the flock. Every doctor, lawyer, merchant, or banker, and everyone intimately associated with the economic and commercial life of the West is joint owner with every livestock man to that extent.

There is another angle, Mr. Chairman. I heard a reference here the other day to the Ohio Valley, when it was built up, as the socalled western reserve. You must remember that all of this great country has gone through practically the same conditions. We are now, as was stated here, pastoralists. I saw in Mr. Butler's magazine that we were classified as pastoralists, apparently not creating much benefit to the economic life of the Nation. I do not believe he meant it that way, but it read that way.

In all history the pastoralists have been the largest factor in building up civilized communities and fitting those areas for the further step of increased population and development.

We are in that stage now. Our children are coming in. They will be the manufacturers, perhaps, of to-morrow, when increased population demands, and when there is a market for manufactured goods, when conditions are favorable. But in the meantime we and our children must live, Mr. Chairman. As I said, Mr. McNamara will explain the relation of this question to the reclamation projects, which depend in very great measure on the grazing of livestock on the forests for their market.

To sum up I want to state that the following practically are the measures, in my judgment that we seek and which your bill, Mr. Chairman, is designed to bring about:

First. Legalizing the use of forage as one of the primary resources of the forests, while bearing in mind the supremacy of the conservation of timber and water and the proper and reasonable use of other forest assets.

Second. Freedom from unlimited and undefined bureaucratic control which will conform to principles enunciated by President Coolidge, Secretary Hoover, and Senator Borah, and again the other day, here in the House, by Representative Wood, of Indiana. Bearing upon the activities and powers of bureaus which should be restricted and brought within the spirit, at least, of the Constitution, we believe that any administrative bureau should act as administrator of a law and not as an owner of the forests. I believe that Congress alone has a constitutional right of ownership, as representing the people, and no bureau should be set up as an owner or otherwise than as an administrative institution.

Third. Legislation should be directed toward stability by defining and determining reasonable grazing tenure and use under proper conservation restrictions as to permittees.

Fourth. Grazing contracts, defining tenure, preference, assignments and renewals, definite in their terms, and subject to court construction, should be made.

Fifth. Above all, there should be provision for the right of appeal from the bureau's decisions on other than administrative questions-to the district courts-that is, where questions arise affecting contractual relations and dependent properties, or an appeal to a disinterested and qualified board of appeal.

Sixth. Legislation covering tenure for reasonable charges, based on the doctrine of economic beneficial use and renewable as long as

the areas are used for grazing with provisions for award to permittees of the use of increased forage where the user has developed and conserved the same, coupled with safeguards against speculation and monopoly, and based on economics and neither socialistic nor paternalistic.

Seventh. A provision for the largest reasonable consistent measure of local government, not incompatible with the conservation of timber and water, subject only to the final control of the Secretary of Agriculture.

I have tried, Mr. Chairman, to cover the subject as briefly as practicable, as far as we have gone at this time, and have tried to disabuse your minds and the minds of the public generally of any thought that we have anything in mind in the shape of an attack on the conservation of other resources, or anything in mind beyond a furtherance of conservation in that we are asking primarily for the conservation of our forage, and incidentally thereby the conservation of our citizenship in the West.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hagenbarth, it has been charged by some that this proposed legislation was a move on the part of the stockmen to acquire large holdings for monopolistic purposes. Have you anything to say on that subject?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think the possibility of such a thing should be guarded against. I draw a distinction. If you and I and other members of this committee and the men in this room would form ourselves into an organization, and if we had many millions of dollars at our command and figured that a law had been passed safeguarding the forage and providing for permanency of tenure, that it was a good thing, and we started out on that theory to monopolize, to buy up the territory, I think there should be a method of stopping it.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think there is any motive of that kind back of the desire for legislation?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. No; absolutely not. We want to build a stable industry and not become nomads. We want to stabilize our business. We are looking forward to building it up gradually so that other members of the family can come in. There should not be a restriction placed upon the business where it is built up by its own accretions. But I would not want to say, Mr. Chairman, that there should be no method of stopping the buying up of permits by a corporation for the purpose of securing control of the range.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it not a fact that legislation is needed more for the small users of the forest than it is for the larger interests?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. Yes, sir; I think it is. I think the small user needs more protection than the bigger man does, and he should above all have the protection of the law and be confirmed in his preference use of the forests, and appeal to a board of appeal or a court in case of injustice.

The CHAIRMAN. And it is equally true of him as it is of the larger owner that to-day he has no legal rights within the boundaries of the forest? He is there only by sufferance or tolerance on the part of

the bureau?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. Yes; that is true. I am not saying, Mr. Chairman, that that has been, except in rare instances, unfairly exercised.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it is beside the question whether it has been fairly or unfairly exercised; it is not an American principle?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. Absolutely not. There should be opportunity for appeal.

The CHAIRMAN. And it is not logical to assume, because those who have occupied these autocratic positions have thus far been fairminded men, that we will always have fair-minded men to exercise the right of dictatorship?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. One of our strongest appeals to you, Mr. Chairman, will be to give us the power of appeal to the courts, or to any properly qualified board of appeal.

Senator CAMERON. Have you carefully studied Senate bill 2584? Mr. HAGENBARTH. Yes; I have studied it very fully.

Senator CAMERON. What is your feeling toward that bill?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. I think that in a general way it takes care of the situation very well. Possibly in the light of your experience and further study of the bill there will be certain things that you will change or define more clearly, but the general principles of the bill are fine. I will say, however, that I am opposed in principle to your board of appeals. We want a court, a United States court, based on justice and law. This may, however, be against public policy. The board of appeals is fine up to a certain point, but when that board of appeals can be reversed by the Secretary of Agriculture we are going around in a circle. However expediency, no doubt, indicates that this provision of the bill is the best we can look for and is a great advance over the present system.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you care to go through the bill now and discuss it, Mr. Hagenbarth?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. That is at your pleasure, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be very glad to have you do so if you feel so inclined.

