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 // conservation hampers development — the country ought to knozv it 
 
 "CONSERVATION 
 AS PRACTISED 
 
 A Specific Answer to a Specific Attack 
 
 55 
 
 WITH A FEW WORDS ON THE ALLEGED WESTERN DISCONTENT 
 WITH CONSERVATION 
 
 BY 
 
 GIFFORD PINCHOT. /^^-r- 
 
 Reprinted from Pearson's Magazine for May^ ^9^3 
 
 FOLLOWED BY 
 
 CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED 
 
 BY 
 
 XD. H. THOMAS 
 
 Reprinted for Comparison from the fanuary Number 
 
 [Any part of this pamphlet may be 
 reproduced without further permission] 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1913 
 
F ^- ^ 
 
 Pt 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 ttp://www.archive.org/details/conservationasprOOpincrich 
 
BuMRoft Ubmn 
 
 ''CONSERVATION 
 AS PRACTISEDV 
 
 (^GIFFORD PINCHOT 
 
 THE FOREMOST CONSERVATIONIST ANSWERS CRITICISMS OF CONSERVATION PRAC- 
 TICE AND TELLS WHY HE THINKS THE PRACTICE IS FOR THE GOOD OF THE MAJORITY 
 
 There is a French proverb — Tell me who 
 are your friends, and I will tell you who you 
 are yourself. With equal truth it might be 
 said of Conservation, and of many another policy 
 and proposal — Tell me who are its enemies, 
 and I will tell you whether the people ought to 
 be its friends. As may be learned from yEsop's 
 fable of The Man, his Son, and the Ass, you 
 cannot please everybody. Moreover, it is far 
 from wise to try. 
 
 Of those who are not pleased with Con- 
 servation, it may be said in general that there's 
 a reason, — a reason so powerful that it sup- 
 plies the motive behind one of the most careful 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 and assiduous campaigns of near truth in re- 
 cent American publicity . It is small wonder 
 that this campaign, plausible enough to deceive 
 the very elect, should have misled even so expe- 
 rienced, sagacious, and patriotic a magazine 
 as Pearson's, to whose editors, as well as to 
 Mr. Thomas, I am indebted for the welcome 
 opportunity to let the winds of truth blow upon 
 Mr. Thomas's seductive house of cards. 
 
 MR. THOMAS says, "The West . . . 
 has no voice in administration, as 
 the forestry bureau at Washington 
 is made up of Eastern theorists." 
 
 The office of the Forest Service at 
 Washington is managed by four men. The 
 first of them was born west of the Alle- 
 ghanies in a public land State, and began 
 his practical acquaintance with Western 
 Forests seventeen years ago, when he be- 
 came, as I can testify from personal ex- 
 perience, a first-class mountain man. The 
 second, born west of the Rockies, was for 
 ten years a small cattleman in Arizona, then 
 went into sheep raising, and was Secretary 
 of the Arizona Wool Growers Association 
 when he entered the Government Service. 
 He had never been East in his life until he 
 was thirty-four years old. The third went 
 to California when he was ten years old, 
 worked his way through the University of 
 California, and had been for seven years in 
 charge of practical forest work in Califor- 
 nia, Montana, and Idaho before he was 
 called to Washington. The fourth, born 
 east of the Rockies like Mr. Thomas him- 
 self, moved West in 1892, and went into 
 business in the same city, Seattle, where 
 Mr. Thomas is an editor of one of the 
 principal Anti-Conservation journals of the 
 West. He enlisted in the Spanish War, and 
 afterward entered the Forest Service. In 
 all he has been in constant touch with the 
 West and its problems for about twenty 
 years. 
 
 Furthermore, of the 147 men in actual 
 charge of the National Forests, all had had 
 extensive Western experience before they 
 were given their present responsible work, 
 and about 80 per cent, were Western men 
 before they entered the service at all. Of 
 the 1,393 Forest Rangers on the rolls June 
 
 30, 1912, a little over 99 per cent, were 
 actual residents of the West when they 
 were appointed. The practical work of 
 forest administration in the West is now 
 in the hands of Western men. 
 
 ■\>1"R. THOMAS repeats in substance the 
 •*• ^ statement made in the annual report 
 of the Forester that the National Forests 
 do not yield each year as much as they cost. 
 He mentions an excess of expenditures over 
 receipts of $3,582,615.19 for the year 191 1, 
 and adds, "What would be thought of a 
 private business that would show such a 
 balance sheet?" 
 
 The sum of $3,582,615.19 includes, al- 
 though Mr. Thomas does not mention it, an 
 extraordinary expense of $1,086,590.89 for 
 meeting the exceptional outburst of forest 
 fires which followed the driest season ever 
 known in the West. That, however, is by 
 the way. The real answer is that a private 
 business, conducted under the limitations 
 imposed by law upon the Forest Service, 
 and with the same conditions to meet, 
 would present a balance sheet of precisely 
 the same kind. The object for which the 
 Service must be conducted is not to make 
 money for the Government, but to make the 
 forests useful to the largest possible number 
 of people. In doing that work the business 
 methods of the Service need fear nothing 
 in comparison with the best managed of the 
 great private corporations, as was deter- 
 mined by the report of Gunn, Richards & 
 Co., a distinguished firm of business or- 
 ganizers, made June 30, 1908. 
 
 The money spent on the National Forests 
 is an insurance against the damage or de- 
 struction by fire of some two billion dol- 
 lars' worth of public property, and against 
 monopoly and extortion when the private 
 
'CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED" 
 
 O 
 
 CO 
 
 CO 
 
 C3 
 
 lands which now supply the bulk of our 
 yearly consumption of timber are nearly ex- 
 hausted. The timber of the National For- 
 ests is increasing in value at the rate of at 
 least fifty million dollars a year. It would 
 be poor economy not to be willing to spend 
 two or three millions annually to insure that 
 immense return. 
 
 Ultimately the National Forests will be 
 self-supporting. But in the meantime there 
 is little more reason in complaining that 
 they cost more than they bring in than 
 there would be in complaining that the 
 premiums paid for fire insurance, or the 
 cost of a city fire department, failed to 
 bring in an annual cash return. 
 
 *\TR. THOMAS says the annual cut from 
 •*• •*• the National Forests is "but 8^ per 
 cent, of the annual crop." 
 
 The whole annual crop or growth is not, 
 and cannot be, harvested at present on the 
 National Forests, and the reason is not far 
 to seek. When the National Forests were 
 created the best and most accessible of the 
 timber had already been appropriated. The 
 Government took what was left. Three- 
 fourths of the National Forest timber is 
 even yet inaccessible by reason of the lack 
 of transportation. Where it is accessible 
 and salable, the annual crop is being har- 
 vested. Much of the more remote timber 
 could not yet be cut even if it were given 
 away. 
 
 The suggestion is constantly made that 
 the National Forest timber should be sold 
 below its value, to which suggestion the 
 conclusive answer is contained in the re- 
 port of a legislative investigation filed with 
 the Governor of the State of Washington 
 April I, 1910, which report contains and 
 comments on more than a hundred cases 
 of sales of State timberland for less than it 
 was worth. There is no safe and prac- 
 ticable way to dispose of Government tim- 
 ber except for what it will bring in the 
 open market. 
 
 O PEAKING of the Mount Olympus Na- 
 ^ tional Monument which lies within the 
 Olympic National Forest, Mr. Thomas says, 
 "On this reserve no one can cut a stick of 
 firewood, prospect a ledge of mineral, catch 
 a fish or shoot a bird. Instead of restricting 
 its boundaries to the base of Mount Olym- 
 pus, the monument covers 608,640 acres of 
 the heart of a known mineral region." 
 
