talking to a very good friend of mine. He said: "What are you sheepmen trying to do with this public domain; trying to steal all the public domain again?" I went ahead and explained these matters. "No, you will never get it," he said, "this public domain should be left so that everybody could be in on it." I said to him: "Frank, you are in the gasoline business. You have 10 or 11 stations here in Boise and more in the State. Now," I said, "when you put up those service stations you either leased them for a period of years or you bought the ground on which they are built?" "Yes," he said. "Would you have put those stations up if you had known that your tenure on that ground would only last maybe over night, or 30 days, or six months, or a year?" "No; I wouldn't." "That is just the position we are in in the livestock industry. Do you think it is right?" He absolutely thought we were all wrong, purely through prejudice. It started when he was a kid and had gone right down.

Mr. MCMURRAY. When they want to put something over they draw a picture of an elderly woman driving along to town, maybe with a little child. Along comes a big sheepman with a Cadillac car, who probably runs into a wheel and tears the axle off, and then goes on, paying no attention to her. I don't know, but I am willing to wager that those sheepmen they are condemning are doing more for the dry farmer than any other part of this State. If they want to put something over they draw a picture of the sheepman dashing by paying no attention to the small man.

Mr. MCNAMARA. This is no movement of the stockmen. This is the condition confronting us, that they are going to do something, and the people of the State should get behind the livestock men and help us frame some bill that would be of benefit to the whole people instead of the stockmen.

Mr. MCMURRAY. Just to show the prejudice against the stockmen in the last legislature: I went over to a senator from a county that I suppose has more sheep and stockmen in than any three counties in the State and asked him to sign a motion to dispense with the rules on the stockmen's bill, and he refused to do it. "I tell you, we will get in bad if we go to pushing this stuff too strong," he said.

Mr. PICKETT. I like the spirit of fairness in the first place in appointing a practical stockman like Stanfield to head this movement in the West, and also in conducting these hearings. It is giving the people a chance to express themselves. When you speak of putting the matter under the head of the Agricultural Department I take it that that means putting it under the Forestry Department. It is practically the same thing. And the question is, if practical men are given a chance to have a say on these boards or committees, I am wondering if it will be about like what has happened in the present advisory boards which have been appointed to work with the Forest Department. We have been called in and had our say, but that is about as far as it usually went. They have generally had the last say, and that is the biggest say. I haven't a great deal of confidence in the Forestry Department. But if it is reorganized, radical changes may be brought about. I can see the light for some changes to be made that the people are given more of a chance to say how their business should be conducted, rather than to have some one from Washington to say how it should be conducted. I think in a country like this where our land is practically all gone, we should also take into consideration the sentiment of other counties where there is a lot left. I was impressed with the first plan of holding it under the State administration. But after hearing Mr. McMurray state what kind of scrapping we would have had with the dry farmers I can see we would get in a lot of trouble. I think that the resolution that was read was about along the right line, and that the association of the men assembled here heartily agrees with you that we are united on any system that will protect the stock interests. First, a maximum price, and will give the stockman a say and a right to be heard and represented on the boards.

Mr. McLEAN. This public-lands question is really a pry to open the question of reorganization of the Forest Service. One of the suggestions that has been made is that instead of having a multiplicity of rules and regulations so that you can always be sure of breaking one of them, that we should take a few fundamentals and have them passed into law by Congress and make it a penitentiary offense for a man to injure the range in any way. Then turn this practical stockman loose and let him run 1,000 or 10,000 sheep on his allotment; and if he disobeys the law, put him in the pen.

Along the line of which you spoke, Mr. Pickett, in regard to the way the present advisory boards work, that they may make their suggestions and agree on certain policies and then the forest reserve has the last say, it has been suggested at a great many of these meetings that this is one of the things that should be put in the law by Congress that this advisory board should have the say and that the Forestry Service could not overrule them and that there should be a board of appeals.

