of permittees, and will, to some extent, curb the actions and the disposition of some of these newer, less experienced, and less capable local officers in the Forest Service who now create most of the trouble that needs to be remedied. I can see some points that might be raised against this kind of board or any other kind of board, but after all I can think of nothing better than substantially the same kind of board as is provided for in this part of the bill.

I would concur, I believe, in Senator Mean's recommendation that paragraph (c) of section 402 be eliminated in order to make sure that the men who might be appointed in these States to pass on these appeals would be such as would have the general interest of conservation at heart and be familiar with them, and not be exclusively or chiefly livestock men.

I believe that concludes all that I have to offer, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Marshall, I am sure we would like to ask you some questions, but inasmuch as our time is limited this afternoon, can you come before the committee again?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Being secretary of our organization I am here for service. Our other delegates are very anxious to be relieved as soon as possible, but I shall be glad to give any assistance I can to the committee at any time.

I want to say now, Mr. Chairman, that our representatives appreciate the extended courtesy that we have had in these hearings and your previous hearings and that we are very ready at any time to furnish any information or be in of any assistance that we can in the consideration of these matters.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hodgson has a brief statement that he desires to make for the record. We will listen to Mr. Hodgson at this time.

STATEMENT OF CASPAR W. HODGSON, LIVESTOCK RAISER, JERSEYDALE, CALIF.

The CHAIRMAN. Where do you live, Mr. Hodgson?

Mr. HODGSON. I live in Yonkers, N. Y., part of the year, but my ranching operations are carried on from Jerseydale, Calif.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a statement that you desire to make to this committee, Mr. Hodgson?

Mr. HODGSON. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you proceed in your own way to make your statement?

Mr. HODGSON. Just by way of introduction, I want to say that since about 1903 I have been interested in ranching in California and Oregon, with a leaning toward the livestock industry. I have always had more or less to do with farms and farm life, but about that date I began to take an interest in livestock and I have a range permit on the Sierra Forest, which is near my place in Mariposa County.

The CHAIRMAN. What kind of livestock do you graze, Mr. Hodgson?

Mr. HODGSON. Hogs on the fenced land; so far as the range is concerned, cattle.

I attended only one of the hearings before the committee on Senate bill 2584-namely, that of Friday morning, the 26th of February.

During Colonel Greeley's examination several points arose upon which I wish to speak.

If I differ from some of my friends, cattlemen and others, it is not because I have not the keenest kind of friendship and love for these men. I think the cowboy is the most interesting character in American history and I think the Pendleton Roundup the greatest show on earth. I have succeeded in getting half a dozen of these old-timer cowmen to tell their stories, which I think are, as a part of the background of American history, some of the most interesting things that have ever been told. I have published three of them already. So I want to present what I have to say from the standpoint of a cowman and perhaps from the standpoint of one who takes a little different point of viey from some of his friends.

Use of income not principal: It seems to me clear that the issue between most people who differ on questions of conservation is as to the location of the line where use of income stops and breaking in on the principal begins. Now the experts, the scientists, who study this question from a disinterested point of view, draw the line where waste of assets begins; that is, where use without drawing on principal stops. If cowmen and forest rangers would both see this in practice from the same point of view, most of the difficulties would be solved. Uncle Sam is the wise father who insists through his Forest Service that the principal should not be spent and that his children, the citizens, should use only the income. Uncle Sam is the owner. No scientific farm owner versed in the methods of the United States Department of Agriculture overgrazes or depletes his own soil. He takes care of his assets in the way of fertility of soil, perennial crops, trees, and the like, but when he rents to an ordinary tenant, away go the soil, the pastures, and the trees. We, the stockmen, are the tenants who are interested only in annual crops and quick profits. We are not the real owners and we must be looked after by men without annual pocketbook interests such as ours. If we have it in our own hands under this bill, some may be faithful to the trust, but the large majority of us will feed the meadows to the bone and use our privileges to the point of irreparable damage to assets in grazing, forests, etc. The resolution passed by the Arizona Woolgrowers' Association in January condemning scientific research into such questions is very much in point and is on par with Tennessee's attempt to throttle the teaching of science. Such moves on the part of stockmen or their friends damage the business of the stock industry and is not fair to the honest stock

man.

