I hope before you submit your recommendations to Secretary Gore that you will definitely ascertain the present sale value of representative cattle ranches adjacent to national forests, whether there is any market for them, the number of forced sales and foreclosures, and the net returns from such sales or foreclosures compared with the value of these ranches in previous years. I trust when this information is secured that you will incorporate it in your report to the Secretary. It would have been a comparatively easy matter to have obtained this information at the time of the appraisal work, and I think it should have been incorporated in the report. It will, I am sure, support my assertion that while the grazing fees on national forests have been advanced, the actual value of cattle ranches in the West. dependent upon outside grazing, has proportionately decreased.

RENTAL VALUE OF PRIVATE LAND

Under this heading the report discusses the method pursued in obtaining leased tracts, for comparison with national forest land. No reference is made to the unappropriated, unreserved public domain of 185,000,000 acres which is used solely for grazing, and without any fee. The presence of large tracts of public domain throughout the West has a potential influence on the grazing value of private land. It might easily account for one-half of the alleged value of leased private land. Yet no consideration is given to this important factor in the report-it is not even mentioned. The leasing of railroad checkerboard land in effect carries with it the use of the intervening sections belonging to the Government, so that by leasing a certain acreage of such land stockmen would secure a double amount of grazing. As to how far that might affect the rental value of private-leased land, the report is strangely silent.

The report states (p. 9) that forage on national forests "is used by approximately 25 per cent of the stockmen of the West; the other 75 per cent have to own land sufficient to carry their stock, or lease from owners in the open market." As the open range is grazed, probably a considerable share of that 75 per cent use it, and no doubt also on that account they are able to pay a high rental for some stragetically located private land.

THE "FAVORED FEW "

Throughout the report the argument is stressed that, unless grazing fees on national forests are put on the kind of commercial basis found by your employees to be fair and reasonable, the benefits of national-forest grazing would go to a "favored few," and that every other citizen of this republic would be shorn of his equal benefit. However, on page 53 of the report it is made plain that national-forest grazing is open to all who can qualify under your rules and regulations, without any discrimination, unless it be against those who ought to, but do not, have any superior rights by reason of their pioneering.. With equal logic it might be argued that those stockmen who are so situated that they can use the grazing on what is left of the open range are a "favored few," and that everybody else is discriminated against. Anybody who desires to use the open range can do so. This "favored-few" excuse is a figment of the imagination. I have never heard a stockman express regret that he could not utilize some of the remaining public domain. Right now I do not believe any stockman envies the "favored few" on the national forests.

Many of the stockmen who settled the West and invested their money in ranches did so because they thought they could thus utilize, at a minimum of expense, that Government land which never would be taken up under any of the land laws, and which was suitable only for grazing-and much of it very inferior grazing, as that term is understood in the East. They utilized without any fee, the grazing on the land now known as national forests. This grazing land consists mostly of rough and rock mountain sides. It has no greater economic use than grazing. The altitude is high, and in the north the season is short. Stockmen must provide winter pasture and feed, in addition to forest-service summer grazing. The ranch holdings and investments were entirely predicated upon these conditions, and now to commercialize the grazing upon the national forests destroys the value of ranch property.

WHAT IS THE INTEREST OF THE PUBLIC?

The report contends that, as the national forests were created for the benefit of all the people, the fair interest of the public requires that grazing fees should be commercialized. I think not. I believe the people generally are more concerned in an adequate supply of meat foods, at a reasonable price, than they are in the possibility of securing two to three million dollars' additional revenue from grazing on national forests. The Corn Belt feeder is more interested in securing cheap feeders from the West than in having the Government collect an additional two cents annually as his share in the proposed increase. If, as I firmly believe, the projected increase in grazing fees will result in a proportionate advance on railroad grant land, State land, other land grants, and private leased land, the consuming public will ultimately pay many times the amount of money involved in the proposed advance of grazing fees on national forest.

The report anticipates the probability that, if grazing fees on national forest are increased, a similar advance will be made on private lands, as was apparently the case following the 1919 advance. It says, "If the Government increases the rates, and the stockmen permit and accept an increase on private lands, that is their own responsibility and not the Government's;" and it suggests that stockmen organize and “preclude the possibilities of extortion." At this time, when other arms of the Government are endeavoring to aid the agricultural and livestock industries, it does appear to me that the Forest Service should hesitate to encourage an inflation in the overhead costs of raising livestock.