 Mr. Thomas has evidently been misin- 
 formed. If he will go and camp in the 
 Olympic National Monument he will find 
 by practical experience that he can cut all 
 the sticks of firewood he needs, that the 
 only limit on the fish he can catch will be 
 his personal skill and sense of sportsman- 
 ship, and that he can hunt buck deer from 
 September i to November I, and shoot 
 grouse from October i to January i, and 
 shore birds and water fowl from October i 
 to February i. There are no restrictions 
 whatever on fishing and hunting within 
 this Monument except those imposed by 
 the game laws of the State of Washing- 
 ton. 
 
 The Olympic National Monument was 
 created with its present area at the request 
 of a congressman from the State of Wash- 
 ington, who presumably represented the 
 wishes and best interests of his State. 
 
 If there is mineral within this National 
 Monument it will, of course, be opened to 
 development. At the time the monument 
 was created it was not known to include a 
 mineral region, and there are said to be 
 strong doubts whether it does so now, al- 
 though a vigorous attempt is being made 
 on that ground to have the land restored 
 to the pubHc domain. 
 
 Whether there is mineral or not, this 
 area does contain valuable timber. In that 
 connection it may be well to recall what 
 happened when over 700,000 acres of heav- 
 ily timbered land in the Olympic National 
 Forest were restored to the public domain 
 and opened to entry in 1891, on the plea 
 that it was chiefly valuable for agriculture. 
 Within ten years 524,000 acres of it had 
 passed into the hands of men who held it 
 exclusively for its timber. One man had 
 acquired 81,530 acres, and five had 178,000. 
 And of this whole vast timbered area, after 
 ten years less than one acre in a thousand 
 was actually under cultivation. 
 
 TUTR. THOMAS also says, "Waterpower 
 •^ ■*• sites on the public domain were with- 
 drawn without provision for their future 
 utilization. The city of Bellingham in the 
 State of Washington is served with power 
 right now generated in British Columbia, 
 because progress on waterpower develop- 
 ment in the Mount Baker region has been 
 halted by the government. 
 
 "The pretext for these withdrawals is 
 that they are intended to prevent monopoly. 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 and this in a region where monopoly is im- 
 possible in the very nature of things." 
 
 The waterpower sites were withdrawn to 
 give Congress an opportunity to regulate 
 their use. They are still withdrawn solely 
 because of the persistent refusal of the 
 waterpower interests to allow the passage 
 of a law, such as the Lever bill, now before 
 Congress, that would insure the use of the 
 public power sites without monopoly. 
 These power interests often work anony- 
 mously, but the list of their spokesmen in- 
 cludes such names as Frank Short of Cali- 
 fornia, Francis Lynde Stetson of New 
 York, Wm. P. Lay of Alabama, and T. R. 
 McKee of the General Electric Company. 
 If there has been failure to develop, the re- 
 sponsibility lies directly upon the men who 
 have blocked the unremitting attempts of 
 the Conservationists to get a reasonable 
 law that would open these sites to develop- 
 ment, and hardly less upon newspapermen, 
 like Mr. Thomas, who make it easy for 
 Congressmen to defeat the true interests of 
 their constituents by misrepresenting the 
 facts and throwing the blame on the wrong 
 people. 
 
 In this they are not always successful. 
 For example. Miles Poindexter of Mr. 
 Thomas's own State of Washington, was 
 elected to the United States Senate mainly 
 on the Conservative issue, standing against 
 Mr. Thomas and with me, and on that is- 
 sue carried Mr. Thomas's own city of 
 Seattle. 
 
 To return to our argument, in the Na- 
 tional Forests the power sites are now and 
 have for years been open to development 
 under the act of February 15, 1901, under 
 which 274 permits have been issued by the 
 Forest Service and 139 water-power plants 
 built, in addition to 28 which are now in 
 process of construction. I do not know 
 why Bellingham gets its power from Brit- 
 ish Columbia, but I do know that the 
 Mount Baker region is in a National For- 
 est, and that it is open to power develop- 
 ment under the same conditions which per- 
 mitted the construction of power plants in 
 other Forests. 
 
 Is waterpower monopoly in the State of 
 Washington impossible, as Mr. Thomas 
 declares? A report of the Commissioner 
 of Corporations published in March, 1912, 
 shows that the General Electric group of 
 power companies controls forty per cent, 
 of the commercial waterpower developed 
 
 and under construction in the United 
 States, while the officers and directors of 
 the General Electric Company and its three 
 subsidiaries control twenty-four corpora- 
 tions which operate hydro-electric plants, 
 over fifty public service corporations, and a 
 number of railroads and factories, and over 
 fifty banks and financial houses. This same 
 powerful group controls seventy-two per 
 cent, of the waterpower in Colorado, fifty- 
 eight per cent, in Oregon, and fifty-five p.er 
 cent, in Mr. Thomas's State of Washing- 
 ton, in which two corporations have al- 
 ready succeeded in securing nearly three- 
 quarters (seventy per cent.) of all the 
 waterpower yet developed. Comment is 
 unnecessary. 
 
 "VTR. THOMAS: "Several years ago a 
 ■*• ■*■ large coal land withdrawal was made 
 in Whatcom County, Washington, and, 
 through department ignorance of geograph- 
 ical conditions, Bellingham, a city of 30,000, 
 was included in the withdrawal." 
 
 This withdrawal, like all withdrawals 
 for similar purposes, affected only certain 
 kinds of land. It had no more effect on 
 land within the city limits of Bellingham 
 than it had on land within the city limits 
 of New York. It respected all existing 
 claims and property rights of every kind, 
 and had to do only with coal, oil, gas, and 
 phosphate rock. All other minerals may be 
 freely located and developed within the 
 area withdrawn, and land may be taken up 
 under the Homestead Laws, with a reser- 
 vation of the underlying coal to the United 
 States. So little does the withdrawal re- 
 strict the development of the region that, 
 although Mr. Thomas evidently does not 
 know it, it is still (Feb. 25, 1913) in effect. 
 Such a withdrawal might be made to in- 
 clude the land beneath Mr. Thomas's office 
 in Seattle without in the least interfering 
 with his rights or his business. 
 
 T^ EFERRING to coal claims in Mount 
 ■*-^ Baker, Mr. Thomas complains of de- 
 lay in granting patents when the coal is 
 needed (as it is) and adds, "This is one 
 case of department stupidity and neglect, 
 but it is not an isolated case. It is typical 
 of the manner in which all matters pertain- 
 ing to the public domain have been 
 handled." 
 
 Sixteen coal entries were made in this 
 field. Half have already been patented, five 
 
'CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED" 
 
 of them within six months after entry. 
 Several of the claims are now under inves- 
 tigation. This seems to be one more case 
 of holding the Government responsible 
 when in reality there is no valid basis for 
 complaint of delay. 
 
 "D UREAU ignorance of forest conditions 
 •■-' in the far West," says Mr. Thomas, "is 
 dense beyond belief," and cites in support 
 the case of a forest ranger who, in 1899, 
 was instructed to blaze out the lines of his 
 reserves, which covered an area about half 
 as large as the state of Connecticut, and 
 patrol its boundaries every day. 
 
