The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., June 01, 1926, Page 15, Image 15

June 1926
THE UNITED AMERICAN
proper salting of cattle arid to carry forward many coopera­
tive projects.
THE PROBLEM ON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
The grazing on the public domain is in many ways closely
related to that on the national forests. As already indicated
the forests provide chiefly the summer range for stock. Many
persons using the open public ranges are also permittees
on the national forests. In many cases portions of the public
domain, if retained permanently in public ownership, should
be administered in conjunction with parts of the national
forests, in order to secure the best economic use of the public
lands. Stockmen are embarrassed because of the lack of a
controlling agency to allot the unreserved ranges and to pre­
vent over-grazing. Stockmen have for a long time acknowl­
edged that these unreserved lands should be brought under
some kind of control. As long ago as Í905 recommendations
were made by the administrative departments of the govern­
ment for legislation looking to this end. The attempts to pass
such a measure have all failed. A special effort was made
in 1907 and again in 1911, 1912, and 1913, with some degree
of support from the stockmen. While the stockmen have
very generally urged some kind of control over the grazing
on the public domain they have not given wholehearted sup­
port to the application of a system analogous to that in effect
on the national forests. The opposition, or rather the lack
of support necessary to secure the legislation, has been and
still is due in large measure to the large stock interests.
There is evidence that the small grazers for the most part
would welcome an extension to the public domain of the
national forest system.
The real reason why there has been no legislation to pro­
tect the open public range is that a strong element in the
business desires a system of grazing rights, such as they
are now asking for on the national forests. Instead of a
leasing law, Congress passed in 1916 the so-called grazing
homestead act that permitted the acquisition of 640 acres by
a homesteader on land classified as suited to the purpose.
This law to a large extent has proved a failure. It has riot
led in any appreciable degree to settlement. Ultimately the
lands pass to those stockmen who are in a position to pur­
chase them. It has without doubt increased the cost of
stock raising, encouraged speculation, and by alienating from
the government many scattered areas made more difficult
an orderly control of those lands which should be handled
in units of considerable size.
THE GRAZING FEE
The policy of charging for grazing privileges on the na­
tional forests is in certain ways quite comparable to charg­
ing for timber. The value of the forage should be reached
by a different process than that of timber, but that the
charge should be commensurate with commercial value is as
sound as in selling timber. Congress has authorized the sale
of timber to bona fide settlers on the basis of cost of ad­
ministration where this timber is for home use only. If a
local settler wishes to buy national forest timber to sell, he
must pay full value. In the same way the Forest Service
allows free use of the range to settlers for their farm animals,
their horses and milch cattle. But where they graze animals
for sale and profit, they must pay the fee. But heretofore
that fee to the settler and the big stockman owning thousands
of animals has been far below what these same men willingly
pay for the privilege of grazing on leased private lands.
If the Forest Service is to be criticized at all in the matter
of the grazing fee, it is that the government has been so
lenient and too slow to raise the fee, even though there have
been many facts to justify deliberateness in taking the final
steps to place the charges on a clear-cut basis of real value
rather than to continue a system of industrial subsidies.
It should be added that the purpose of increasing the graz­
ing fee is not essentially to increase the revenue of the United
States Treasury. The purpose of the national forests is not
to secure financial returns. It is, rather, to secure the greatest
possible public benefit from the productive use of the land.
In grazing the objective is to make the forage contribute to
the furnishing of products needed by the country, to sustain
local industries and to build up the communities dependent
on the forest resources, all this without jeopardizing the
primary purposes of the national forests. A subsidy to the
grazing permittees would react to impair rather than stimu-
Page Fifteen
late the best effort to devolop the methods of grazing practice.
The nation may dispense with possible revenue in order to
secure general public benefits, but the nation properly may.
insist when private individuals are given natural resources
to use for commercial purposes . that they compensate
the government for them on a proper valuation. No other
principle can or will be accepted by the people of the country.
NEED OF EFFECTIVE CONTROL
Constant and vigilarit control of grazing on the national
forests is absolutely necessary to prevent injury.. Generally
speaking, the forest ranges are fully stocked. So long as the
grazing is well handled, there is no injury to the forests and
range. The moment there is a let-up in the efficiency of the
supervision and inspection of the grazing, damage begins. If
under pressure or through faulty judgment stock is allowed
on the forest too early in the spring, if the stock is not prop­
erly distributed, if through trespass or inefficiency of . forest
officers too large a number of animals are permitted on a
given range, the forest, range, and watershed are placed in
jeopardy. Under proper and constant control stock graz­
ing on the national forests is a public benefit. If that control
is withdrawn or weakened, grazing is a destructive agency,
dangerous to the public welfare. Full utilization of the
forage on the public forests is therefore possible only with a
system of control like that now1 in effect and so elastic as
to permit constant adjustment of the grazing to existing con­
ditions on the ground. If Congress should yield to the pleas
of the stockmen now made to take away the power of the
Forest Service to govern the use of the lands as an administra­
tive matter, the public interests would require a great re­
duction of stock and in places, the complete exclusion of
sheep. I am confident that public sentiment would swiftly
demand such action, just as in the early days the people of
California insisted on excluding sheep from thé forest reserves,
and irrigators generally urged the establishment of the re­
serves to protect the sources of water.
WHAT THE LIVESTOCK PROGRAM MEANS
The resolutions of the stockmen as submitted to the Senate
Public Lands Committee demand legal rights, which would
amount to easements, for thé use of the forage on the na­
tional forests and public domain. These would be rights to
the use of specfic areas of land, not the right to graze a
certain number of stock.. The rights would be perpetual,
transferable, and negotiable. They are to be granted to
those now occupying the lands with their herds and flocks.
The public lands are to be encumbered by private rights.
This means that wherever grazing is allowed now on the na­
tional forests no newcomer such as a local rancher, can obtain
any grazing privileges except by buying a right to do so from
the holder of an existing right. It means that the govern­
ment cannot devote a given area to some other use as, for
example, the establishment of a recreation center, a private
pasture, or an industrial undertaking requiring a substantial
amount of land, without liquidating the existing grazing
rights.
The stockmen’s program provides that the “rights” shall
be subject to the measures necessary for the protection of
other natural resources. Presumably this means timber pro­
duction- and watershed protection. It is, however, propose-1
that any questions of dispute between holders of grazing
rights and the government shall be settled by the courts. The
policy of use of the lands suited to grazing is to be based upon
general business welfare, not upon the public welfare. The
protection, of communities, of the small rancher, of wild life,
and of recreational interests shall be upon an equitable basis.
All this means that the effective administrative control of
the grazing of livestock on the national forests is to bé taken
away. The Forest Service would have to go to court to
prove damage to the forest or to watersheds, a thing often
difficult to prove until the injury is so great as to be almost
irreparable.
The program, further, urges that there be no extensions
of existing national parks or creation of new parks or game
preserves in the grazing states. Those drawing the resolu­
tions doubtless had in mind the proposals for an extension of
the Crater Lake, the Yellowstone, and Grand. Canyon. Na­
tional Parks and for the creation of the Roosevelt National