It is well to bear in mind the real position which the Government occupies in the administration of approximately 110,000,000 acres of grazing on the national forest. In any other hands it would be called a monopoly. Stockmen who have all their worldly possessions tied up in a ranch property, and who are dependent on national-forest grazing for part of the year at least. are compelled to pay whatever fees the Government may fix, without any voice in what they are, or abandon or sell their ranches, if the latter is pos

sible.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1924, the receipts for grazing on the national forests showed a decrease of $425,924.36, and the following comment on this decrease, appearing in your annual report, is illuminating:

"The reduction in the revenues from the national forest stock ranges was due in part to delinquencies and delays in the payment of grazing fees, arising from the depression under which the livestock industry is still suffering in many portions of the West. The delinquencies for the past four years aggregate $126,476.95, 90 per cent of which is not collectible because the grazing privileges have been abandoned, and in many cases the ranches and livestock have passed out of the hands of the permittees."

FOREST SERVICE RESTRICTIONS

The Forest Service has always recognized that, by reason of certain restrictions, the value of its grazing was less than of that on privately fenced areas. This is a fact hardly open to dispute. However for the first time, to my knowledge a representative of your service argues that these restrictions are not to the disadvantage of stockmen. I note this remarkable sentence in Mr. Rachford's report:

"The restrictions imposed by private landowners on lessees are often equal to, and in some cases far in excess of those imposed by the Forest Service." I am sure stockmen will not agree with that statement; nor do I believe you will accept it as a fact.

The report of Mr. Rachford does not bear the stamp of impartiality. It reads like the brief of a special pleader who undertook the task of justifying another 100 per cent increase in grazing fees. The Forest Service, not Congress, established the principle of commercializing the forage on the

national forests.

I believe it is for the best interests of our nation that grazing fees on national forests should be established on the lowest possible basis consistent with the expense of administering such grazing practically on the cost-ad

ministration basis.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1924, the cost of

administration represented approximately 30 per cent of the receipts from

grazing. Such a basis would not, in my judgment, involve any discrimination or undue perference.

66

I fully understand, both from your letter and from the statement made by you at our Omaha convention in 1924, that it is not your intention to enforce such increase in grazing fees as may be approved by the Secretary of Agriculture until, as you say, there is a substantial improvement in the business conditions affecting the live stock industry." I submit that this makes for an almost intolerable situation. Just as soon as stockmen get in a position to pay their present arrears in grazing fees, a bureau of the government, at its option, is prepared to impose a further burden.

I note that you intimate in your letter the possibility "that this whole subject may be considered by Congress." In the Rachford report reference is made to the attitude of certain members of Congress. It seems to me that the time has now arrived when Congress, which created these national forests, should definitely announce a policy as to the administration of grazing thereon. Then the stockmen utilizing the grass, and your department as well, will know where they stand.

Yours very sincerely,

T. W. TOMLINSON, Secretary American National Live Stock Association. Mr. TOMLINSON. Without going into detail in this reply, I want to point out that it contains the various increases made in forest reserve fees since the time that the Department of Agriculture, or rather the Forest Service, first commenced to impose a nominal fee. In November, 1916, Secretary Houston decided, in effect, that fees for grazing on national forests should be fixed upon what he then called a commercial basis. And proposed an increase in the then existing fees of 100 per cent. Vigorous protest was made by our association for the cattlemen, and by the National Woolgrowers Association for the sheep men, and as a result of that protest, which was predicated upon the theory that the livestock business could not stand it, and that the increase was not warranted on a commercial basis, Secretary Houston proposed as a compromise an increase of 25 per cent, which was to go into effect on March 1, 1917. He then said, "Further increases will be deferred until a specific study of the existing conditions upon each of the national forests has been made."

Now, such a supplemental study was made in addition to the study which had been made previous thereto, and on November 25, 1918, Secretary Houston wrote me a letter, which is contained herein, in which he stated, in effect:

In accordance with the conclusion announced by me on February 1, 1917, that the charge for grazing should be based upon the real value of the forage, I have decided that beginning with March 1, the charge for grazing upon the national forests during the year-long period will be *.

Then he recites the rates which made up the 100 per cent increase. Now, I wish to emphasize this, because during that period commencing in 1914 and ending in 1918, there was a so-called appraisal of what was understood to be the commercial value of this forage, and on the basis of that appraisal 100 per cent increase was imposed on the rates which were in existence in 1916.

Mr. Greeley recognized that in his annual report for the fiscal year 1920, when he makes a statement to the effect that grazing fees had been established upon a commercial basis. And I think in the report of the hearings before this committee he does not deny that state

ment.

In 1920, shortly after Mr. Greeley took charge of the forests he undertook this so-called reappraisal. The exact date of his sug

gestion that a reappraisal be inaugurated was November 6 of the year in which he was appointed forester.

As a result of his effort to secure another reappraisal, which was approved by the Secretary of Agriculture, the Rachford report was presented to stockmen for their consideration late in 1924.