 This anecdote of fourteen years ago 
 dates from a time long before the present 
 National Forest policy was in existence, 
 and six years before the care of the Na- 
 tional Forests was transferred from the 
 General Land Office to the Forest Service, 
 upon whose efficiency it can therefore have 
 no bearing. This was the period, unless I 
 am mistaken, when not a single man in the 
 Division which had charge of the National 
 Forests at Washington, had ever seen or 
 set foot in one of them. I could myself 
 give Mr. Thomas other cases from that al- 
 most forgotten time which are even more 
 striking. Take, for example, that of two 
 men, also in the State of Washington, who 
 were instructed to buy rakes and rake up 
 and burn the down timber on more than 
 a thousand square miles of heavy forest. 
 Neither of these stories, however, has any- 
 thing to do with the present subject of dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 -V/fR. THOMAS: "Sales on the 11,- 
 ''■ ■*■ 684,360 acres of forest reserve in the 
 state of Washington have aggregated 95,- 
 204,000 board feet in 14 years, or less than 
 7,000,000 annually. Decay is destroying 
 nearly a billion feet of timber annually, so 
 that cutting has not reached 7 per cent, of 
 the decay loss." 
 
 The facts are that in the eight years, 
 1905 to 1912 inclusive, during which the 
 Forest Service has had charge of the Na- 
 tional Forests, 415,512,900 feet of timber 
 has been sold from the National Forests of 
 the State of Washington. The average cut 
 during that period was not seven, but 171^^ 
 million feet annually. For the last three 
 years the cut has averaged a little over 
 thirty million feet, and during the last year 
 it reached 37,000,000 feet. 
 
 The total stand of merchantable timber 
 in the National Forests of Washington is 
 estimated at about ninety billion feet. This 
 includes all classes of timber, the thrifty 
 and growing, as well as the over-mature. 
 There is undoubtedly some loss from decay. 
 It is, however, but gradual ; and Mr. 
 Thomas's figure of one billion feet a year 
 is preposterous. While it seems to be well 
 within Mr. Thomas's average limit of error, 
 it is an overstatement by more than four to 
 one. 
 
 A GAIN Mr. Thomas refers to an al- 
 "^^ leged loss to the States, "which have 
 had taken from them areas to be held in 
 perpetuity as undeveloped wilderness on 
 which there is no taxable or revenue-pro- 
 ducing property." 
 
 Let us see. Apart from the fact that 
 more than 6oo,oeo persons every year en- 
 gage in the use or development of National 
 Forests, the Western States now receive 
 for their schools and roads, in lieu of taxes, 
 twenty-five per cent, of the gross revenue 
 from the National Forests. Up to January 
 30, 1912, they have thus received $2,- 
 606,400, of which $115,205 went to the 
 State of Washington. The present Con- 
 gress has set aside an additional ten per 
 cent, for building roads, and over $200,000 
 has already been made available. In some 
 places the proceeds from this thirty-five 
 per cent, of the gross revenue already ex- 
 ceeds what would be produced by taxation 
 under private ownership. In others it still 
 falls short. In the end it will surely ex- 
 ceed it everywhere. 
 
 TN most of the Western States, in the 
 -■■ areas locked up, are lands belonging to 
 the commonwealth. Washington, for in- 
 stance, has nearly 600,000 acres of school 
 lands worth from $12,000,000 to $15,090,000 
 within the eleven reserves plastered over 
 its area. Idaho and Montana fare simi- 
 larly." Thus Mr. Thomas. 
 
 This statement probably refers to a de- 
 cision of the Secretary of the Interior that 
 the creation of a National Forest before 
 public surveys have been made defeats the 
 claims of certain States to school lands in 
 the National Forests, while giving them the 
 right to make indemnity selections else- 
 where. This decision of another depart- 
 ment is controlling on the Forest Service, 
 which nevertheless has steadily recognized 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 the moral right of the States to these lands, 
 has refrained from cutting timber on them 
 except in agreement with the States, and 
 has vigorously insisted that the equities of 
 the States must be allowed and satisfied by 
 exchange. On February 15, 1912, a final 
 exchange of this kind was made with South 
 Dakota. On June 4 last, a similar ex- 
 change of certain lands was made with 
 Idaho, and an exchange that will satisfy all 
 of Idaho's claims is now nearly complete. 
 As soon as legislative authority can be se- 
 cured the same arrangement will be made 
 .with Montana and other States. 
 
 While I was Forester, I made a similar 
 proposition personally and repeatedly to 
 the Land Commissioner of the State of 
 Washington, but Mr. Ross evidently pre- 
 ferred a cause of quarrel to the satisfac- 
 tion of the State's claims, and my sugges- 
 tion was always rejected. 
 
 •K/TR. THOMAS: "One third of Wash- 
 ^ •*• ington's total area is reserved. On 
 these reservations there is no industry, no 
 settlement, no development, though twenty 
 per cent, of the lands within them are 
 arable and capable of settlement, and an- 
 other twenty per cent, mineral on which 
 the forest growth is inferior and practically 
 valueless." 
 
 If it were true, this would be by far the 
 most important paragraph in the whole 
 article. There are agricultural and mineral 
 lands within the National Forests, about 
 two (not twenty) per cent, of the former, 
 and an unknown and for the present un- 
 knowable amount of the latter. Are they 
 tied up? 
 
 Within a year after it took charge, the 
 Forest Service itself proposed and on June 
 II, 1906, secured the passage of an act to 
 open to settlement any lands in National 
 Forests which were more valuable for agri- 
 culture than for forest purposes. Under 
 this law, 1,213,000 acres have already been 
 opened to settlement for the benefit of over 
 12,000 settlers. The work is proceeding so 
 rapidly that within three years, in spite of 
 the huge area of the National Forests, it 
 will have been completed. 
 
 Most of the agricultural land still owned 
 by the Government in the National Forests 
 is heavily timbered, and worth from two to 
 twenty times as much for the timber as for 
 the land. To give the timber with the 
 land would merely invite speculation in- 
 
 stead of promoting settlement. So the 
 Forest Service first sells the timber, and 
 then the land is opened to settlement, by 
 which arrangement the imitation home- 
 steader is eliminated. The effect of giving 
 the timber with the land is well illustrated 
 by the Olympic Forest elimination cited 
 above. 
 
 How then as to the mineral lands? Are 
 they open to development? 
 
 Every season there are 45,000 miners and 
 prospectors in the National Forests. The 
 prospector is welcome. He may and does 
 search the Forests at will. He cuts with- 
 out charge the timber he needs for his 
 claim. He is often aided by the roads, 
 bridges, trails, and telephone lines built by 
 the Forest Service. Of all the false 
 charges made against the Forest Service, 
 there is none more perfectly false than the 
 charge that the National Forests are closed 
 against mineral development. If the well- 
 established policy of the Forest Service 
 were not proof enough, there is the law of 
 June 4, 1897, which specifically provides 
 that the National Forests shall be open to 
 prospecting and mining. 
 
 TUTR. THOMAS: "Mr. Graves maintains 
 ■•• "*• that it is profitable to continue for- 
 estry on lands adaptable to agriculture. 
 But is it a wise national policy which seeks 
 to perpetuate forest growth at 33-^ cents 
 per acre per year on land which properly 
 cultivated will produce from $50 to $500 
 per acre per annum? If it is, then produc- 
 tion has ceased to be a fundamental ele- 
 ment of economics." 
 
 This statement would be important if it 
 were true. The simple but conclusive an- 
 swer is that Mr. Graves holds no such 
 opinion, and that already a million and a 
 quarter acres of agricultural land in the 
 National Forests have been opened to en- 
 try by twelve thousand settlers under a 
 policy initiated by the Forest Service in 
 1906 and in vigorous effect to this day. 
 