Mr. HAGENBARTH. Whether this is the best time to do that I do not know.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say this, that this is in process of legislation and we are attempting to get a bill that may be more agreeable to those interested in the legislation than this bill is, and we will probably have that before the committee in a day or two.

Mr. HAGENBARTH. I will be very glad to go into it then. In fact, I am prepared to do so now, but I do not think it is wise, for my own purposes. I happen to be president of an association, and I am looked upon as more or less of a leader, and in plain language I do not want to go off at half cock, before hearing all the testi

mony

Mr. MARSHALL. May I make this statement, Mr. Chairman? The representatives of the stockmen who are to appear before you have studied different sections of the bill on which they wish respectively to testify and make suggestions and comment, and among us I think we will cover a large part of the bill in that way. Perhaps after that has been done Mr. Hagenbarth or somebody else should take up the bill as a whole. I think it may work out better that way. The CHAIRMAN. Very well; we will follow that plan. Mr. Hooper, will you take the stand?

STATEMENT OF JAMES A. HOOPER, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, SECRETARY UTAH STATE WOOL GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hooper, will you state your full name, your address, and whom you represent, for the record?

Mr. HOOPER. James A. Hooper, Salt Lake City, Utah; secretary of the Utah State Wool Growers' Association, and connected with Austin Bros. Association, interested in the raising of sheep and cattle. I have been interested in the livestock industry for about 17 years.

The CHAIRMAN. During that time you have grazed livestock on the public domain and the forest reserves?

Mr. HOOPER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you a statement that you wish to make to the committee, Mr. Hooper?

Mr. HOOPER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Please proceed in your own way.

Mr. HOOPER. I might say first that I wish in a general way to confirm in the main the statement which has been made by Mr. Hagenbarth, president of the National Woolgrowers' Association, and to substantiate further the idea that we as western livestock men are fundamentally and primarily interested in the conservation of all the resources of the national forests that mean so much to our financial welfare in the West.

One of the immediate necessities of this conservation is the need for range protection, which finds a very important place in the scheme of legislation to stabilize and to perpetuate the livestock industry of the West. As livestock men we must perpetuate and protect the national forests, and to do this we must have adequate range protection.

This is not substantiated by our words alone. In some instances we have of our own volition held off of the forest a part of the number of livestock authorized by our permits to be grazed on the forest. We have done this and paid the price for grazing the entire number in order that our ranges would not be denuded of vegetation.

We have not only resorted to the method of keeping livestock off entirely, but in most of the sections of Utah we do not run our livestock during the entire grazing period. When we see that our range needs protection we of our own free will graze a shorter period than our permit calls for, or we reduce our numbers, which proves the fact that we believe in range protection.

But in this range protection we think that we should be adequately protected by not permitting a distribution of permits one year, and then in the year following be required to stand a reduction in numbers in order to admit additional permittees. This particular phase of the bill is covered by section 307, under (b) of that particular section. The supervisor is authorized, in affording grazing privileges to homesteaders in the vicinity of the forests, to reduce existing grazing preferences by not more than 5 per cent during any 10-year period. This provision of limitation on the amount that is made avaliable for new permittees or for homesteaders where preferences are given should not be exercised in the method which

I have already suggested; that is, of determining that the carrying capacity of a particular range is such that even a greater number might be given a permit because of the fact that from appearance there is sufficient forage to take care of a greater number than are being grazed, and then within a year of two years after giving these additional permits, to say, that the range is then overstocked, and that a reduction must be made because of overgrazing.

This condition also has arisen in the past by stock being allowed to trespass on a forest, and after such trespass has continued for a considerable length of time that permanent permits have been given to the owners of such stock, and then a reduction takes place for that particular cause. So I feel that this bill should properly safeguard the present grazers on the national forest so that this injustice can not be allowed under the exercise of the authority vested in the supervisor.

In our particular section of the country the Federal Government, by reason of owning probably the largest percentage of summer ranges, becomes a monopolist itself. Having most of the summer range, or a large percentage of the summer range, it controls one of the units that make the grazing of livestock possible, and controlling that to such a large extent it becomes, so to speak, a monopolist.

Now in creating this monopoly, if distribution is carried on and they take from a landowning stockman part of his summer range, his spring, fall, and winter range no longer is of any use to him. Because of having more grazing acreage than he needs for handling the smaller number of stock covered by his permit, a part of his land becomes inoperative. Because it is inoperative he naturally goes into the market and tries to procure or purchase sheep that have a range right with them. And in that way we might produce that particular bonus or particular value that Colonel Greeley feels attaches to some of these permits. But if that distribution were not going on there would be nobody that would want this particular part of the summer range, because it would not fit in with the rest of his unit, and it would have no value attached to it.

This is probably the reason that the testimony showed yesterday that more of this bonus prevails in Utah, because the livestock outfits have been reduced to such small numbers that the unit is not a proper operating unit, and the owner has probably paid a small bonus on stock needed to build up his flock or herd. But never since the unnatural condition that existed in 1919 have these values been of any great amount. And we have to-day, in that very vicinity that Colonel Greeley spoke of, permits that are attached to sheep whose owners do not have commensurate and dependent property. These sheep with forest permits are being offered and there is nobody that wants to pay a bonus, hence they are still on the market.

It is rather unusual in that matter that we do not hear of any of these bonuses or these additional values being attached to sheep in the section of the Southwest where the entire community is on the national forests. It would seem to me that if this greatly enhanced value of permits were in fact of any great consequence that it would prevail in that particular section where there was no need of additional property on which to run livestock.