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Show ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUBLIC FOREST LANDS 591 the best of the white pine lands of Minnesota. In 1907 it was reported that applications for the exchange of 2,786,471 acres of relinquished lands had been received, 1,988,089 acres had been approved and exchanges patented, 193,464 acres had been rejected, and 604,918 acres were pending.77 No law was more disliked in the western public land states than the Forest Lieu Act, perhaps because it provided outsiders, like the Santa Fe Railroad and the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, with scrip that cost them little and enabled them to acquire land not open under normal conditions to local lumbermen. Binger Hermann who surely represented the western position in land matters early revealed this dislike. Despite his recommendations for amendment or repeal, Hermann seems to have become involved in approving questionable issues of scrip to the land rings in Oregon and California and, being under fire, was permitted to resign. His successor, W. A. Richards, Secretary Hitchcock, and President Roosevelt convinced Congress that the country had had enough of the Forest Lieu Act and the corruption which had surrounded its operation from the very beginning. On March 3, 1905, Congress repealed the act while providing that the validity of all contracts entered into by the Secretary of the Interior for exchange should not be impaired. This provision saved the rights of owners of land in two forests in Arizona and one in California to obtain lieu land.78 Investigations of Timberland Frauds When one of Theodore Roosevelt's plans, policies, commissions, or most favored appointees came in for severe attack in Congress, the President tried to divert attention by raising other controversial 77 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1907, p. 258. These figures are only for lands acquired under the Act of 1897. 78 33 Stat., Part 1, p. 1264. questions that contributed to the excitement of the time. One such diversionary tactic was used in 1906 and 1907. Western Senators were carping at Pinchot and a congressional resolution (whether introduced at the suggestion of the President or not cannot be determined), called upon the Bureau of Corporations, Departments of Commerce and Labor, to investigate the lumber industry to determine whether there was a conspiracy to regulate prices, contrary to the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.79 There was no reluctance on the part of the Bureau to make the investigation. It set about the task with vim. The huge amount of data it compiled showed that, though there were great holdings of timberland, there were also many small companies and nothing comparable to a monopoly existed. The Weyerhaeuser Companies were found to have 1,525,000 acres purchased from the Northern Pacific Railroad-a major beneficiary of the forest lieu scrip and Mount Rainier lieu scrip-Thomas B. Walker had 760,000 acres of sugar pine in California, and the Amalgamated Copper Company owned a million acres of Montana timberland. The reports of the Bureau managed to bring out by implication, if not otherwise, that the Wey-erhaeusers, Walker, and other large holders had worked through agents, or others who were using dummy entrymen under the Timber and Stone Act and the Homestead Act, to acquire heavily timbered lands in Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho. There is abundant evidence that these and other large timber buyers were the beneficiaries of laws intended for the use of actual settlers, laws which often were being fraudulently used.80 The Bureau's reports offer an overall critique of Federal policy toward the tim- 79 Cong. Record, 59th Cong., 2d sess., Dec. 13, 1906, Jan. 18, 1907, pp. 352-54, 1330-33. 80 One of the great gaps in American historical writing is a frank, honest, and nonapologetic history of the lumber industry. |