OCR Text |
Show Article for The Rocky Mountain News By Cecil D. Andrus, Secretary of the Interior An atte'mpt is being made to hornswoggle all Americans out of a unique land heritage which has been a bulwark of our society and the source of a special freedom that has made the West such a great place to live. The threat is from the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion which has the potential of transforming the West from a land of open spaces into a patchwork eyesore that benefits the few and fences out the majority. Promoters of the Sagebrush Rebellion claim they are striking c blow for state's rights and and equality. They say the West is being discriminated against because there ere large tracts of Federal land in the West, but not in the East. They argue that the Federal government should hand over more than 600 million ceres to the states. That would be a disastrous mistake for virtually all Americans whether they are in Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, New York or Rhode Island. The land which some state"officials would confiscate belongs to all of the people of this country -not just to some of them, not even just to the people In the state where the land is located. This means that every American owns more than 2i acres of the public lsnds of this country, clthough the deeo is not in individual names. No American, regardless of how poor he or she may be, is landless. This has had and continues to have a great stabilizing effect on our society. |