who has forest-reserve right. There are the "coyote men," who come in and eat him out, or if he has a lease from some private individual they will take what open range is carried with it and eat his lease off. The coyote man has become almost as much of a pest in this country as the coyote himself. The coyote leaves the dead skeleton of your lambs while the coyote man leaves the lamb a living skeleton. If the sheep business is going to be stabilized and get Cut of the grasp of speculators, it will be better for a man to know what he has even if he has to pay a small amount of Government rent than it would be to wake up some morning and not have anything until you get onto the forest reserve. The man who has no rights but coyotes around for a month or two with a bunch for speculation is the fellow that destroys the business for the man who wants to stay in it. It should be controlled by some Government department. It will be for the good of the country, and it seems to me that the Department of Agriculture is the only department that can handle it because they are in the business. I think it will work quite satisfactorily. Mr. HANLON. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Pickett: You spoke of having it allotted. I have run sheep for seven years and stay in the business, but I want forest reserve and can't get it. I got a ranch in the hills and depend on that ranch and the free range around it. Do you mean, then, that I am to be allotted a range in the hills with no open range around it and not know where I am to be? Have no say in it at all? Mr. PICKETT. I should have said lease instead of allottment. Mr. HANLON. I beg your pardon. Mr. BARBER. Why is there so much prejudice against the stockman in the senate? Twenty-five or forty years ago the stockmen built up the political situation in this State. and if they can not get anything up to pass it must be their own fault. Mr. PICKETT. Now you can go out and if the farmer has a chance to hold you up on the hay he will do it. He is more against sheep than any other thing and will make you pay for the hay if he can. If your sheep look inside of the fence without any damages whatever he will want money no matter what damage is done because the stockman is his enemy. There have been people who have not kept away a respectable distance from the premises. But usually if a man has no more than a jackass and a bulldog to graze he will be given the advantage. It is not only in Idaho that this is true either. Mr. BARBER. Mr. Chairman, don't you think that some of the prejudices and other feelings are due to the fact that the rangeman in a pretty strict sort of sense is a sort of gypsy running a bunch of sheep around and does not have a business, and has no right as a legal standing in that respect, and the other fellow, who may be a miner, has rights and can prove them by law and knows where he is at? The grazer would not have to back out if he had some definite form of legal standing. He would not be that sort of a tramp any more. He would be a respected citizen in the eyes of the law. Mr. BOYLE. There is a lot of professional jealousy enters into it. The sheepman is either broke or has a little money. When he borrows money he can get as much as any man who tends to his own business. He is about as honorable as any other. The farmer can not borrow money at all. He has nothing to borrow money on. He is either broke or has no attention paid to him. Mr. Boyle left. Mr. BARBER. Do you know what the other Western States are doing? Mr. McLEAN. Washington and Oregon are doing what Idaho wants done. They have taken these resolutions and are adopting them at their local meetings. Mr. BARBER. You published for us the speech of Senator Ashurst, of Arizona. You just now read for us Colonel Greeley's testimony. It seems to be pretty good but somebody must be a liar. Ashurst does not claim to be an honorable man. When you come down to the big meetings you are going to find that those forestry fellows have some pretty strong arguments. Mr. MONTGOMERY. At one meeting it was brought out that there was so much pressure from other parts of the country outside of these grazing States that some sort of control is bound to come to be forced onto the industry. There is the question of picking the best way out before the local men have nothing to say. Mr. PICKETT. If it could be left indefinitely as it is now it would be preferable but that is impossible and most of us know some sort of control is coming. We might as well take it now. Mr. HANLON. Have they ever tried to iron this point out? Where a man grazes on the Saw Tooth Mountains in the summer and in Nevada in the winter, he has to spend two or three months getting from one to the other. Supposing all of the public domain is taken up? How would he get there? Mr. MCLEAN. Broad driveways across country would be necessary and that the association of wool growers would have to handle the allottments. Mr. HANLON. In other words, if a man wants to trail around he would have to belong to the association to be permitted to do so? It is a good thing that transients come through for if they did not then all the hay we have here would go to waste and there would be less money for they have to buy feed. I know of one time that I bought hay at $4 a ton. I was ashamed to take it almost. Mr. PICKETT. I would be just as ashamed as the man who sold hay for $35 in the time when hay was short. I even paid $40 a ton. Mr. WARD. I believe