OCR Text |
Show 592 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT berlands that is both devastating and, in view of the failure of Congress to make changes for many years thereafter, disillusioning. The strongest criticisms were directed at the application of homestead laws to timbered areas wholly unsuitable for farming and the inclusion of timberlands in the grants to railroads and wagon road companies. The result had been extensive acquisition of timberland by companies such as Weyerhaeuser of great stands of redwood, Douglas-fir and other valuable trees for no more than $2.50 an acre when they were worth five and ten times as much. By indirection, the reports criticized the weak and inept administration in the Land Office and the unimaginative and uncritical leadership in Congress that had permitted errors of the past to be compounded over and over again. Allusions were made to southern pine lands selling for $60 an acre, Douglas-fir for $100 to $200, and redwood for "hundreds of dollars" an acre for which the government had received $1.25 to $2.50 an acre. The report was particularly severe on those persons who, under the guise of friendship for the "actual settlers," were trying "to secure the transfer of public timberlands to private owners under . . . pleas . . . wholly specious and insincere. . . ." One notable case was cited of the elimination of 705,000 acres from the Olympic National Forest because it was said to be chiefly valuable for agriculture. As events turned out-and should have been anticipated-523,720 acres quickly fell to timberland speculators, not farm makers. In 1910 there were 100 "homesteaders" on the balance of the land and they had a mere 570 acres in cultivation. Unfortunately for those advocating reform in government land policies information in the reports that would a few years earlier have been useful in quieting the opponents of forest conservation and land reform hardly caused a ripple of public interest in 1914.81 This history of the framing and administration of public land policies is not primarily or even largely concerned with individuals. They have been mentioned only when they have been influential in shaping policy. Bickering among bureaucrats and the political narrative have no place in it. Mention is therefore made of the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy and the extensive literature on it only in passing. Pinchot and Ballinger as respective heads of the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior were both replaced by men strongly inclined toward conservation, and indeed close associates of Pinchot. Except for the reduction of acreage within the forests, no marked effort was made to turn the clock back.82 True, some of the withdrawn min- 81 Bureau of Corporations, The Lumber Industry, Part 1, "Standing Timber" (1913), pp. xiv, xix. Other parts are 2, "Concentration of Timber Ownership in Important Selected Regions," 3, "Land Holdings of Large Timber Owners" (1914), and 4, "Conditions in Production and Wholesale Distribution including Wholesale Prices" (1914). John Ise summarized much of the information in these reports, in United States Forest Policy, pp. 315 ff. 82 One writer makes the interesting point that Pinchot "continued his personal influence in the Forest Service" being a "self-styled watchdog of forestry and of conservation in general." Donald C. Swain, Federal Conservation Policy, 1921-1933 (Berkeley, 1963), p. 11. Also see Henry Clepper, "The Forest Service Backlash," Forest History, XI (January 1868), 6-15. The Ballinger-Pinchot controversy has attracted more attention than any other aspect of conservation history, partly because Gifford Pinchot -one of the most dramatic figures in American history-was deeply involved and never during his lifetime let the country forget it, and also because it was a part of the conflict between progressives and conservatives. On the one side were arrayed Richard A. Ballinger, Secretary of the Interior, supported by President William Howard Taft, Attorney General George W. Wickersham, and the prevailing Republican majority in the Congress and on the other Pinchot, Louis Brandeis, a number of able journalists and altorneys, and Progressive leadeis. The 13-volume Investigation of the Department of the |