Show the old settler my dear san Jua ners I 1 what this order of thin thins things s is doing all over the country should be sufficient to stop a self respecting clock but every man seems to I 1 think that so long as it is being done to the other fellow and not to him he should keep hi his 1 s nose out of trouble and let the other I 1 fellow do the worrying the trouble with that philosophy is that in nine cases out of ten what is is happening to the other fellow is going in due time to happen to him last july an old man from one of our near neighboring states told me he had long had a farm on what has become the edge of the forest reserve it is where he has lived and where he digs his bread from the soil he said that for years he could turn his team to graze on the hills above him his team a and d his cows in the winter if is ifs need be lie he could turn his livestock on the hills below but that mountain above him is now stocked with thousands of head of catta cattes belonging to one man whose ig agal al range rights extend for miles and miles and under another legal act t this IA i s cattle baron is emperor of miles and miles of the country below in the winter time when the old man put his horses on the hills above him as before he was ordered to take them of off f or they would be shot the horses of one of his neighbors several miles away were shot when found on the reserve they were to keep their livestock within their fence for their homes being there were a fly inthe sacred ointment of the cattle dictator and nothing would please him more than to see them squeezed out so their fields could raise more grass for the increased number of cattle he would like io to have the old man said that the summer rains would sometimes come in a flood out of a little draw above him and cut an ugly gully across his wheat patch and heap he applied to the forest service corper for permission to make a ditch along the hillside to carry that water around the end of his fence the service supplied him with a blank a long drawn out technical affair about the kind called for in some international transaction just the kind of a blank with which a certain kind of people like to hedge and confuse the issue till it is defeated a blank which called for all the details of the proposed ditch its length its direction its fall per foft its width depth how and when and by whom it was to be made why it was to be made and what would be the difference if it were not made at all the result it was not made at all it was not allowed now I 1 am an old man I 1 lived in san juan when it wash was a free country I 1 pioneers go out to build it up and I 1 know the ideals they cherished for what it was to become by their industry and the industry of their children I 1 saw their program carry forward to a certain point and there I 1 saw it begin to freeze up like a stream in december this thing is is not hurting me individually and I 1 am sure to make some enem enemies i es by speaking plainly about it as I 1 am doing but I 1 have to live with my own self answering the demands which my sense of right wrong demand they demand that I 1 register this protest and that I 1 invite people to take stock of these things ascertain what they are leading to and invoke the government to begin undoing some of the things it has been inveigled inveigle into doing the end ALBERT R LYMAN |