Now, I wish to state as a fact that there are no ranch properties in the West to-day that can be sold at as advantageous a price as they could be when the former reappraisal was under consideration. Without going into details as to what Mr. Rachford found, I take issue with his conclusions that the proposed rates are on a commercial basis. He arrives at this commercial basis as stated in the report upon a comparison of the rental values on other lands after making certain deductions to get them on a comparable basis.

Now, wihtout going into instances in other States, I wish to point out the statement made here by Mr. Goss to-day, who pays approximately $3 a head for rental on State lands, of which he leases 80,000 acres, and he considers that at least as favorable, if not more preferable to the payment of $1 on the forest reserve in the Leadville district for a year-around grazing, and for the reasons he stated.

I happened to eat lunch to-day with a stockman who ranches in this vicinity, who owns 2,100 acres of land-deeded land. He leases from the State two sections, 1,280 acres for which he pays 10 cents an acre. He stated in addition to that he had access to approximately 10,000 acres of other land, most of which was abandoned homesteads in his neighborhood. He said if he could not avail himself of this free grazing on these other lands he could not pay 10 cents an acre for the State lands. That if he had to pay an acreage basis on all the land, two or three cents would be the maximum.

Now, these two instances will illustrate the infirmity, if not the absurdity of any effort to make any comparison of the value of grazing on the national forests with privately owned leased land or State leased land or railroad leased land or any other land that may be leased for grazing purposes. No matter how finely attuned the mind may be of the man who attempts to appraise property, there are too many divergent contributing factors involved that make it utterly impossible to arrive at a commercial basis by comparison with the data arrived at from leased land or otherwise.

Then I think the presence of 186,000,000 acres of public domain and the ability of stockmen to use that free of charge has a tremendous influence upon the value of strategic leases that might control water. How much of a deduction should be made on that account goes into the realms almost of speculation.

So therefore, without burdening you with other comparisons, I wish to state emphatically that I take most violent issue with the so-called Rachford basis, I do not think it fair, I do not think it represents conditions-indeed I do not think anyone, superhuman or otherwise, can arrive at any basis that would be comparable on this so-called commercial plan.

I have referred in this letter to the oft-repeated statement that the users of grazing on the national forests were in a favored class; that they had an advantage over other stockmen who were not so situated that they could use the grazing on the national forests. I have taken exceeding pains to make some inquiries along this line. I

have never yet found a man who was familiar with both the character of grazing on the national forests and on deeded land who felt that he was being discriminated against because he could not get on the national forests. The gentleman I was talking to this noon had no desire to go on the forest reserves under any kind of conditions.

I was talking with Mr. Murdo Mackenzie, manager of the Matador Land & Cattle Co. not long ago, and he would not go on the forest reserve with rent free, and he said nobody could give him a piece of public domain that he would use. And he has had long experience in grazing on all kinds of land.

I have also talked with a good many feeders down in the Corn Belt and in the grazing districts of western Nebraska, the so-called Sand Hills country, and I have never heard any of them express any feeling that the men who had a grazing permit on the national forest had any the best of it over them. In fact, the interest of the so-called Corn-Belt man, the man who buys these thin cattle or sheep for further finishing, is toward the point of getting his product at the lowest possible price. He does not feel that he is in competition with the man using grazing on the national forest or on the public domain. He wants to buy his stock at the lowest possible basis. Indeed, it is of more interest to him that the stockmen pay but little for this grass out here, because it means the overhead is less, and the Corn-Belt man can get his livestock for further finishing at a less price.

So much for the interest of the Corn-Belt feeder or the grass man in other sections. I wish to emphasize as a fact that I have never, except in the Agricultural Committee of the House, heard any statement made by an actual stockman who knew what he was talking about, even intimating that he felt he was being discriminated against by any favors shown to those using the national forests.

Now, if the advance made in 1919 had any effect on the value of other leased land it was to advance it. And I express the conviction that the increase in rental prices on forest reserves- -a vast area aggregating 156,000,000 acres, of which 110,000,000 acres are susceptible of grazing-the increase in rental value on that vast domain must necessarily have a direct influence on the value of grazing on other lands. Indeed, if there is any foundation for the findings of Mr. Rachford they are based largely on that premise that the advance of 1919 automatically increased the value of these other lands to the great detriment of the stockmen.

The United States Government has been making a very elaborate investigation of the costs and methods of range cattle production within the State of Colorado. And I wish to file in the record, not to have printed, merely as an exhibit, a document entitled "An economic study of the costs and methods of range cattle production on 41 ranches in Colorado in 1922," there being 22,285 cows and their calves covered by this investigation.

Now, I have made and wish to appear in the record some brief excerpts from this report. And for the purpose of intelligently commenting on it I will read a few sentences. The report is by G. S. Klemmedson, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, United States Department of Agriculture and Colorado Experiment Station.