Now, I do not see any reason for excluding a similar provision from the public domain portion of the bill. I think it is a very important thing. I have already referred to that as one of the defects in the Interior Department bill, that no such provision exists. And if it is right on the forest it is certainly right on the public domain to allow a man to build improvements on the understanding that they become the property of the United States, and have the improvements paid for by giving the reductions on his grazing fees of the cost of the improvements.

I do not care so much about the 10 per cent being devoted by the Secretary to improving the range, because under the system of area leasing which I like to imagine in effect on the public domain, I would rather let every man improve his own pasture, and it might be all right to spend a certain amount of it for the destruction of rodents, kill prairie dogs and so on, but all that I think could be handled under the provision of a reduction of rental. As between private individuals an arrangement like this is often made.

I made a lease of a large body of land once as a lessee, and I fenced the whole thing, put up windmills and other improvements, and took the cost of them out of the land, although it took two or three years to pay for the improvements. At the end of my lease I turned over a fenced pasture and established ranch to the owners, and they had nothing before but a lot of acreage lying out of doors. I believe that a similar provision to this that is in the forest part of the bill ought to be written into the other. I think that is only fair.

Of course there is no provision in the bill at all about turning over any part of the revenues to the States. That is a thing on which I suppose we are all agreed, that we want some of the revenue to go to the States-in fact we want as much as we can get. These lands are not turning anything into the States in taxation, and in lieu of that I think the State ought to be allowed some portion of the revenue in excess of the cost of administration. Just how much I am not prepared to say, but I think the general idea is to get as much as we can for the State.

This provision as to impounding, section 314, I think has been discussed here a great deal, and I do not want to say much about it. But it does not seem to me that a national forest which is not fenced on the boundaries should have an advantage in law over any other unfenced land. I think that if an enclosure is fenced, whether it belongs to the Government or to an individual, and if a man opens the gate and throws a lot of stock in there he ought to be punished, and very severely punished. But if his stock is ranging loose and happen to get onto the forest, I thing it would be unjust to penalize the man and take his cattle up and impound them and sell them. On the whole I think that this provision is impractical, because there might be several hundred head of trespassing cattle, and I do not see where a man would put them. I do not see where the Forester would take the cattle and hold them and keep them pending the sale.

The CHAIRMAN. What section are you now referring to?
Mr. O'DONEL. Section 314, "Impounding."

The CHAIRMAN. Well, you know in the latter part of the section there it provides that

This section does not authorize the impounding of any stock unless the presence of such stock within the forest would under similar circumstances have constituted a trespass if the stock had been taken into custody upon private lands in the same State in which such forest area is located.

Mr. O'DONEL. Yes; of course the value of that sentence depends upon what the law is in any specific State. Now I do not think we have any trespass law in New Mexico, and perhaps that would nullify it entirely. If we have, I haven't heard of it. I think an action for trespass there is simply a civil action. You can sue for damages. But I do not think it makes it a misdemeanor at all. I never came in contact with any such law. It seems to me that if cattle or horses are turned loose in such a way that the owner knows that they would inevitably go on the forest for grazing or water, that they would have nowhere else to go, that that man can be proceeded against by injunction.

I had a case of that kind once between individuals, and we enjoined the man from turning his cattle loose. They had to go on to our land for water, some unfenced lands which we were not using ourselves, and he turned them loose in such a way that they were bound to go on our land for water. They had no other place to go for water. Well, we simply went into court and asked for an injunction, and the case was heard and tried, and an injunction was issued, and it was found very effective. We had no trouble about it thereafter at all.

I do not think I have any other criticisms to make on this bill, Senator. I would like to say a word on the subject of erosion. We have heard a good deal about erosion. As an owner or representing owners of lands in pasture and which have never been over-stocked, according to the standards of conservative stocking, I have watched the process of erosion a great deal, ever since I have been in the West. Erosion is a law of nature. It is going on all the time. And all our rich valley lands have been built up at the expense of the mountains and the watersheds. All such river bottoms as the Mississippi and the Arkansas and all the rich sugar lands of Louisiana have been built up at the expense of the West.

Erosion is a thing that you can not stop at all, and there is no doubt that the stocking of a range with cattle does promote erosion to some extent. It happens in this way, that the cattle make trails coming down to water. A torrential rain comes, and every one of those trails becomes a small rivulet. In time they will wash out in gulleys. The result is that after years the floods will be drained. into the creeks very much more readily than they were before. The creeks will overflow their banks and cut out and widen their channels.

