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Show 580 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT administrative costs of the Forest Service, including that of protecting the reserves against fire and plunder. Other significant provisions allowed Forest Service personnel to make arrests for violation of laws and regulations relating to the reserves and national parks and to ship timber cut on the reserves out of the state or territory in which it was cut.47 Meantime, there had begun what Pin-chot called "The Race for New Reserves." Reasoning that public ownership and management was superior to private ownership and no management, Pinchot felt that he and his staff were racing against all the elements in the West now exerting themselves either to prevent the Forest Service and the President from adding to the reserves or to get the best of them into private hands before the lands were withdrawn from entry. Timber cruisers scouted the forests on public lands for choice bodies of timber which they hoped to secure 47 Acts of Feb. 1 and March 3, 1905, 33 Stat., Part I, pp. 628, 872; Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, p. 257. under the Timber and Stone Act or with lieu scrip, Soldier's Additional Homestead scrip, or through the use of dummies and homestead entries.48 The extensive frauds which enabled timberlands to pass to private ownership under the guise of aiding settlers and the failure of Congress to repeal the Timber and Stone Act and to give sufficient aid to the Land Office to prevent abuses doubtless contributed to Pinchot's conviction that public timberlands could only be saved from plunderers, spoilsmen, and speculators by having them withdrawn for national forest status. At the close of the McKinley administration (1901), there were 41 forests containing 46,410,209 acres. At the close of Roosevelt's administration the total area included within the reserves was 194,505,325 acres of which a considerable part was privately owned. In his ly2 years Roosevelt, spurred by Pinchot, had added 148,095,116 acres to the reserves. Of this large amount 26,261,-626 acres were in Alaska. 48 Pinchot, op. cit., pp. 250 ff. Forest Reserves" Total Reserves New Reserves Year Number Acreage Number Acreage 1900 38 46,772,129 1 1901 41 46,410,209 3 1902 54 60,175,765 15 9,146,846 1903 53 62,354,965 2 766,720 1904 59 62,763,494 9 408,529 1905 83 85,627,472 26 22,854,478 1906 106 106,999,423 22 21,306,001 1907 159 150,831,665 57 43,832,242 1908 165 167,976,886 9 11,789,847 1909 158 194,505,325 8 23,552,950 " Compiled from GLO Annual Reports. In 1907 the reserves were renamed "National Forests." |