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Show TIMBER CUTTING. ' The News years ago, pointed out a remedy for timber depredations upon the public domain. Let the government govern-ment survey the land, mineral and all, and sell only the but face right of the mineral laud, including tiie timber, tim-ber, at $1.25 per- acre. Then, when a man wants to put up a sawmill in a particular place he will buy the land about it, the tie maker and the wood chopper will do the same. Being owners cf the land they will try to preserve its value. Instead of its be ing at once swept clean of timber the boat only will be taken, aud the trees that are cut down will be all used up. Young timber will be preserved and allowed to grow. The tie cutter and the wood, chopper will gather, more or lees, a yearly crop. Precautions will be taken to prevent and restrict the spread of forest fires, which now annually destroy a hundred times as much timber in' Colorado as is cut by all tho wood choppers in the btate. This sale of the but face right of the land need not affect mineral ownership owner-ship or miners' righls, Bince the surface sur-face value of mineral land is Bolely in its timber and grass. At the Bame time it wouid restrict the waste of timber and greatly increase its preservation preser-vation from. fire. Meantime until some Buch policy is adopted the government gov-ernment need not hope to preserve the forests. People will not suffer with cold for want of wood when it is within reach. Mines will be timbered, mills and reduction works will be run, railways will bo built and kept in repair bo long as timber is to be had. The people, and these interests, will buy the timber if they can. U they are not allowed to buy it they will take it. If the government wants a revenue from the wooded public domain of the Rocky Mountains it can get it. If it don't waut it, thou it may as well let the people use the timber tor their own comfort, aud to develop the country, in peace. The standing army of tbe United States is not half big euough to drive out the settlers from Colorado, and that is tbe only thing that will atop wood cutting on the government land. And if prose cutiou ie to become persecution as it looks new no decent man will want to be a government agent, and it will be a precarious business for men of any kind. The News hopes that congress will ask Mr, Secretary Schurz for a bal ance sheet of his timber accounts in Colorado. It will show debits, in large fees and endless costs, many thousands of dollars; credits, by psnalties recovered, nil. No jury can be found iu Colorado! to convict for cutting necessary! limber on public land; for needless waste of timber, there may be. The' limber that is being cut for fuel fori Hill's works, as an illustration is all, I or nearly all, dead limber. It was killed by fire years ago and is fasti rotting. Its preservation is of no' benefit or value whatever. Yet the wood choppers would gladly pay $1.25 i or even $2 50 per acre for it, to avoid even tne seeming ot wrong doing if the government will, in its wisdom, provide a way by which they can be permitted to do so. Not a dollar tam yet been recovered by ttie law's I machinery. Denver News. |