Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1879.djvu/30

28 taken advantage of not only by settlers and miners to provide economically for their actual current wants, but by persons who would see in this donation a chance to make money quickly; that it would stimulate a wasteful consumption beyond actual need and lead to wanton destruction, and that the machinery left to this department to prevent or repress such waste and destruction through the enforcement of rules to be made by the Commissioner of the General Land Office would be found insufficient for that purpose, has already in many places been verified by experience; also the predictions made by the Commissioner of the General Land Office with regard to the effect of the second one of the above-named acts. Referring to what was said about these laws in my last annual report, I repeat my earnest recommendation that they be repealed, and that more adequate legislation be substituted therefor.

It is by no means denied that the people of the above-named States and Territories must have timber for their domestic use as well as the requirements of their local industries. Neither is it insisted upon that the timber so required should be imported from a distance, so that the forests in those States and Territories might remain intact. This would be unreasonable. But it is deemed necessary that a law be enacted providing that the people may lawfully acquire the timber required for their domestic use and their local industries from the public lands under such regulations as will prevent the indiscriminate and irreparable destruction of forests, with its train of disastrous consequences. It is thought that this end will be reached by authorizing the government to sell timber from the public lands principally valuable for the timber thereon, without conveying the fee, and to conduct such sales by government officers under such instructions from this department as will be calculated to prevent the denudation of large tracts, especially in those mountain regions where forests once destroyed will not reproduce themselves. I have no doubt that under such a law, well considered in its provisions, the people of those States and Territories would be enabled to obtain all the timber they need for domestic as well as industrial purposes at reasonable rates, and that at the same time the cutting of timber can be so regulated as to afford sufficient protection to the existence and reproduction of the forests, which is so indispensable to the future prosperity of those regions. I venture to express the opinion that the enactment of such a law has become a pressing necessity, and cannot much longer be delayed without great and irreparable injury to one of the most vital interests of the people. I therefore again commend to the consideration of Congress the bill introduced as Senate bill No. 609 in the last Congress.

The subject of the destruction of forests by fire also calls for early and earnest attention. In most, if not all, of the States where timber lands are in private possession, the setting of fires in them is made a highly penal offense by statute. But there is no law of the United States providing specifically for the punishment of such offenses when committed on the