Now this happens without any overstocking of ranges. It happens anyhow. There isn't any practical way to stop it. I have studied it a good deal, and I know something about it. It can be checked, and about the most effective way to check it that I know is to establish watering places elsewhere than on the creeks so that there will not be so many of these trails running down to the drainage.

But it would be much better, perhaps, from a scenic point of view, an aesthetic point of view, if you could stop erosion altogether, and that would mean taking of the stock off the range.

But the maximum of protection against erosion is quite incompatible with the minimum of fire hazard. You can not have fire protection by grazing the forage and at the same time a maximum of erosion protection. The two things will not come together at all. You have got to take a happy mean and stock fairly heavily in order to keep the forage down. In fact the ideal way to stock a range, from a stockman's point of view, is to stock it so that there will always be plenty of feed left on the ground, and it is a question whether that is compatible with fire protection of the forests. I do not think it is. But you have got to hit a mean somewhere, and you have got to consider the value to the nation of a great industry, the food value of cattle, of mutton, the value of the wool produced, and the whole thing has got to be taken together, and you have got to strike a medium somewhere, and there is no use getting panicky about a little washing here and there, because it is going on, and it is going to go on more or less if you take every cow and sheep off the range.

I do not think I have anything more to say, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. O'Donel, have you been able to discover in the portions of this bill applying to the regulating of grazing on the forest reserve areas wherein there are provisions that can so limit the powers of the Secretary of Agriculture, as compared with the powers he now has, that there is danger of the livestock industry passing into the hands of monopolies?

Mr. O'DONEL. There is nothing in the bill that would lead me to anticipate that any such danger exists or would exist if the bill became a law. The supervisor as provided in the bill, is an officer of the forest service. He presumably would carry out the instructions and the policy of the Secretary of Agriculture through the Chief Forester. That is my understanding of it. The only agency provided in the bill which is not a departmental agency is the State board of appeals.

And right here I want to say that I think the State board of appeals is a good thing. I think it is the right idea, because they have local knowledge as compared with what a national board would have. I think they can deal with the subject more intelligently-that is in parentheses, you understand. But the subjects which can be taken to the board of appeals under this bill are very limited. There are only two or three things you can take to them at all, and, in fact, as I read the bill their power is less in the case of the national forests than it is in the case of the public domain.

The power of the supervisor is rather greater than the power of the register on the other side. There are only a few things you can appeal on, and none of them run directly counter to the regulations made by the department.

May I add a word to what I have said heretofore but on a matter I overlooked: I do not believe I said anything about fees. I think this bill takes the correct view that fees should be fixed with due regard to the ecenomic value, seasonal or annual, of the grazing privileges. I think economic value should be the ruling guide for fixing

such fees. They are to be fixed, in one case, by the supervisor, and, in another case, by the register. I do not understand that they are subject to appeal; they can not be appealed. If a man thinks he is being charged too much, he has to pay it or get out.

Now, as to remission of fees under certain circumstances: I am not sure that adverse livestock market conditions should be a cause to remit fees. Of course, economic value, on which fees are based, can not be determined without consideration of livestock market conditions as they occur over a term of years, and while I have no particular objection to letting this provision stay in the bill so far as I am concerned, yet I think it might be better to take it out, because an argument might be made that if adverse livestock conditions are a cause for reducing fees, then, on the other hand, an improvement in livestock market conditions should be cause for increasing them. And in order to be perfectly fair all round I think we might just as well leave that out. I am not much afraid of the fees that are going to be charged anyhow.

The CHAIRMAN. This bill leaves that with the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, the only condition being that the fees shall be reasonable and moderate.

Mr. O'DONEL. Certainly, but as to adverse livestock market conditions, they are always adverse, as far as that goes, but that provision might give a permittee reason to believe that he ought to have his fees reduced, because the market is bad, and it might give him ground for applying all the time for reduction of fees on the ground of adverse market conditions and, as I have already said, I never knew the time when they were anything but adverse-except perhaps, two years in my experience. If I were writing a bill, which I am not doing, of course, I would take that out. I do not think it is of any advantage in there.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not believe I have any other questions to propound, Mr. O'Donel, and if that is all you have to say, you will be excused.

Mr. O'DONEL. Thank you, Senator Stanfield.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will now stand adjourned until 2.30 p.m. to-morrow, Tuesday, March 2, 1926.

(Whereupon at 12.22 p. m., the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Tuesday, March 2, 1926, at 2.30 p. m.)

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