 58th Cong., 3d sess., Vol. 4, No. 189 (Serial No. 4766), pp. iii-xxiv. |