Now, of course we understand that you appear in opposition to any control over the public domain and the grazing thereon-I think I am right in drawing that conclusion from your statement here?

Mr. MONDELL. I have endeavored to make that clear.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you have done so very forcibly. But if it comes to the enactment of a new law and a choice as between the two bills with the two different principal provisions that I have recited, would you say that it is best to enact a law that the Secretary of the Interior shall be the sole judge as to whether a grazing district shall be created or whether the people directly concerned should have a voice in the matter or not? Which would you prefer? Mr. MONDELL. I say this, still feeling that the thing should not be done anywhere. If you are to have grazing districts it would be unwise to give any Federal officer the right to say that lands should be included in a grazing district. I say that with the most kindly feeling and with the greatest of confidence in Federal officials and in full appreciation of their perfect good faith and their desire to do the right thing. The trouble is they would not be in a position to judge as to the wisdom of their action. If there is to be a policy of public control over grazing it certainly should be confined to districts where a majority of the people living in the section, interested in the section, owning land somewhere in the locality, or utilizing the range, desire to have a district established. I think it would be somewhat difficult at times to determine as to the opinion of the people in that regard, but in many instances there would, perhaps, be no difficulty.

Now, that was the first of your propositions. What was the second inquiry, Senator?

The CHAIRMAN. As to whether controversial questions should be passed upon by a board separate and apart from the department. It has been suggested that the President should appoint a board for each one of the Western States, and that this board should determine preference rights as to permits and leases, and then that from that board the contestants could appeal to the Secretary of the Interior, who would render a decision that would be final. Instead of the bureau being the judge, jury, and prosecutor in the case, it would be heard by a board entirely separate from the bureau.

Mr. MONDELL. Possibly I should not express an opinion in regard to organizations which I think should never be set up, but assuming again, for the sake of the argument, that you were going to provide for grazing control over certain areas-and it certainly should only be done where the people interested, the people on the ground, and the people utilizing the range, desire it

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, you understand, Mr. Mondell, that I am only attempting to get from you your opinion of what you regard as an evil, as to which is the lesser of the two evils. I am not trying to put you on record in any way as being favorable to the regulation or control of grazing on the public domain, but I should like to get your judgment as to which would be the lesser of the two evils, if you regard them as such.

Mr. MONDELL. I am inclined to think that if the thing is to be done the character of the organization in the department and the

naming of the officials, who are to have charge of the administration. in the department, should be left to the Secretary of the Interior. It would probably lead to some modification of and, of course, increase of the field forces. It would be a field-force problem, not a land-office problem, and the operations would naturally and properly be through the field force. It would possibly necessitate the location of offices at some place different from the land office, frequently distant from the land office, where these questions could be considered.

By all means there should be a legal advisory committee. That would be absolutely essential for the satisfactory working out of such a policy, if such a policy can work out satisfactorily anywhere. Whether such advisory boards should be appointed by the President or not-I do not know that I am prepared to say. I think the more important of these advisory associations would be local. They would be, as they have developed in the Forest Service, associations of local people.

Now, as to who shall appoint them, just what the status shall be, official or semiofficial, is a good deal of a problem. But in any event, whatever powers may be given them, and whoever may suggest or make their appointment, they should be men designated by the people locally, either through their usual stock associations or, where there are no organizations of that kind, by organizations which the people would set up.

The American people are wonderfully efficient in setting up instrumentalities to work out problems, and it might result in the setting up of local unofficial organizations consisting of the men using the range and the people interested in the use of the range. But the associations or organizations should, of course, in every instance, suggest the men who are to represent them. They should, at least, have something more than merely advisory power; they should have a real voice in the policy to be pursued.

The CHAIRMAN. It seems to me that carries us pretty well over the public domain question and the forest reserve question. The opinion of the people of your State does not seem to differ greatly from the opinion that was found to exist in the other public land States as to the matter of providing by legislation for grazing within the national forests the enactment of certain basic principles of grazing into law. Mr. MONDELL. I think our people are in agreement in the main-they certainly are unanimously in principle-with the resolutions of the Salt Lake City conference, held August 24 and 25, 1925. Their statement of views with regard to the national forests is to be found on pages 1827 and 1828 of part 7 of your hearings on Senate resolution 347. I think our people approve the views therein expressed touching the national forests.