 •V4'R. THOMAS says: "The entire ii,- 
 •*■ ^ 684,000 acres of National Forests of 
 the State of Washington, more than a 
 fourth of the State's total area, contains 
 exactly 34 miles of wagon road." 
 
 This statement is but twenty-six hundred 
 and sixty per cent, out of the way. The 
 fact is that the National Forests of the 
 State of Washington contain 938 miles of 
 
"CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED" 
 
 road and 1,491 miles of trails, of which the 
 Forest Service itself has actually built 
 more miles of road than Mr. Thomas al- 
 lows altogether, and in addition more than 
 a thousand miles of trails. 
 
 AS matters stand," says Mr. Thomas, 
 "only the very wealthy can bid at such 
 sales" — the sales of timber by the Forest 
 Service. 
 
 Again important if it were true. The 
 fact is that ninety-nine per cent, of all the 
 timber sales made during the last fiscal year 
 were for amounts under $5,000 and 97 per 
 cent, for amounts under $1,000. Not only 
 so, but over 3,000 small operators cut 63 
 per cent, of the timber cut during the year, 
 while more than 38,000 permits for free 
 timber were issued to settlers and pros- 
 pectors. With the growing monopoly of 
 Western timber, it will soon be the Na- 
 tional Forests alone that give the small 
 lumberman a chance. 
 
 ■KTR. THOMAS: "In the Philippine Isl- 
 ^ *• ands with 116,000 square miles, there 
 are many fine forests, but up to last Octo- 
 ber no National Forests had been created 
 there." 
 
 This statement of Mr. Thomas's is with- 
 in about forty million acres of being cor- 
 rect. Over ninety-nine per cent, of the 
 forests of the Philippine Islands, or 59,500 
 square miles, are forest reserves controlled 
 and managed by the United States Govern- 
 ment through the Bureau of Forestry of 
 the Philippines, precisely as the National 
 Forests in the United States (likewise 
 called forest reserves until 1905) are con- 
 trolled and managed by the United States 
 Government through the Forest Service. 
 The names used to be the same, the pur- 
 poses are the same, the general lines of 
 policy are the same; and of this I speak 
 with some confidence because policy and 
 purposes were embodied in a report made 
 by me to Mr. Taft while he was Governor 
 of the Philippine Islands. 
 
 "V/TR. THOMAS: "Alaska to-day consists 
 '*•'*• of a few towns and mining camps 
 governed by United States marshals and 
 surrounded by alien territory on which 
 Alaskans can venture as trespassers only. 
 It is rich in every natural resource, but 
 these resources are as worthless as the 
 minerals in the moon. They can't be 
 
 touched by {be people who require them." 
 
 This statement is fully as accurate as that 
 just quoted about the Philippine Islands. 
 First, any Alaskan can go freely upon any 
 public land or National Forest in Alaska 
 without committing trespass of any sort. 
 Every foot of it is open to the freest access. 
 Second, the resources of Alaska "can't be 
 touched by the people who require them" 
 to the following extent: 
 
 In 19 12, there were sold from the Na- 
 tional Forests of Alaska, 45,000,000 feet of 
 timber in 355 sales. 
 
 Every kind of mineral except coal is 
 freely open to development. During the 
 past year, the mineral resources of Alaska 
 which "can't be touched by the people who 
 require them" produced copper to the value 
 of $4,904,715 and gold and silver to the 
 value of $16,031,705, while the furs which 
 "can't be touched" yet were touched to the 
 value of $728,554. 
 
 Although it is doubtful whether Mr. 
 Thomas had fish in mind as one of the 
 natural resources he was describing, it is 
 worth while noting that the untouchable 
 salmon resources of Alaska yielded during 
 the past year $16,459,036. 
 
 'TTHE law," says Mr. Thomas, "as the De- 
 "•• partment interprets it, is that no man 
 can acquire a coal claim unless he acquires 
 it 'for his own individual use and benefit.' 
 And 'own individual use and benefit' is 
 capable of no elasticity. Nowhere in 
 our statutes is there another phrase so 
 rigid." 
 
 There is little fault to be found with this 
 statement except that it is not so. Such 
 provisions are common in our public land 
 laws. For example : 
 
 The Homestead Act (R. S. 2290) says: 
 "The entry shall be made in good faith for 
 the purpose of actual settlement and cul- 
 tivation and not for the benefit of any other 
 person, persons, or corporation." 
 
 The Timber and Stone Act (Act of 
 June 3, 1878, Sec. 2) says: "The applicant 
 to purchase must state under oath that he 
 does not apply to purchase land for specu- 
 lation but in good faith to appropriate it to 
 his own exclusive use and benefit, and that 
 he has not directly or indirectly made any 
 agreement or contract in any way or man- 
 ner with any person or persons whatsoever, 
 by which the title which he may acquire 
 from the Government may inure, in whole 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 or in part, to the benefit of any person ex- 
 cept himself." 
 
 MR. THOMAS assumes to take issue 
 with the conservation policy, yet 
 says: "A coal land leasing law in 1907 
 would have accomplished all that could 
 have been done under private ownership." 
 
 Mr. Thomas is evidently not aware that 
 immediately upon the withdrawal of the 
 coal lands in 1906 the Roosevelt adminis- 
 tration made every effort to secure the pas- 
 sage of a coal land leasing bill for open- 
 ing them to development without waste and 
 without monopoly. Every year since an ef- 
 fort has been made by the friends of Con- 
 servation to pass similar legislation. That 
 we have not succeeded was directly and 
 solely due to the attitude of the men (Gug- 
 genheim and others) who preferred to see 
 no legislation enacted rather than legisla- 
 tion which would prevent speculation and 
 monopoly in coal, and who were supported 
 by Mr. Thomas's paper, the Seattle Post 
 Intelligencer, in their successful effort to 
 prevent the passage of a coal land leasing 
 law. 
 
 It does not become the men who opposed 
 this legislation at the time to express re- 
 gret now that it did not pass, without at 
 least acknowledging their share in defeat- 
 ing it. If they had allowed it to pass, the 
 just complaint that Alaska is not allowed 
 to use her own fuel could not now be 
 made. It is a curious fact that the men 
 who were directly responsible for locking 
 up the coal of Alaska, first by their un- 
 successful attempt to have it monopolized, 
 and second by their successful effort to 
 prevent its development under conditions 
 that would effectually prevent monopoly, 
 are now the loudest in lamenting a condi- 
 tion which but for them would never have 
 taken place. 
 
 -V/JR. THOMAS: "The remedy for our 
 *• ■*• Conservation bungle is simple . . . 
 Classify the public lands. These four 
 words contain the cure." 
 
 For once Mr. Thomas is almost right. 
 The classification of the public lands is not 
 the whole cure, but it is a part of it, and 
 the United States Forest Service has done 
 its full share toward that end. Both before 
 and since I left it, it has given its best at- 
 tention to segregating agricultural lands 
 from lands more valuable for forestry. It 
 
 has opened a million and a quarter acres of 
 the true agricultural lands to entry, and is 
 protecting the lands more valuable for tim- 
 ber against the land grabbers. It has 
 eliminated from the forest boundaries more 
 than ten million acres of lands more suit- 
 able for other uses. It ascertains the min- 
 eral character of lands claimed under the 
 mineral land laws, and in many ways gives 
 practical effect to the fundamental principle 
 of any wise public land classification policy, 
 the principle that each parcel of land must 
 be put to that use in which it will con- 
 tribute most to the commonwealth. 
 
