Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/38

 above directions in order to arrest the offender or to secure the government for the damages suffered, the agents were instructed to apply to the United States district attorney for the district in which the waste was committed to institute the proper legal proceedings for that purpose, which course, however, should be taken only in cases where the evidence was clear and indisputable. This letter has since formed the basis of all action of this department, having in view the prevention of trespasses upon the timber of the public lands and the collection of the value of the timber cut and the prosecution of the offender.

The appropriations for keeping these special agents in the field were very limited; for the year ending June 30, 1877, $12,500; for the year ending June 30, 1879, $25,000; and for the year ending June 30, 1880, $40,000; making a total down to June 30, 1880, of $77,500 since the inauguration of the present policy. Considered from the standpoint of a mere financial transaction, the operations of the department have been very successful. During the twenty-two years from December 24, 1855, to the 5th of April, 1877, while all action as to timber depredations took place under the circular of 1855 first mentioned, the sums recovered and turned into the Treasury amounted in gross to $248,795.68. During three years and three months from April 5, 1877, to the 30th of June, 1880, the proceeds from the same source amounted to $242,376.68 actually collected. It must be considered, however, that the amount for which judgment has been obtained—but not yet collected—is about as much more. The proceeds of the last three years and a half have therefore been much larger than those of the twenty-two years preceding.

The net money thus realized, however, forms no considerable and certainly not the most important part of the benefits derived from the appropriations made by Congress for that purpose. The repression and prevention of depredations on the public timber-lands on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts constitutes the chief and most beneficial result. At the time of the inauguration of the present system the export trade in timber had grown to enormous proportions on those coasts. Whole fleets of vessels entered the harbors of Puget Sound, the Columbia River, Pensacola, Sabine Pass, Atchafalaya, and places along the shore, whose cargoes consisted mainly of timber taken from the public lands, for which no compensation was paid to the government, and which was not used for the domestic or mining purposes of our own people, but for export to foreign countries. If this trade has not been entirely arrested, it has at least been very materially diminished. From the best sources of information at my command, I am able to report that little if any timber unlawfully taken from the public lands is now being shipped to foreign countries. While it was not the policy to interfere with the necessary use of timber by the settler or miner for domestic use or purposes immediately connected with mining business, it was thought but just to the people of the United States that extensive trading in stolen timber by large firms, and