The CHAIRMAN. There has been prepared and offered by the Department of Agriculture a bill that would be an offset to the legislation that is proposed by the committee, legislation that has been worked out from what the committee believes to be the consensus of opinion on the data gathered during the past summer.

One of the questions, Mr. Mondell, that has given the greatest concern to users of the national forests is that of fees, whether the

grazing fee should be placed on a commercial basis and determined by taking charges made for grazing on comparable private lands.

That brings up the question, then, as to whether the utilization of the resources of the forests should be a source of revenue to the Federal Treasury or whether those resources should be for the benefit of the districts wherein they lie.

It was naturally the expression of the livestock men that the fee charged should be moderate. The general expression was that it should be a fee to cover only the cost of administration, but that if any greater fee were to be charged, it should go to the States and the counties in which collected and not to the Federal Treasury.

Mr. MONDELL. Well, our theory from the beginning has been that the public lands within the borders of a State were held by the Federal Government in trust for the people. The establishment of the forest reserves, the permanent reservation from settlement and entry of considerable mountain areas, was not, as I understand it, intended to be a departure from that fundamental theory, except so far as it was necessary to set up a public control that would preserve for the use and benefit of the people these areas which it was as-. sumed it would not be wise to have pass into private ownership. Therefore the forest reserves should be administered with a view of giving to the areas and the communities affected, the States in which they lie, and the adjacent regions which are affected by the reserves, the greatest possible benefit from the retention of those reserves in public control and without adding unusual burdens.

The utilization of the forest by the stockmen of course has a value. The man who lives in the locality and does not have the benefit of the use of the reserves would probably feel, and does feel, that those who utilize the reserves should pay something for the privilege. But certainly there can be no justification for the idea, if anyone holds the idea, that the reserves should be maintained as a commercial proposition with a view of securing the largest possible revenue. On the contrary, having in mind all the time the fact that here is an area still held, as the other public lands are in trust for the people of the Nation, they should be so administered and controlled as to afford the greatest possible benefits to the section and region with the least possible burden.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the policy that has ever been pursued by our Government as to the public lands, is it not, that provisions should be made for the appropriation of the lands in order that they might pass to the benefit of the States, and that the lands have never sold for anything more than a nominal value; they have never sold on an appraisal of real worth?

Mr. MONDELL. I think we have departed a little from that theory in the sale of isolated tracts. Otherwise the interpretation of the law is that $2.50 an acre did not mean $2.50 an acre but some price some one might fix on the basis of what the land was worth. So far as the Congress is concerned, it has never through any law I can recall taken any attitude toward the public lands except the historic attitude, the constitutional attitude, of trusteeship for the coming settler and user of the public lands. Of course, following that kind of policy we have not attempted, by Congressional enactment, at least, to place the public lands on a commercial basis.

Now, that very attitude and theory have been invoked to prevent the carrying out of what I believe is a wise policy touching the remnants of lands to which I have referred, the remnants lying in and around settlements.

The CHAIRMAN. The isolated tracts?

Mr. MONDELL. Yes the idea that as the Government was only disposing of its lands to settlers, it ought not to sell. To sell at the nominal figure which the raw land is worth, which the settler could afford to pay, is a continuation of the policy of dividing the lands up in economic units among the people who have the disposition to settle upon and develop them. The country has found it hard to realize the idea of the economic unit in the use of lands. The economic unit in the original homestead law was 160 acres. Use is developing the fact that a larger unit is the economic unit when we reach the drier sections, even of the crop-growing areas, and that as we reach the areas of mixed farming and stock raising and the growing of forage crops the economic area is still larger; and then as we reach the areas where the herbage is very scarce and sparce and likely to disappear entirely in a dry year, and where but little or no forage can be grown, the economic unit is still larger, until in some sections it becomes very large. And yet it does not represent values any greater than the value of a 40-acre irrigated tract in a good irrigated project, or a 160-acre farm in Iowa, or a 340-acre farm in the Dakotas.