 TT is one of the commonest charges 
 •*• against the Forest Service, because it is 
 so easy to make, that it "Nullifies the acts 
 of Congress," indulges in "Bureaucratic 
 government," to quote again Mr. Thomas's 
 language, and generally does as it pleases 
 without regard to the law or to certain 
 kinds of prophets. 
 
 The Forest Service does disregard proph- 
 ets of Mr. Thomas's kind for reasons which 
 I hope have already appeared to the reader; 
 but if it had disregarded the law that fact 
 would long ago have been judicially estab- 
 lished. The truth is that the Forest Serv- 
 ice is law abiding with such completeness 
 that in no single case has any court of last 
 resort declared any action by the Forest 
 Service to have exceeded its legal powers, 
 and this includes two decisions by the Su- 
 preme Court of the United States. The 
 Forest Service has frequently applied the 
 law in ways that were distasteful to certain 
 special interests, but when the final test of 
 judicial decision has been made, it has been 
 proved without exception that the Service 
 had respected the law and acted within its 
 legal powers. 
 
 T IKE so many others who attack it, Mr. 
 •*-' Thomas does not understand what 
 Conservation means. "Conservation," he 
 says, "has been intrusted to a bureau of the 
 Agricultural Department." It is doubtless 
 the Forest Service which Mr. Thomas had 
 in mind. 
 
 A portion of the work in Conservation 
 is indeed intrusted to the Forest Service, 
 but the statement might be accepted as 
 more accurate if Mr. Thomas had not 
 omitted to mention that other portions are 
 intrusted to five other Bureaus in the De- 
 partment of Agriculture, such as the 
 
"CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED" 
 
 Bureau of Soils and the Bureau of Plant 
 Industry; to five Bureaus in the Depart- 
 ment of the Interior, such as the General 
 Land Office and the Bureau of Mines; one 
 in the Department of Justice, charged with 
 the enforcement of the public land laws; 
 and three in the War Department, which 
 deal with the control and development of 
 navigable streams (including waterpower) 
 and with the conservation of the natural 
 resources of military reservations and the 
 Philippine Islands. In other respects the 
 statement that conservation is intrusted to 
 a single bureau appears to be beyond criti- 
 cism. 
 
 Mr. Thomas's article presents an em- 
 barrassment of riches to the man who will 
 look up the facts. Richer digging is sel- 
 dom found, but the foregoing samples will 
 suffice. I should have been glad to touch, 
 among other things, on the question of the 
 Chugach National Forest, which was not 
 "created under a false pretence" and which 
 does not "exclude the only timber worth 
 while in Southern and Southeastern 
 Alaska," and upon the whole question of 
 coal and other monopolies attempted or 
 achieved by the Guggenheim Syndicate. 
 But perhaps enough has been said to raise 
 a reasonable doubt whether after all the 
 grabbers have had all the right on their 
 side. 
 
 There are three principal sources of op- 
 position to Conservation in the West. 
 First, the men who came out as pioneers, 
 
 and who can not realize that the time when 
 everything was free could not last and has 
 gone by. Second, the men who have been 
 checked by Conservation in their efforts to 
 grab more than their share of the public 
 wealth. Third, men interested in develop- 
 ment, and rightly so, who have been de- 
 ceived by the stream of lies on the subject 
 of Conservation put in circulation by its 
 enemies. 
 
 These men are opponents only until they 
 learn the facts, but until they do their dis- 
 content with Conservation is no better 
 based than the hostility of the Romans of 
 Nero's time to the Christians, which rested 
 on the current fable that the Christians 
 were enemies of humanity, habitually mur- 
 dered little children, and worshiped an 
 ass's head. 
 
 I do not say that the Forest Service is 
 free from the common human faults, but I 
 do assert that its work is peculiarly neces- 
 sary, unusually hard to do and remarkably 
 well done. 
 
 The pity of it is that reckless perversion 
 should turn against it some men who are 
 naturally its friends, and so should make 
 still more difficult the enormous task of 
 wisely opening to public use the natural 
 resources on an area as large as all the 
 States from Maine to Virginia, and doing 
 it with the least practicable restraint to 
 the individual, with the largest benefits to 
 the people generally, and without monopoly 
 or unnecessary waste. 
 
CONSERVATION AS 
 PaACTISED 
 
 f>9^jy H« THOMAS 
 
 HOW CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED THREATENS TO DESTROY THE RESOURCES WE 
 ARE TRYING TO CONSERVE AND BESIDES AIDS PRIVATE MONOPOLY IN THREE WAYS 
 
 Here is a first-hand look ckt the conservation of our natural resources as 
 practised. See how you like it. You may think it strange that the article be- 
 ginning on page $1 should advocate government ownership of the coal mines as 
 a means of serving the people when the government has failed so signally in its 
 conservation policy which is meant to serve the people. The conservation policy 
 is all right. The conservation practice seems to be all wrong. That's all there 
 is to it. Certainly there would be no benefit to the people if the government 
 handled the coal mines as it is handling the conservation matter. Conservation 
 as practised serves private monopoly. It is the people's own fault. They — you 
 — are the government. Wake up and show some interest in things. You'll get 
 just as good, just as an efficient government as you demand. You are the gov- 
 ernment. If conservation is a rank failure as a benefit to you, it's your fault. 
 Find out what is the matter first; then see what you want to do about it. You 
 can find out what is the matter with our pet " use of our natural resources with- 
 out waste " in this article and there's a whole lot the matter with it. The Dem- 
 ocratic Platform promised some conservation practice. Let's have it. — Editors. 
 
 CONSERVATION has been defined by 
 its chief exponent as the "use with- 
 out waste of our natural resources 
 for the benefit of all the people." 
 When the conservation movement started 
 
 seriously, little more than a decade ago, it 
 was welcomed by all classes except the 
 professional land, timber and coal grabbers, 
 and by all sections of the country. The 
 West had learned the lesson of the East 
 
CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED 
 
 resources have been locked up by 
 
 is; coal 
 lands, oil lands, etc., have been reserved as national forests. 
 
 TT7ESTERN 
 ' ^ blanketing the public domain with reserves; coal 
 
 by observation and example, and did not 
 want to see its great forests destroyed as 
 the walnut and oak groves of Ohio and 
 Indiana and the maple orchards of New 
 England were annihilated. 
 
 The national parks have met popular ap- 
 proval. They have been perpetuated for a 
 worthy purpose, and actually serve that 
 purpose, which is to save and hold for all 
 alike for all time wonderful and inspiring 
 objects of nature. 
 
 Our national forests would meet with the 
 same approval if they served the purposes 
 which they purport to serve. 
 
 The popular conception of conservation 
 is that it permits the wise use, and pre- 
 vents the wilful waste, of the natural re- 
 sources still to be found within and upon 
 the public domain. 
 
 Conservation has been intrusted to a 
 bureau of the Agricultural Department, 
 which has been permitted to grow arrogant 
 and wasteful without reproof. This has 
 gone on until conservation now actually 
 threatens with destruction the very re- 
 sources we are trying to hold for wise use 
 and against profligacy. 
 
 The West sees this. The East does not. 
 The East, however, is acquainted with the- 
 oretical conservation only. The West is ac- 
 quainted with conservation as it is prac- 
 tised. The radical conservationist affects 
 to believe that Western opposition is due to 
 the alleged fact that every Westerner is 
 either an active or a passive land thief. 
 
 As a matter of fact the average Western 
 man is as honest as the average Eastern 
 man, and the public conscience is as active 
 an entity West as East, therefore there 
 must be another reason. 
 