that as to trailing sheep in and buying hay, most men can ship their sheep here cheaper than they can trail them. I feel as most of the other boys here do, that our rights are small and we must get along as best we can until something is done and a conclusion is reached. I know because I have been trailing some yearlings around American Falls and I sure experienced some funny things. I sure found out that my rights were small. The ranchers simply say that sheep don't go this way and before I got through I believed it. We got into a jack pot several times and finally got through but it certainly is quite an effort to get what rights we have. I certainly think some form of Government control should be exercised. We have no legal standing, you might say. What I mean, the miner has certain rights by law, the farmer has certain rights by law, and there is where we are lacking. We have not got a stand in at all with the law. It is a cinch that the Forest Service has not been carried out as Teddy Roosevelt intended that it should. As it is now run it is a burden on the stockman and the stockman has to pay for the privilege of bearing the burden. Mr. KING (cattleman from Elba). For instance, you take the money the stockmen have to pay as taxes, and the money for grazing and this money was used to build roads into the forests for tourists who come in automobiles and camp and shoot and make free use of the range. Why not charge a man with six children the same as a man with six cattie? The Government control is all right if we can keep the taxation down. It is hardly fair for a man to have to go out on the open range and carry water for himself and stock and pay taxes to do it and then take a chance on losing his life and his stock. That is the question before the house. You go out and you take your cattle and fight it out and during this time you pay an excessive price for fighting for your own lives. If it is to be handled as the forest reserves I would not say it was a good thing for the stockman. That is the reason why a maximum must be fixed by law. Mr. McLEAN. Wouldn't an independent board of stockmen and a court of appeal help settle that question? Mr. KING. It seems to me that it would settle it entirely. Every sheepman who goes up there goes in a car instead of going on a horse. Mr. PARKINSON (grazing assistant, district No. 6. United States Forest Service). I think the main trouble with the Forest Service is that so many times they have employed men who do not know their business. They mess up the business and have about as much business in the Forest Service as I have in a kitchen. The Forest Service is getting rid of these men just as fast as they can, and it is our duty to help get rid of them. Mr. KING. If they are going to tell me how to handle my sheep they should know about as much as I do about it and they are getting that way now. That is what makes the trouble. It is handled by men who do not understand the business. There are a lot of people con- Mr. PARKINSON. You are on the right track. cerned and it has to be put over on a broad basis. thing others besides the sheepman are interested. of in its entirety instead of just for the sheepman. I think there is a whole lot of similarity in the sheepman as in the Forest Service. We want to know why it is we are accused of hypocrisy. The sheep business is a big thing for the State. And one industry can not develop without developing the whole State. There is a lot of agitation about putting the public domain under Government administration. I believe the stockman should have a hand in it where your interests will be helped. There are none in the Forest Service who want to handle it for we have about all we can do now to tear down this benevolent bureaucracy. There can be big improvements in developing water, etc., and fixing things up so that the range can be put to more and beneficial use. I believe also that if you put under the lease system you might get a storm in one locality where another portion might be without any feed at all. If we assign a definite boundary to one man he might have lots of feed one year and none at all the next. I believe the State is never going to come into its own until the land comes into its own and these problems are straightened out. We have been using these lands for 50 or 60 years and they are not under an administration yet. Mr. HANLON. Will there be a limit to this leasing if it is put into effect? That is, if a man has an abundant number of sheep will he be held to the same amount of range as a small man? I have seen some writings on it from Washington, where they said their idea was to increase the production of sheep, for they can not raise them all over the United States; and the sheep industry is not as good as it might be at present. Mr. McLean then asked if the resolutions were to be adopted as they were read; whether they were to be changed or added to or not adopted at all. He then suggested that they be put before the house in the form of a motion. Mr. Pickett moved that they be adopted as they stood as being the consensus of this meeting. The motion was seconded by Wesley Ward, and upon the vote it was found that it was unanimously affirmative. The meeting stood adjourned. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will now stand adjourned. (Whereupon, at 6.10 o'clock p. m. Monday, September 14, 1925, the committee adjourned, to reconvene at Burns, Oreg., Wednesday, September 16, 1925.) |