by the Commissioner of the General Land Office in the following language:
It is a bill of local and not general application to the timber lands of the United States, and adds one more to the already numerous special acts for the disposal of the public domain. The price fixed is too low, as much of the land is worth from five to fifty dollars per acre.
Under the provisions of the bill the timber lands will, in my opinion, be speedily taken up and pass into the hands of speculators, notwithstanding the provisions to prevent such result. The soil should not be sold with the timber where the land is not fit for cultivation. Only the timber of a certain size should be sold, and the soil and young timber retained with a view to the reproduction of the forests. The bill should have limited the sale of the lands to persons who have farms and homes within the State or Territory, and it ought to have required the purchasers to show affirmatively that they had need of timber for domestic uses.
The last clause of the second section will permit any person applying for a tract of timber land and securing a certificate from the register, to sell his right and interest therein immediately, and the purchaser, although it may have been obtained by perjury, may be entitled to a patent for the land.
Section 5 provides that any person prosecuted under section 2461 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, may be relieved of the penalty by the payment of two dollars and fifty cents ($2.50) per acre for the land trespassed upon. This is objectionable, for the reason that the penalty fixed is altogether inadequate, and does not require the payment of costs of prosecution, which are often greater than the penalty to be collected. It should require that the trespasser should pay for the entire subdivision trespassed upon.
There can be no doubt that if this bill becomes a law it will be taken advantage of, by persons who want to make money quickly, to acquire the timber lands under its provisions at a very low price, and strip the mountain sides of their forest growth as rapidly as possible. How disastrous such a result will be to these States and Territories need not be detailed here.
I fully concur with the Commissioner of the General Land Office in his opinion thus expressed.
The traditions of a time are still alive when the area covered with virgin forest in this country was so great that the settler might consider the trees on the land he occupied as a mere difficulty to be overcome and to be swept out of his way. But circumstances have very materially changed. We are now rapidly approaching the day when the forests of this country will no longer be sufficient to supply our home wants, and it is the highest time that the old notion that the timber on the public lands belongs to anybody and everybody, to be cut down and taken off at pleasure, should give way. A provident policy, having our future wants in view, cannot be adopted too soon. Every year lost inflicts upon the economical interests of this country an injury, which in every part of the country will be seriously felt, but in the mountainous regions threatens to become especially disastrous and absolutely irreparable. We ought to learn something from the calamitous experiences of other parts of the world. If the necessity of such a provident policy be not recognized while it is time, the neglect of it will be painfully appreciated when it is too late. I am so deeply impressed with the importance of this subject, that as long as I remain entrusted with my present duties I shall never cease to urge it upon the attention of Congress.
