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Show 582 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT only to the people of the West, it maintained.50 Prior to 1907 efforts to restrict the Presidential authority for creating forest reserves under the Act of 1891 had met with little favor, but in the midst of the attack upon Pinchot, Senator Charles W. Fulton of Oregon introduced an amendment to an appropriation bill for the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture that would take from the President the power to create new or add to existing forest reserves in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming. Adopted without division or serious discussion, the provision became law on March 4, 1907 with the approval of President Roosevelt.51 Pinchot has related dramatically how he and his staff worked night and day between the introduction of the Fulton amendment and the signing of the appropriation act-8 days later-to prepare last minute proclamations for forest reserves in areas the staff had already investigated. On March 1 and 2, 32 proclamations were issued for the creation of new, and extensions of existing, forest reserves in each of the states in which authority was to be denied on March 3.52 Pinchot describes the angry reaction of Heyburn, Carter, and others with considerable glee but when the appropriation bill for the next year came 60 The Nation, 86 (June 25, 1908), 568. The editor welcomed the conviction of looters of the public lands in Oregon by a jury in a District of Columbia Court, adding that the government could not get justice in land fraud cases at the hands of a western jury. 51 Cong. Record, 59th Cong., 2d sess., Feb. 23, 25, 1907, pp. 3720, 3869; 34 Stat., Part 1, p. 1271. 32 Senator Patterson on Feb. 25, thought the Fulton amendment was like shutting the barn door after the horse had been stolen and doubted if the Forest Service "would have the audacity to attempt to set apart any more lands" in the states mentioned, but he did not know either Pinchot or Roosevelt. Cong. Record, 59th Cong., 2d sess., p. 3869. up for consideration,5S his Service had a hard time gaining funds it needed. The Appropriations Act of 1907 also ended the special fund into which all receipts from the leasing of grazing privileges and payments for timber had been paid and on which the Forest Service had previously depended. Two successive steps taken by Congress to permit the states to share in the proceeds from the income from the forests contributed somewhat to smoothing over the antagonism the proclamations had created. In the Appropriation Act for the Department of Agriculture in 1907 it was provided that 10 percent of all money received by the Forest Service from leasing fees and lumbering should be paid to the states or territories in which the reserves were located for public schools and roads. In 1908 the percentage was raised to 25 percent.54 In this way the sharing by Federal, state, and local governments in the proceeds derived from revenues of Federal land was begun. Another policy that brought Pinchot and the Forest Service into conflict with important interests in the West was the controls the bureaucrats established in the forests over grazing by requiring leasing fees, limiting the number of cattle, sheep, and horses in the forests, and determining the time and conditions under which grazing should be permitted. When the reserves were still in Interior, Binger Hermann had first questioned the wisdom of allowing sheep to graze in the forest, holding that next to fires sheep were responsible for the greatest damage to young growth. He issued a temporary order prohibiting sheep grazing on all the reserves but those in Oregon and Washington and 5:1 Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, p. 300; William B. Greeley, Forests and Men (Garden City, 1952), p. 65. 34 Act of March 4, 1807, 34 Stat., Part 1, p. 1270, and Act of May 23, 1808, 35 Stat., Part 1. p. 260. |