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Show ATTACKS CONSERVATION POLICY. The Sacramento Union uses the example of Minnesota and its freedom from state taxation due to the income received from the rent of natural resources as material for an attack on the policy of conservation. This curious inversion of logic is accomplished by a flat misrepresentation of the policy initiated by Roosevelt and Gif-ford Gif-ford Pinchot. Such misrepresentation is habitual with the organs of the interests, which make a practice of pretending that the purpose pur-pose of the Roosevelt policy is to lock up forever these resources and keep them unused. Then the Union launches out like this: i Minnesota has used her natural resources so as to give thc( state a continual income. California has done that in the matter of her schools, and as a result we spend on our schools many times what we raise for them by taxation. Why not continue the same policy in other matters? If the public lands in this state were the property of the state, as they should be, and if they are utilize for California and not along the plan of Pinchot for the reforestation reforesta-tion of the eastern mountains, then there is no reason why the day may not be at hand when there will be no state taxes in California, The water power of the state belongs to the state that has been decided by the supreme court, and Pinchot and his friends can not take it from us, fortunately; but the former forester purposes to tax the land that is needed for power sites along the streams for the benefit of bis eastern bureau. Of course, water power confined to the bed of a stream, with no right to erect any building on the adjoining land, is useless, and we must have control of the land as well as the water. If the water powers in the reservations were turned over to the states tomorrow they would be at once grabbed in many cases with-. with-. out suitable compensation for public property. By and by, when the states have provided legislation to regulate such grants and official machinery for the collection of a reasonable revenue therefrom, the federal government may safely make the transfer. In the meantime they are safe and they are not locked up from use, but can be applied for industrial purposes. |