 In the first place it is the West and not 
 the East, North or South which has been 
 conserved. The West is carrying the bur- 
 den for the whole nation for, with the ex- 
 ception of 163,171 acres in Michigan, 674,- 
 970 acres in Florida and 65,950 acres in 
 Porto Rico, our national forest reserves, 
 190,328,733 acres in all, lie in tht states 
 west of the Mississippi and within the ter- 
 ritory of Alaska. 
 
 The man who has read only the Forestry 
 Bureau's circulars and press matter knows 
 only one side, the side of the theorist and 
 the radical; what the publicist with a col- 
 lege course knowledge of forestry has to 
 say of the purpose and work of the forest 
 service. Out in the states where conserva- 
 tion is going on, and where men can see for 
 themselves, results are apparent. 
 
 Conservation has piled up a continuous 
 deficit, and at the same time has permitted 
 an appalling waste of the very resources it 
 purports to save. 
 
 A bulletin issued by the Forest Service 
 under date of October 30, 191 1, gives the 
 total area of all the national forests as 190,- 
 328,733 acres. Only two states of the East- 
 ern half of the country, Michigan and 
 Florida, have national forests within their 
 borders. With Porto Rico the total area of 
 forest reserves east of the Mississippi is 
 904,690 acres. Alaska and the West con- 
 tain all the balance. 
 
 Right here is found an unequal distribu- 
 tion of a great national burden. The West 
 carries practically all of it, but has no voice 
 in administration, as the forestry bureau at 
 Washington is made up of Eastern the- 
 orists. 
 
 A statement issued by Forester Graves 
 under date of September 12, 1912, gives an 
 estimated stumpage for all the forests under 
 the service of 600,000,000,000 feet board 
 measure. In his 191 1 report Mr. Graves 
 estimates annual new growth on the re- 
 serves at 3,273,690 feet. In other words 
 that is the crop. 
 
 Total timber sales on the reserves for the 
 7 years, 1905 to 191 1 inclusive, was 1,901,- 
 532,000 feet, or less than 60 per cent, of any 
 single season's growth. The average an- 
 nual cut for this 7-year period was only 
 271,647,000 board feet, or about eight and 
 one-half per cent, of the annual crop. 
 
 Total cost of administration for the past 
 five years is shown on pages 12 and 13 of 
 the chief forester's report for 191 1. It ag- 
 gregates $18,164,984.56. 
 
 The total revenues for the same period, 
 as shown in the same place in this report, 
 
 Bu^roft LibruT 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 XT ORTH WESTERN cities have to get their power from 
 
 i^ 
 
 British Columbia because water power sites have 
 
 been withdrawn without provision for their future use. 
 
 400 years. This is a production of 33^ 
 cents a year per acre. Mr. Graves main- 
 tains that it is profitable to continue for- 
 estry on lands adaptable to agriculture. But 
 is it a wise national policy which seeks to 
 perpetuate forest growth at 33^^ cents per 
 acre per year on land which properly cul- 
 tivated will produce from $50 to $500 per 
 acre per annum? If it is then production 
 has ceased to be a fundamental element of 
 economics. 
 
 Forest preservation as practised has re- 
 tarded mineral as well as agricultural de- 
 velopment in every state where there are 
 any considerable areas within the reserves. 
 
 An opportunity for comparison is afforded 
 by those national forests in the state of 
 Washington which lie along the Canadian- 
 American boundary. Locked up in these 
 areas are long and fertile valleys forested at 
 present, and in the extreme mountainous 
 parts are treeless areas highly mineralized. 
 
 South of the International line in the 
 state of Washington is one of these min- 
 eral areas. More than three-fourths of the 
 northern tier of counties, however, are 
 swallowed up in national forests. Mineral 
 and physical characteristics in both British 
 Columbia and Washington are identical. 
 The line, geographically, is imaginary. To- 
 pographically and quantitatively it does not 
 exist. As between development, however, 
 and lack of development, that line exactly 
 traverses the 49th parallel of latitude, for 
 the mines of the region just north of the 
 International line, the Boundary and the 
 East and West Kootenay districts, produced 
 some $11,000,000 last year, while those to 
 the south yielded only about $800,000, and 
 all but an insignificant fraction of this came 
 from the mines of Republic, located in a 
 part of Ferry County happily not included 
 in any national forest. 
 
 In creating the forestry service it was 
 not intended that mining and prospecting 
 should be discouraged, as Congress pro- 
 vided legal means to carry on both occupa- 
 tions within the reserves themselves, but 
 here, again, the forestry bureau has trans- 
 cended its creator. 
 
 It has abrogated the laws of Congress, 
 not by direction, not by any positive act, but 
 by indirection and negation. 
 
 If the forestry service were to sell and 
 cut a billion feet of timber annually on the 
 reserves in Washington State alone it would 
 have from $2,500,000 to $3,000,000 annual 
 revenues, whereas the revenues from that 
 source have not yet exceeded an average of 
 $10,000 per year, and the price of lumber 
 would go down, as I will show later. 
 
 With such revenues, roads could be built 
 and mining encouraged on the reserves un- 
 der the plain provisions of the laws of Con- 
 gress, and that without waste of timber re- 
 sources, for a billion feet of lumber sold and 
 cut annually would not exceed either natu- 
 ral decay or new growth. 
 
 South of the boundary mining and pros- 
 pecting are permitted to languish because of 
 lack of roads. The land is held in reserves 
 by the federal government. Neither state 
 nor county has any taxable property within 
 those reserves. Prospectors are not men 
 of means or they would not be prospectors. 
 To discover mineral which could not be de- 
 veloped because of the lack of the most 
 primitive means of transportation would be 
 of no benefit, so prospectors have learned 
 that there is little or nothing to be gained 
 working over government reserves. 
 
 In the mining regions of British Columbia 
 are many hundreds of miles of road of the 
 very best character, all built by the province. 
 It is possible to secure immediate govern- 
 ment aid for roads into any new region 
 north of the boundary where mineral has 
 been discovered. 
 
 Southern British Columbia is full of 
 American prospectors and miners. They 
 find encouragement there, but find only dis- 
 couragement in the same identical mineral 
 belt south of the line, a belt capable of the 
 same production as the British boundary 
 camps. 
 
 Conservation as practised is the cause of 
 it all. In the British camps along the in- 
 ternational line there is a mile of good road 
 for every square mile of territory. South 
 of the line in the forest reserve of the state 
 
CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED 
 
 TN Washington State alone decay annually kills a bil- 
 -■- lion feet of timber on reserved land; total sales are 
 7,000,000 feet; waste like that keeps lumber prices up. 
 
 of Washington there is a mile of road for 
 every 550 square miles of territory, and the 
 American roads are generally inferior to 
 those of the Canadian province at that. 
 
 The entire 11,684,000 acres of national 
 forests of the state of Washington, more 
 than a fourth of the state's total area, con- 
 tain exactly 34 miles of wagon road. 
 
 Conservation as practised aids monopoly 
 in three ways. 
 
 First — by failure to settle agricultural and 
 to develop mineral lands within the national 
 forests, leaving the timber to be sold eventu- 
 ally to timber buyers rich enough to build 
 logging railroads into and through the re- 
 serves. If cultivation of the soil and min- 
 ing were encouraged on the lands in the 
 public domain better adapted to those pur- 
 suits than to forestry, there would be trans- 
 portation, and small lumbering would grow 
 up, giving the logger and mill man of ordi- 
 nary means an opportunity to purchase gov- 
 ernment offerings of timber. As matters 
 stand only the very wealthy can bid suc- 
 cessfully at such sales. 
 