Mr. HILL. I ran sheep on the forest before there were any forest reserves in Wyoming and Utah, and as bad as the forest is now it is better than it was then, but I don't think we can get it any worse than it is now. If something could be done in the reorganization of the Forest Service in connection with the public domain, it might work out for the benefit of all of us. I remember when the first leased land came in Wyoming. I remember when we leased the land from the railroad company. Very satisfactory. I leased land from the State. I have run on State leases in Wyoming that were very satisfactory for 10 years, all on the low summer ranges, like this public domain here. The State seemed to handle it very nicely, but whether they could handle it now I don't know. But I suppose that most of us submit to the different wrongs because we have to. Now, this little forest we have down here. The sheepman came to me, and he said I was doing fine. I didn't send my fees in on the 1st of December, and I received a letter to-day that he is going to cut 85 head of sheep, and I only have 800 now, and he is cutting 85 more off on me because I didn't send that in. I don't know how they can handle it. That is very unsatisfactory now. This public domain is a big thing, but I suppose it will work out in the forest department to the betterment of the sheepman, even as the forest did.

Mr. HOLTZ. Mr. Chairman, I am not a stockman, and I really don't feel that I have any particular say in this matter. Further, I am not well enough informed to express myself intelligently or to make any constructive suggestions. I was going to ask a question. I got the impression from the secretary that it would be better for the stockmen if the matter was left as it is. You are really making an effort to leave it the way it is?

Mr. MCNAMARA. It is simply an issue that is being forced upon the stock industry and we want to be prepared.

Mr. McLEAN. If we are going to have it we want it right.

Mr. ACUFF. Take this desert country out here. We at one time leased it from the North Side Extension. While it was a very nominal sum, it din't amount to anything. It wasn't practical. One year you would have water and the next year none. You take the man who is feeding and maybe he will have 5,000 yearlings this year and none next. It is going to work a hardship on him. What are you going to do with the man who is in and out?

Mr. WARD. The main trouble with the sheep business is that we take too many chances. Economically there is hardly a rule under which we operate that is a sound rule. They raise the freight rates on the merchant. They raise the price. But we, on the other hand, ask them what they are going to pay for our product. A little more cooperation and we will get our business on a more definite basis. This point occurred to me: It is going to be hard for a man to start if this range is going to be all tied up, and that is going to hurt the industry. You throttle the new blood and you kill the industry. It is the new man coming in, the new blood, that keeps the industry moving. It seems to me that if you put it under control it will hurt the business.

Mr. MCMURRAY. If a man wants to go into a business he must buy into it. He can buy into any business if he wants to set up in that business. Now, if you had it so arranged so that the amount would be sufficient that it would be encouraging to a man to go into that business, he can buy into that business. There is no business in the world that you can't buy into. Why shouldn't the sheep business be made just the same as the other businesses are? Now, if you want to go into that business and keep on with it, you can afford to pay more for the stock and make good on it and benefit the country as a whole. The reason that the Agricultural Department should handle this is that they have had experience for a number of years. In changing forest-reserve officials, later we have always had better results than in the beginning. When you get a man out here who partially knows your angle of the business, we don't have a great deal of trouble in getting him to be reasonable. It is this leasing business and the uncertainty with the stockman that is wrong, and they would rather leave it this way and get along.

Mr. MCLEAN. If we just had a few more practical men in there who would have more personal say, and each permittee would get a permanent reserve that he can use and be held responsible for the damage he does, we would like it that way.

Mr. MCMURRAY. Yes. Now, they could establish certain principles in regard to the operation of those reserves and let the person that uses that reserve use it as he pleases and he will be responsible if he abuses that right. Now, in regard to your resolution there, is that to be permanent? That might do as a tentative form, but I think I could draft a resolution that would suit me better.

Mr. MCNAMARA. I will appoint a committee, and you can take one copy of this resolution and write a set of resolutions of your own. When we meet in Boise and in Pocatello those resolutions will just be offered as a tentative plan. Then when we get to Salt Lake it will all be gone over again and rearranged. Mr. MCMURRAY. I think the stockmen's contention for a legal right will be held good because he has had experience. It puts personal responsibility on the stockman, the man who has solidified the industry, and that right should be legalized and be made permanent. Then you would know that you had permanency. I have this in mind: You can go to the credit man and tell him what you have and your credit would be established. Now it is uncertain and you have no credit for the reason that you have no permanent right.

Mr. McLEAN. It used to be the belief of our Government that every new man ought to have a chance to take up a homestead and get a start that way. But the young men of to-day are having a perfectly good chance to get in because there are always old men dying off. If a fellow wants to go in the ranching business he would probably buy in rather than homestead anyway.

