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Show GOVERNORS MAKING A MISTAKE. The governors of nine intermountain states are in Salt Lake City for the purpose of outlining a policy in opposition to "conservation" "conser-vation" as praoticed by the federal government. One of the gov-ernors gov-ernors is quoted as saying that the East is not playing fair in handling the national reserves and he is in favor of the western states supplanting the government in control of those resources. Governor Hay of Washington is one of the most aggressive opponents op-ponents of the conservation plans and he advocates opposition to the object of the St. Paul conservation congress. We are disappointed. We had hoped the governors would meet nd approve of federal control as a general proposition, simply advising ad-vising some minor changes as to administration and the distribution f revenues. But here is an avowed policy of retrogression going backward to the state control of natural resources. The record of state controlled lands is a history of fraud, trickery trick-ery and deception. There is not a state in all the west that has been free from land jobbery. Stat land3 made possible the powerful cattle companies of the west which retarded progress and shut out bona fide home-seekers from millions of acres of rich, fertile land. These frauds were made possible through the cupidity of state officers and the rascality of political leaders. We do not know of a state land office west of the Missouri river that has not been the hotbed of fraud at some time in the past thirty years. The lands turned over to the states have been treated as resources re-sources to enrich the favored few aud strengthen the hands of the "inner circle" and, as a result, the great body of the people of the west have welcomed government conservation as promising the removal re-moval of our rich land heritage beyond the grasping hand of state politicians and powerful local concerns with political pulls. There is some danger of the same influence at work in the nation's capital, but the danger is greatly mininnzed. |