 Second — by withdrawing great areas 
 from use and refusing to sell and cut, the 
 market values of Weyerhauser and other 
 holdings are greatly enhanced. 
 
 The Olympic National Forest, in the state 
 of Washington, is an example. 
 
 This reserve is triangular, surrounded on 
 three sides by navigable waters. Between 
 the boundaries of the national forest and 
 the encompassing Pacific and its inlets is a 
 row of townships heavily forested, and pri- 
 vately owned by some of the largest timber- 
 holding organizations in the country. 
 
 The withdrawal of 100,000,000,000 feet of 
 timber in the heart of this peninsula has 
 added millions of dollars to the value of the 
 outer private holdings, and in addition has 
 left the owners of that outer strip in a posi- 
 tion to command the whole when the gov- 
 ernment finally offers it for sale. 
 
 Third — by refusing to cut any but a small 
 per cent, of the annual increase or new 
 growth, and leaving hundreds of millions of 
 feet to rot each year which should be cut, 
 the price of lumber is maintained at a high 
 
 level -to the disadvantage of the consumer 
 and the enrichment of the already wealthy 
 timber holders. 
 
 Who is conservation to benefit if not the 
 masses, and if present practices do not bene- 
 fit the people as a whole, but do benefit the 
 lumber barons, how can the policy pursued 
 be called conservation? 
 
 Going from the national forests of Wash- 
 ington to those of Alaska conditions grow 
 worse. 
 
 One Alaskan, for trade purposes with the 
 states last year, was worth 394 Filipinos. 
 
 The whites in Alaska are all Americans 
 and the natives are far less an alien race 
 than the natives of the Philippines, but we 
 are making aliens of the Alaskans and little 
 brothers of the aborigines of our far-off 
 Pacific Islands. 
 
 Alaska with nearly 600,000 square miles 
 of area has nearly 27,000,000 acres of na- 
 tional forests. Of this total one-third is 
 treeless, and another third sparsely covered 
 with a worthless and stunted growth. Of 
 the Chugach forest not 10 per cent, is worth 
 the expense of administration, and that re- 
 serve alone covers more than 11,000,000 
 acres. 
 
 The Copper River & Northwestern Rail- 
 road, from Cordova to Kennecott, 197 miles, 
 is built through the Chugach forest, but it 
 was found cheaper to import ties and piling 
 from Puget Sound than to use the trees 
 along the right of way, which have neither 
 strength nor life, being brittle and decay- 
 ing quickly when cut and used. 
 
 These facts have been brought to the at- 
 tention of the authorities again and again, 
 but none of the lands withdrawn for al- 
 leged forestry purposes has as yet been re- 
 stored to the public domain. 
 
 In the Philippine Islands, with 116,000 
 square miles, are many fine forests, but up 
 to last October no national forests had been 
 created there. 
 
 Alaska to-day consists of a few towns and 
 mining camps governed by United States 
 marshals and surrounded by alien territory 
 on which Alaskans can venture as tres- 
 passers only. It is rich in every natural re- 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 npHE Forestry Bureau thinks it wise to perpetuate forests 
 
 -*- which produce 33^ cents per year per acre on land 
 
 which if cultivated would produce from $50 to $500. 
 
 source, but those resources are as worthless 
 as the minerals in the moon. They can't 
 be touched by the people who require 
 them. 
 
 Alaska has sore need of fuel for both do- 
 mestic and industrial purposes, and because 
 it has been denied the right to cut its own 
 cord wood and mine its own coal — and I 
 say "its own" advisedly — settlement and in- 
 dustry have languished. 
 
 Alaska belongs to the people of Alaska, 
 the men and women who have gone there 
 to settle and develop it. In no other way 
 can a citizen of any American state ac- 
 quire any interest in that territory. 
 
 Coal in the ground is valueless. In the 
 cellar or in the bunkers of some railroad or 
 factory it is an asset, a factor in human 
 progress and comfort. Forests which can't 
 be cut save under prohibitive penalties, but 
 which may die and decay, are productive 
 only of national waste. 
 
 Gold lured many souls to the Northland, 
 but only the hardy and the brave remained 
 to permanently people that domain. Alaska 
 has cost the United States, original pur- 
 chase price and administration, from 1867 
 to 191 1, $35,816,674. It has produced in 
 minerals, furs and fish alone $446,640,984. 
 Of this more than $195,000,000 was in vir- 
 gin gold. All of this wealth has gone into 
 American pockets, a contribution to the 
 general welfare and prosperity of the en- 
 tire nation. 
 
 National indifference to Alaska has be- 
 come a fixed American habit. Looked 
 upon from the first as folly, the country 
 is still regarded as a place to go and dig 
 gold from frozen muck. It is the "land 
 of the frozen north," "ice-clad Alaska," to 
 the multitude, a misnomer, for which guilt 
 attaches to a few half-baked fake writers 
 and novelists. 
 
 As a matter of fact interior Alaska is 
 no colder than the two Dakotas, Minne- 
 sota, Wisconsin or eastern Montana, and 
 the cold nowhere in that whole territory 
 is as penetrating and disagreeable as the 
 cold of Chicago. 
 
 The finest berries, the crispest lettuce, 
 
 the sweetest cabbage in all the world, grow 
 along Cook's Inlet. Apples ripened this 
 year in and around Dawson, and the farms 
 of the Klondike harvested $30,000 worth 
 of potatoes in 191 1. Tomatoes and melons 
 have been matured for years in the Tanana, 
 and nowhere in all the world do grasses 
 and flowers reach such luxuriance of 
 growth and brilliant beauty. 
 
 Alaska is a land of long summer sun- 
 shine, of skies of deepest blue and waters 
 which flash every jeweled color to the 
 ravished eye. It is a land of plenty where 
 nature has been most lavish, where there 
 is everything to grip the heart and mind 
 and fancy, and every material thing neces- 
 sary to make it the habitat of civilized 
 human beings. 
 
 It is by far more beautiful, more hos- 
 pitable and more inviting than the coast of 
 New England, but Alaska is not gaining 
 population. 
 
 In a speech made on a visit to Seattle 
 after his return from Africa Theodore 
 Roosevelt said: "Alaska is capable of sup- 
 porting a population as great as that 
 of the Scandinavian peninsula." Under 
 Roosevelt-Pinchot policies, however, the 
 time when Alaska will have that popula- 
 tion is far distant indeed. In 1900 the ter- 
 ritory had 63,592 people. In 1910 it had 
 64,356, a gain of 764 in the decade, or 76.4 
 persons per year. 
 
 Norway and Sweden in 19 10 had a com- 
 bined population of 7,869,139, so that 
 Alaska has to gain 7,804,783 people to 
 equal Scandinavia's present figure. Gain- 
 ing 76.4 people per year the time required 
 for Alaska to reach Scandinavia's im- 
 portance la point of population is only 
 102,156 years. 
 
 The fish are in the sea, the minerals are 
 in the mountains, the qualities are in the 
 soil, the water and the air to support mil- 
 lions of people; but settlement, the ac- 
 quisition of lands, the right to cut a tree, 
 dig a little coal, or do anything necessary 
 to self-support or human comfort, are so 
 restricted and abridged that Alaska has 
 failed to attract population, while at the 
 
CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED 
 
 T AND along the International Line is alike; just north 
 -■— ' of the line last year mines produced $i 1,000,000; just 
 south $800,000; the south mineral land is forest reserve. 
 
 same time certain bleak, inhospitable north- 
 west Canadian provinces to-day are fairly 
 swarming with American settlers. 
 
 What is the reason for this? 
 