Mr. WARD. My point there is that he can buy any business all right if he has the money. Here is the point. In the stock business, of course, we have been schooled more or less and raised to go into the stock business, but here is the main point. When you take away our public domain it is going to cut off our side line, which is the only way we make a profit. We are not like the easterner. We are not running these ranches as our whole business, but have to have range in connection as a side line to make a profit. If we want to develop sheep or cattle, if you take away our range, how are we going to do it? I go out here and buy me a ranch. I come from the East. Conditions are not the same. This is not primarily an agricultural country, and I can't make a living on the farm alone. I need the public domain. But when you take this public domain from a man he can not raise this side-line of sheep or cattle and will fail. He can make a good living all right if he has a side issue of stock.

Mr. McLEAN. In the case of class A users, an inexperienced man thinks he wants to run sheep. He sees a neighbor making money at it. He applies for a range, and the Forest Service makes a cut of 5 per cent against several men who own ranches and have spent a number of years building up their stock business and know the game. We have five big men in that territory that are cut 5 per cent for this other man to come in. There is only 3 per cent of the small class A users who stay in the business for the three years required by the Forest Service before they can get a permanent right. But these big users are cut. Then the Forest Service doesn't give them back what they had before. Then maybe there comes another good year. and there will be lots of applications. They cut you another 5 per cent and another 5 per cent, and in the course of several years the big man is cut way down for these other fellows who have come and gone, and the man who had the prior right is cut to pieces and run out of business. The country is not benefited, the class A user is hurt rather than helped, and one of its best citizens and producers is ruined.

Mr. MCNAMARA. You take one case. A man is running a few sheep on the range. Now, in two or three years he may want to branch out. What will he have to do with conditions as they are now? He gets a forest permit for his sheep for his spring and fall range. He either has to go up in the further hills or buy out a ranch property. Then he is not sure that he has any permanency. If he doesn't buy a ranch he has to go up against some other outfit. He has nothing permanent at all. But if things are adjusted right and at the end of that time he wants to go into that business, then

he could have a legalized right that he could operate 800 head of ewes for five years.

Mr. ACUFF. We will all agree that if you pay anything for the public domain you are paying almost too much. Now, suppose that this public domain is divided into associations, that you are a new man and pay hard money for something that doesn't cost those men anything. And every year I would get a little more public domain lease and finally after 10 or 15 years I have acquired a big lease from the Government. All right, I want to sell out. The first thing I do is to raise the price of my ewes for more than they are worth to sell my lease.

Mr. HILL. Go over into Wyoming and you can buy your ewes with a permanent right for railroad land for summer, fall, and winter grazing. It is worth $2 a head, because there is more money in having something definite. I could pay $500 and get the right to lease range for 500 ewes on the railroad land, and it was the cheapest way I could get it.

Mr. MCLEAN. When you came you stayed on the water right and made use of it, and the forest range is the same. You are there making use of it and you should be established and no other man should be able to come in and make use of it. If we are going to have a socialistic government, then let's make it all socialistic.

Mr. FISHER. A man ought to have some right to his range, but I don't think he should have a permanent right to it.

Mr. MCNAMARA. We have decided to call another meeting at Burley on the 11th day of July, and this meeting will be adjourned until then.

(Meeting adjourned 4.45 p. m.)

PROCEEDINGS OF THE HEARING ON PUBLIC LANDS HELD AT BURLEY NATIONAL HOTEL BY THE IDAHO WOOL GROWERS' ASSOCIATION, SATURDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 11, 1925

Meeting called to order at 3 p. m. by Mr. McLean.

Present: Thirty-five.

After a brief talk Mr. McLean went over the happenings at the other meetings and explained what was being done.

After the opening talk, in which Mr. McLean explained the easy way in which right to graze on open range could be obtained, Mr. Hanlon spoke.

"I have been living here eight years and you talk like if a person starts living here it gives him a right to use the range. That is true to a certain extent, but so far I have paid three or four dollars an acre for all I got. Most of the small men try to range their sheep, but then have to turn them over to Swift & Co. or some other big concern, because they have a monopoly on the range. A sheep man with a small amount of sheep can not get on the range or public domain under the Forest Service, because four or five thousand head is all one man can run efficiently. Why not put a limit on the range against the eastern concerns? Of course, you say that a man can run more than that efficiently. Swift & Co. do, but they depend upon other men running them, for one man can not run a large bunch efficiently. The large concerns are not limited to the same restrictions as we are, it seems to me, especially on the forest reserve. They can get the range much cheaper than we can. I believe the public domain should be put under some sort of supervision, but not to the extent that we will have nothing to say about it. We don't know whether a man can run 10, 50, or 5,000 sheep."