I think the country needs a little education on the subject of the economic form unit, and one difficulty that Congress has had in working out this problem along the line of transferring the land to the settler rather than attempting Federal control, which crystallizes conditions, has been due to the fact that a good many people have not realized that you must measure land by its productive value, and that under our system you must recognize as the unit below which we ought never to go, the area that will support a family, the average American family. And if we could work out laws under which we would recognize the theory of the economic unit more fully than we have I think we would soon solve the problems of the range.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, as to the public domain? that would not apply to the reserved areas?

Of course,

Mr. MONDELL. Oh, no. And they should be, of course, administered with the view of the greatest possible benefit to the general region in which they lie and the people of that region.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that they should be given any greater right of protection by bureaucratic rule than is provided by State laws for areas in private ownership? Now, to be specific, your State has a fence law. But the Bureau of Forestry has made a ruling that abrogates that law so far as its application to forests is concerned, and there seemed to be a considerable opinion in Wyoming that the Forest Service should have to meet the same requirements as those imposed by the State law.

Mr. MONDELL. Well, unfortunately the Supreme Court some years ago I have forgotten the name of the case; I am sure that Professor Greeley has it in his mind-decided in a bad case-bad cases make bad decisions. It was rather an aggravated case. I have forgotten now just where the location was.

Mr. GREELEY. Colorado. The Fred Light case.

Mr. MONDELL. Yes; the Fred Light case. Some one taking the view of the stockmen agreed to a stipulation on the Fred Light case, and courts got it on a statement of facts. It was the kind of a case that inclines a court to questionable decisions. I think it was admitted that there was no real attempt to keep the cattle off the forest reserve, but they rather tempted them to go on. The Forest Service has been standing on that decision.

The CHAIRMAN. Was not the decision in the Light case predicated rather upon an absence of law to the contrary than existing law?

Mr. MONDELL. I think that is all the more reason why the Fred Light decision seems extraordinary. If there were a Federal statute--which there is not-specifically defining the rights to utilize and use the forest reserves, there might be a little more basis for it. No; I think the decision in the Fred Light case-if I may say that without any intentional criticism of the court that delivered the opinion-was a decision based on the fact that it was a bad case, and the court believed there was a lack of good faith. Now, of course, it is going far afield to say that courts render decisions on highly important matters on considerations of that sort, but you remember, as Mr. Dooley, in one of his conversations with Henessy, stated in the days when we were debating about the Philippines, that while the Constitution did not follow the flag the Supreme Court did follow the election returns.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that such a question is of sufficient import that it should be determined by Congressional action? Mr. MONDELL. Well, I think in some way or other we should know very definitely what the facts are. When the forest reserves were established there was no special thought of the utilization of the reserves for grazing, as the gentlemen will remember, and it was some time after the reserves were established before any charges were made for grazing. The reserves were, in the first instance, under the Secretary of the Interior. I plead guilty to being the author of the bill-that is, I plead guilty if it was an offensethat transferred the reserves to the Department of Agriculture. A short time thereafter, rather to the surprise of some of us who thought we had reason to believe that that policy was going to be inaugurated very gradually and only after consultation with the people interested the fee system was inaugurated.

The CHAIRMAN. In your opinion, did the act creating the forest reserves contemplate a utilization of the resources as well as the conservation thereof?

Mr. MONDELL. Oh, necessarily; necessarily, because there could not be a conservation of any value except a conservation for utilization. Any other conservation is valueless.

The CHAIRMAN. Then it seems to you that the utilization of the range by grazing should be recognized by statute so long as it does not conflict and is subordinated to the general purpose of the establishment of the areas, the conservation of timber growth, and preservation of sources of water supply?

Mr. MONDELL. Well, I think it is always better that a practice or policy should be defined; the basis of the policy or the practice relating to public lands or any other public affair should be statutory