The CHAIRMAN. I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Hodgson, but there is a call for a vote and we shall have to suspend while the vote is being taken.

(At this point there was an informal recess of about one hour, to permit members of the committee to respond to a call for a vote in the Senate.)

(At the conclusion of the informal recess the committee reconvened and the following proceedings were had :)

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hodgson, you may continue.

Mr. HODGSON. I started to make my statement, and made the first point that I had with regard to the practice which I thought the

Forest Service and stockmen ought to get in agreement upon. It is not the theory but the practice that we seem to disagree on.

Now my second point is, Irreparable damage and prevention versus cure: At the hearing above mentioned I heard much talk about irreparable damage and the burden of proof as to such damage. Colonel Greeley made the point that the method of prevention was far better than that of cure. As a matter of fact, there is no cure. A Sierra forest is a product of evolution and it takes perhaps a thousand years on the survival of the fittest plan to produce such a forest, and it is a hard struggle for existence at that. Some of the mountain meadows have perhaps been as long in evolving if the making of the soil is taken into consideration. Doctor Kennedy, of the University of California, who knows more about wild mountain grasses and mountain meadows than any man I know, says that when one of the mountain meadows is stamped out by overgrazing, that it is irreparably damaged and that it will take at least a hundred years to renew itself, if it ever does renew. The same may be said of similar damage to young forests.

As an illustration of this point, take certain meadows in the Sierra forest of California. I spent 60 days with my small pack outfit going over this forest in the summer of 1924. I found great difficulty in getting anywhere feed for mules or horses for more than one night. There were more cattle and sheep grazed in that forest during that summer than ever before or since. Not a meadow, not even a small pocket anywhere below snow line, remained ungrazed. I reported to the Forest Service that I believed certain meadows were irreparably damaged. Certain rangers in sympathy with cowmen and sheepmen advised me that if I would come back in 1925 I would find these meadows green again. I did return and spent 45 days examining them. Those meadows pronounced irreparably damaged were green with weeds. The cattle there fed upon the little grass which survived, giving the weeds the best chance to reseed or survive. Thus does man intervene and the overgrazing helps the weeds to survive, and they are eventually all that do survive. The mountain meadow as an asset has been wiped out. In many cases the one-time beautiful meadow becomes gashed with washes, the soil weathers down the gulches, and it becomes a barren basin, perhaps for all time.

As a further illustration, I bought, 16 years ago, a ranch at 4,000 feet elevation. It was once in the Yosemite Park, but it is now about 15 miles from the park boundary. According to old-timers, and all the natural evidence, this ranch once contained beautiful mountain meadows-three of them. They had been completely wiped out by overgrazing of range stock at the time I bought the place. Thinking the meadows would renew themselves by natural processes, I completely fenced the ranch. I kept the stock out and tried this for seven or eight years, with no result except weeds. I then got the best advice from experts, and undertook to plow them up and renew them with the best grasses for that purpose of which I could get the seed. During another seven or eight years I spent $10,000, $3,000 of which was spent for seed, and yet I have no meadows. Irreparable damage caused by overgrazing resulted in such change in the soil conditions that it has become impossible in

any man's lifetime to regain the condition of 30 or 40 years ago. As a matter of private ownership, I would pay an unreasonable price to regain these meadows. And now, I ask, why shouldn't Uncle Sam be just as worried and anxious to prevent such irreparable damage to his estate as any private owner. Furthermore, Uncle Sam holds this in trust for us and our children's children, and that puts it up to the Government to fight the wasters. These are points, I may say, that came up in this hearing that I attended, and I wanted to get this message across which is based on my own personal observation.

3. Compare with forest destruction. The question of young tree growth and mountain meadow growth are about the same thing. It probably takes longer to produce a Sierra forest on nature's plan. The struggle for existence may be harder there than in most places, but in the Sierras it is almost impossible to obtain a successful stand of coniferous trees by planting seed. No one denies that if a forest is improperly lumbered the young trees destroyed by lumbering or by grazing, or both, and the soil carried down the canyons, that nature must begin all over again from soil building to forest growth. So in so far as general principles are concerned, the irreparable damage in the case of stockmen is the same as that in the case of lumbermen.