Mr. MCLEAN. One suggestion has been made that the land of the public domain should be classified as to whether it is grazing or agricultural land. The reason for this is that many homesteaders take land for speculation, not with the idea of keeping it for a home but of making some money off of it. It should not be allowed to be homesteaded while it is being classified. If it is grazing land no homesteader should be allowed to take it for agricultural purposes. Mineral lands should be subject to withdrawal at any time. Mr. HANLON. I think Hoover is absolutely right.

Mr. PICKETT. Will you read the first resolution again Mr. McLean? Now, the next one. I believe the land for grazing should be under supervision but not under the departments of the States. I think they should be under the supervision of Government officials and the States should have certain rights thereunder.

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JACK BOYLE. Citizens of the State should have the right to graze the lands to the best interest of the State and of the people, especially in thte fall and winter. I think it should be supervised by the Government and the citizens should be forced to obey the rulings which are to the best interests of the grazing lands. And the administrators should charge for every person whether for sheep or otherwise. But it should be allotted by districts and should let everyone on the district use it in common. It should not be under an individual allottment system. The man running forty or sixty thousand sheep in Idaho and Nevada or Idaho and Washington has no right to come in here and take the land away from us when they have already got reserve and grazing rights for their sheep. If they do that, the small man who has a farm or ranch, raises his own feed and goes out in the summer time and comes back he will be pushed clear off the land entirely.

Mr. HANLON. Don't you think putting it under some form of Government control would regulate it? Wouldn't a number limit cut that down?

Mr. BOYLE. I believe it will.

Mr. HANLON. Limit them to what a man can run efficiently. Swift & Co. run large bunches it is true but they hire men to do it. I mean let them run just what one man can run efficiently. Allot the forest and free range to the efficient man first.

Mr. BOYLE, I think you will find that our range here is entirely different than in any other country. It is a benefit for a farmer to have a right paying bunch of sheep so he can go onto the range with a thousand or twentyfive hundred head. We can have so many more men here than any other range in the eastern country. You can not have the allotment for a man in Idaho that you can in Nevada. It has got to be all used under the public domain in common. You will find here every year ten or fifteen hundred men who start out in the sheep business. If they have no place to put them in the summer they soon go broke. I think that the fact is that because of the number of transients the farmer has no chance. It is all right for transients to come in but not to the extent that it will ruin the man who is here permanently.

Mr. HANLON. Although I have no bone to pick with Stanfield, Stanfield is nothing more than Swift & Co. Are we going to allot our range to Swift & Co. instead of ourselves? That is exactly what they are doing.

Mr. BOYLE. I have been in Idaho for perhaps 25 or 30 years. Every few years some big concern will come in and Swift will have to take them over. It is not that they want to go into the sheep business but the big outfit run by hired men is just unable to compete with the individual. They don't last long, they can't meet the competition. You can not find many of these big concerns that last.

Mr. HANLON. Do you think you should mortgage me to my farm? Do you think I have the same privilege that they have to run sheep on the range? Mr. BOYLE. They lasted only until the individual put them out. The individual can take the range away from them, and did. I think if you will investigate that you will find that the individual has the advantage. There was an appeal made by Swift & Co. because they could not occupy the range that was allotted to the small citizen.

Mr. PICKETT. Mr. McMurray expressed himself as against State control from the fact that any bill that was ever put up in the legislature that claimed to be a stockman's bill would see little chance of passing. I should certainly hate to see anything like this go into the State control, for there is enough prejudice against the stockmen in the State already. Nothing is going through that is in favor of the stockman. It was also said that if the range is put under Government control like the forest reserve it will be unsatisfactory. I will say that while the Forest Service has not been entirely satisfactory it has had a good many years of experience and is more satisfactory now than it was in the beginning. I remember that at the beginning the Forest Service supervisor would pigeonhole the reports of meetings and bills which the advisory board had recommended and would pass on them himself. But I believe that they are getting fast away from those things and that if the forest reserve system is going to be controlled more by local men we will get a good many better results. I have often said that if the country got rid of the scab, the coyotes, and the Democrats that the sheep business would be both profitable and pleasurable. We have done away with the scab and have handled the coyote and Democrat to some extent. but we are having trouble with what little open range there is left for the man