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Show IRRIGftTION I THE NATIONAL IRRIGATION ACT. Since the passage of the National Irrigation Act in 1902, 6,000,000 acres of public timber lands, worth more than $100,000,000 in excess of the $2.50 an acre which the timber speculators paid the government for it, has been located under the Timber and Stone Act and passed from the ownership of the Government into private ownership. own-ership. Why has this been done? Why has the government lost this $100,000,000? Why has this land which should have been preserved as a perpetual source of revenue and timber supply for ail future years, by putting it into national forest reserves, been lost to the government and passed into the-ownership the-ownership of timber syndicates at a price less by $100,000,000 than its actual act-ual value? The primary reason is the indifference indiffer-ence of congress. We hear much talk in congress about economy in -appropriations, especially es-pecially when needed for the establishment estab-lishment of national forests in the Eastern part of the United States, where the government must buy the land. But when it comes to stopping u little leak through which $100,000,-000 $100,000,-000 has slipped away from the people peo-ple into the pockets of timber speculators specu-lators in the West in less than six years, Congress apparently is too busy to stop the leak. They cannot plead ignorance because for more than five years they have been annually an-nually urged iby the Secretary of the Interior to stop the spoilation of the public timber lands that was going on under the Timber and) Stone Act. General Public Indifference. In justice to the individu.al members mem-bers of congress, however, the fact should be recognized that the reason why congress has not acted has been, in the List analysis, because the people themselves did not care very much about it. What is everybody's business busi-ness is nobody's business. The fact that the nation was losing over $16,-000,000 $16,-000,000 a year on the value of the timber land it was selling in the West interested very few people. The speculators who have been making that $16,000,000 a year were very much interested so much so that they have been able to quietly Iblock all efforts to get the Timber and Stone Act repealed. Repeal Timber and Stone Act. 1 Let the Timber and Stone Act be repealed and let all the public timber lands of the West be included in national na-tional forest reserves. Then the stumpage from those kinds can be sold for enough to 'provide more . money than will be required to establish es-tablish the national forests in the East. ' There arc 20,000,000 acres of government gov-ernment forest lands in the West that arc now being taken up by the speculators specu-lators under the Timber and Stone Act for $2.50 an acre that arc worth $200,000,000 over and above all that the government will get for them at , $2.50 an' acre under that law. I If congress will repeal the Timber and Stone Act in the next session of congress, the sale of stumpage from the public lanJs that the national government gov-ernment now owns will provide over $200,000,000 that will otherwise be absorbed ab-sorbed by timber syndicates under the Timber and Stone Act. Let the Timber and Stone Act be repealed, and include every remain- i ing acre of public forest lands in na- ' tional forests. $200,000,000 for Irrigation and Forestry. For-estry. Let the $200,000,000 that will be realized from the sale of stumpage on those lands be divided equally between be-tween forestry on one hand, and irrigation irri-gation and drainage on the other. The whole problem of the conservation and development of those great national na-tional resources could then be solvH. It would provide a fund that would be so large that it would never be necessary to appropriate money direct di-rect from the treasury to establish national forest plantations in the East or to reclaim) land cither Iby irrigation irriga-tion or drainage. From address of Geo. H. Maxwell on Irrigation and Waterways. |