 The interior department has accepted 
 some $300,000 from American citizens for 
 coal lands in Alaska. While some of this 
 money was paid in nearly a decade ago 
 there has been neither an acre of land 
 granted nor a dollar returned. 
 
 But not one coal claim in all Alaska has 
 been found regular or free from construc- 
 tive fraud. This is the recent announce- 
 ment of the interior department. In short 
 not a single Alaskan with a coal claim has 
 been found to be honest in intent. Each 
 and every one is charged with having en- 
 tered into some development, mining or 
 transportation agreement with some one 
 else. The law, as the department inter- 
 prets it, is that no man can acquire a coal 
 claim unless he acquires it "for his own 
 individual use and benefit." And "own in- 
 dividual use and benefit" is capable of no 
 elasticity. Nowhere in our statutes is there 
 another phrase so rigid. 
 
 In disposing of cases before the land 
 office it is learned that "own individual use 
 and benefit" means that each locator must 
 locate for himself, by his own personal act 
 and not under the power of attorney law, 
 a federal statute applied to Alaska, else he 
 becomes a "dummy" ; that he must pay for 
 the claim with his own money, for should 
 he borrow it he will be charged by some 
 field agent with conspiring to give some 
 one else a share of the "use and benefit" ; 
 that he must develop the mine himself, 
 mine the coal himself, and carry it to 
 market himself, on his back, presumably, 
 for should he make a railroad company of 
 himself to furnish transportation, he is 
 charged with another form of conspiracy, 
 and that is with a conspiracy to monopo- 
 lize and "bottle up" the field for the bene- 
 fit of himself as a railroad company. 
 
 In the light of requirements for suc- 
 cessful coal mining in a field far removed 
 from markets, for there is no market worth 
 mining for in Alaska alone, and the trans- 
 
 portation of that coal on any possible basis 
 of profit, the construction placed on the 
 Alaska coal land laws shows bad faith on 
 the part of the government. 
 
 Immoral as that construction becomes 
 under analysis it is not so dishonest as the 
 withdrawal orders which followed the suc- 
 cessful blocking of the entrymen by means 
 of these fraud charges. 
 
 The Chugach forest, let it be said here, 
 was created under a false pretence. It 
 was not formed for the purposes of for- 
 estry; but to prevent private acquisition of 
 coal lands under any of the existing pub- 
 lic land laws. 
 
 Classification of the lands in that re- 
 serve would show greater agricultural 
 areas than forest; greater glacier areas 
 than either, and mineral areas equal' to 
 more than fifty per cent, of the total 
 
 The timber has no commercial value 
 from a lumbering standpoint. A few areas 
 near the coast contain pulp spruce, but 
 these are comparatively small, and do not 
 and never did justify the huge blanket 
 withdrawal which constitutes the present 
 Chugach forest. 
 
 In an effort to include in a reserve all 
 of the coal lands where there was promise 
 of development, and where locators were 
 attempting to acquire titles, Mr. Pinchot 
 drew boundaries which excluded the only 
 timber worth while in Southern and South- 
 western Alaska, and that is the forest 
 growth on Cook's Inlet just to the west of 
 the western limits of the Chugach forest. 
 
 He had no information in his possession 
 touching forest growth in that region, but 
 he was fully informed on all coal land de- 
 velopment on the public domain within the 
 territory of Alaska. 
 
 Alaska should have been exporting coal, 
 making coke and smelting ore at its coast 
 towns. Cordova should be as large as 
 Butte, but it isn't. 
 
 Alaska is buying domestic fuel from 
 British Columbia, paying from $17 to $30 
 per ton, shipping copper ore to Tacoma 
 where it is smelted with coke from Aus- 
 
PEARSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 \ LASKA is buying domestic fuel from British Co- 
 ^ ^ lumbia for from $17 to $30 per ton while its 
 own land is full of coal which it is not allowed to use. 
 
 tralia, and has lost population instead of 
 gaining in the past five years. It runs one 
 train a week over its only railroad and is 
 suffering, as James Keeley, Editor of the 
 Chicago Tribune, said after a visit there 
 last July, "not from confiscation, but from 
 suffocation." 
 
 "But," says some one, "we are going to 
 have a coal land leasing law and open 
 Alaska and develop its resources." 
 
 A coal land leasing in 1907 would have 
 accomplished all that could have been done 
 under private ownership. 
 
 Oil has now supplanted coal on the Pa- 
 cific Coast. Steamships, locomotives, fac- 
 tories all use it. Coal mining in both 
 Washington and British Columbia has de- 
 creased as a consequence of California's 
 77,000,000 barrel annual oil production. 
 To compete with oil which brings from 30 
 to 40 cents per barrel at the well, coal 
 prices must range from 90 cents to $1.20 
 per ton at the mine, with transportation 
 facilities equal to those in the oil fields. 
 Alaska has no transportation facilities 
 whatever. 
 
 Now, who will lease Alaska coal lands, 
 let the terms be ever so generous ? 
 
 The remedy for our conservation bungle 
 is simple, and the machinery to apply it is 
 a long-established and permanent adjunct 
 of the federal government, the Geological 
 Survey. 
 
 Classify the public lands. These four 
 words contain the cure. 
 
 Until this is done, and done thoroughly, 
 no government land policy satisfactory to 
 all alike will be possible. 
 
 When this is done agricultural lands can 
 be settled and used ; mineral lands devel- 
 oped and forest lands held intact to per- 
 petuate forest growth where forest growth 
 is the best and most profitable crop for the 
 lands so used. In short, when the lands 
 of the public domain are classified the res- 
 ervations can be limited to the purpose 
 which they purport to serve. 
 
 Under our past and present policies 
 boundaries have been marked around huge 
 areas without proper or careful regard — 
 
 many times without accurate knowledge — 
 of what those areas contained. The result 
 is that mineral lands and agricultural 
 lands have been locked up and withheld 
 from their proper use ; states deprived of 
 the benefits which would accrue from de- 
 velopment; stagnation has taken place of 
 industry and activity, and wilderness per- 
 petuated where there should be thriving 
 and productive communities. 
 
 The Canadian provinces have worked 
 along land classification lines, and there is 
 marked development north of the bound- 
 ary. Those provinces are attracting 
 American settlers and American miners 
 and prospectors to the disadvantage of our 
 own northwestern states. 
 
 British Columbia is Canada's great for- 
 est and mineral province. British Colum- 
 bia does not sell its timber lands. It leases 
 them. Twenty-one years is the tenure, and 
 some of the largest holders of "timber 
 limits" in that province, as the leaseholds 
 are called, are American lumbermen. 
 
 If our own public lands policy were as 
 sensible the tide of American immigration 
 into Canada would be diverted to our own 
 unused, imdeveloped domain. 
 
 Conservation can be made businesslike. 
 It can conserve, which it is not doing now. 
 The state of Washington has the proof, 
 and it lies in its own wise administration 
 of its own lands. Washington has a $10,- 
 000,000 permanent school fund and still 
 has in its possession 80 per cent, of its 
 granted lands. 
 
 Under the ownership of the state are ag- 
 ricultural, timber, mineral, tide lands and 
 oyster beds. These lands are classified and 
 disposed of both by sale and lease. Fed- 
 eral reserves within the state are nearly 
 five times the area of the state holdings, 
 but the federal gross revenues from nearly 
 12,000,000 acres of lands in Washington 
 are barely i per cent, of the state's reve- 
 nues from 2,500,000 acres. 
 
 When conservation really conserves the 
 West will be ready to believe in it and to 
 support it. It must first get on a business 
 basis. 
 
>^?J 
 
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