4. Burden of proof: So the burden of proof should not be upon the disinterested authorities. The official who looks at the conservation of Uncle Sam's assets in grazing and trees from a disinterested and expert point of view, and who is holding this property in trust, should be the authority, and it is certainly better for cattlemen as well as all citizens that he err on the side of saving rather than of spending these assets which are Uncle Sam's capital. Our interest, the cattlemen's interest, is a pocketbook interest; and while some may be big enough to look over and above this, the great majority of us under the stress and circumstances are inclined to use all we can for our immediate benefit. What is everybody's business is nobody's business is well understood human nature, and without a representative Uncle Sam would be eaten out of house and home by his own children. It is the same with offspring everywhere. We can not alter human nature by legislation.

It should be clear to any mind that irreparable damage is irreparable, and that if it must be proved after the event and the legal machinery is such that the damage can not be prevented that we, stockmen and all, are in an awful fix.

5. Compare with farm tenancy: At the hearing mentioned the new area plan of the Stanfield bill was compared with farm tenancy, but one difference was not pointed out. On Uncle Sam's farm there are grazing tenants, lumbering tenants, mining tenants, irrigation tenants, power tenants, recreation users, and under such circumstances one tenant can not control a fixed area without infringing on the rights of others. No farm owner ever makes a number of different contracts for different uses of the same land. He would have to be right on the ground bossing all the time if he worked out such a plan. This provision of the bill is clearly unbusinesslike and impossible. There must be one boss in all successful human affairs, and in this case the landowner should be represented by a wise

Government service. Any other plan I think will be bad for stockmen in the long run.

6. Gifts: I am inclined to think we are so cocky about living off of Uncle Sam because we get these permits practically as gifts. We like to look the gift horse in the mouth. In our Sierra Forest we pay for cattle around 70 cents a head for about five months' feed on the forest reserve, whereas the same kind of wild feed on fenced land near and around the forest would cost $1 to $1.50 a head, or, say, $5 as against 70 cents. To check this, I wired an old-timer and cowman who has been in my country all his life and is now manager of the farm mortgage department of the Bank of Italy of Merced. Mr. Cunningham, in answer to my telegram asking for the ruling market price of wild feed outside the Sierra Forest, wired as follows: $1 to $1.50 per head per month." In my judgment, it would be better for cattlemen in the long run and better for the permanency of our capital assets in feed if we paid higher fees.

7. Losing our subsidy: As a cowman, I foresee that we are in danger of losing these gifts or our subsidies in grazing on the people's property. With a Forest Service so considerate, and sometimes too considerate, of all the economic interests which have a grip on the national forests, I believe it would be to our own best interest to try to understand the real conservation which provides for use up to the point of waste and to cooperate with our broad-minded Forest Service; and in so far as the personnel of the service is concerned, insist on ability and disinterested and scientific carrying out of that true conservation which is in the interest of everybody. It seems to me the trouble lies with certain of our fellow stockmen who fight either because they do not understand the real question or who are regarding the owners of this great estate as ignorant. I believe this is a great error on the part of some of these self-appointed men, and that we ought not to tolerate such a reflection on those stockmen who see all sides of the question.

It is doubtless true that some cattlemen and sheepmen are enemies of that conservation which is really in their own interest. I give them credit for sincerity, but they certainly are misguided and spoiling the chances of all the rest of us. I know a very influential cowman, for instance, who made the statement to me recently that all wild game is a pest and must exterminated. Now, there are men in these United States, and Roosevelt was one of them, who insist that we do not exterminate a species of wild life. Such positions. as that of the above-mentioned cowman will no longer be tolerated by the best people. Now, my proposal to stockmen everywhere is to line up with conservation which in the long run is always in their own best interests, insist on the protection of wild-animal life, wild-plant life, forests, streams, great natural museums in the shape of parks and monuments and all other natural resources, and do this as American citizens who are part owners and also as stockmen. If we would do this, the Government would improve in its service of protecting all interests, and ours certainly needs to be protected, or it is going to the wall for all time and we are out of a job. Go into any library and you will find the books full of condemnation of the waste and destruction, particularly to wild animal and plant life, of men engaged in our industry, particularly the sheep end of it. We have already exterminated certain species of wild-animal life in the