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Show 612 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT would surely be able to manage them for less than any new agency would have to charge. Whether his amendment was a shrewd effort to defeat the measure or was an expression of respect for the Forest Service is not clear. It was brought out in the hearings that the Forest Service had estimated that the cost of managing an additional 80 million to 160 million acres would be $1,500,000 to $2 million. On the other hand, Harold Ickes, in his desire to retain control of the lands in Interior, declared that his Department could manage them for a mere $150,000. Ickes' estimate of cost was ridiculed by Vincent Carter of Wyoming who said that nobody in the House believed he could handle the problem for that amount. Richard M. Kleberg, Texan owner of the giant King Ranch, moved that fees for pasturing cattle in the districts to be created should be not less than 80 percent of the average commercial fees in adjacent areas, or in areas of the same general character. The Kleberg amendment failed for, as was said, the amendment would make it impossible for the management and leasing plan to succeed. Kleberg raised the question that had long bothered the Forest Service: should it charge less than the going value of the pasturage, as its permittees wanted, and thereby give a minority of the stockmen an economic advantage over the much larger group whose members paid, either in taxes and other costs on their own land or on rented land, the commercial value of the forage, or should it charge a rate equivalent to the actual value of the service? The Forest Service had moved fairly steadily toward the latter objective but had suffered politically as a result.12 Before the enactment of the Taylor bill the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior said that the Withdrawal Act of June 26, 1910, gave the Secretary sufficient legal authority to create grazing districts 12 Cong. Record, 73d Cong., 2d sess., April 10, 1934, pp. 6362, 6365, 6368, 6348. by administrative order and therefore no special legislation was necessary. Mindful of the unfavorable reaction land withdrawals recommended by Gifford Pinchot and ordered by Theodore Roosevelt had received, the advocates of the bill preferred to get congressional sanction, for, as Vincent Carter of Wyoming said, the bill was loaded with dynamite. It was federalism in the extreme, it would give the Secretary of the Interior dictatorial power, and would surely lead to effective reprisals in much the way that restrictive and at times harmful legislation had been directed at the Forest Service in reprisal for its restrictions on grazing. Many western Congressmen, perhaps most, agreed in part but were convinced that action to conserve the range and establish order in its use was essential and the Taylor bill offered the only route to these ends.13 The bill passed the House, 265-92. Fifteen votes from the states to be most affected by the measure were cast against the bill, eight Republican and seven Democratic. The Senate passed the measure without useful discussion and without a division but it insisted on limiting the area that might be included in grazing districts to 80 million acres.14 Homesteading on public lands under the Stock Raising Act, the original Act of 1862 or the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 did not end with the adoption of the Taylor Act. All existing rights that may have been established prior to its enactment were saved. Furthermore, the act did not provide for suspension of entries under any of the acts until the notice of a hearing on proposed boundaries of districts to be created had been posted. On November 26, 1934, all remaining unreserved lands in North and South Dakota and 10 Inter-mountain and West Coast States exclusive 13 Cong. Record, 73d Cong., 2d sess., June 12, 1934, pp. 11142-43. 14 Cong. Record, 73d Cong., 2d sess., April 11, 1934, p. 6414, and June 12, 1934, p. 11162. |