and we believe that we ought to have enough time to get back on to our feet to justify any increase in the cost of production. We do not believe that because the outlook is very encouraging this year that somebody or some bureau ought to come along and because our hair is sticking up out of the water that it ought to be shaved down again.

Mr. BOWDEN. Have you an individual allotment on the forest? Mr. BAER. I have a permit; yes, sir.

Mr. BOWDEN. Do they give you an individual allotment to run your cattle on?

Mr. BAER. A unit, as they call it, a unit.

Mr. BOWDEN. Would you prefer getting a lease from the Forest Service for a given period of years instead of your permit as you have at the present time?

Mr. BAER. I am perfectly satisfied with the head allotment, if it will not be reduced as we are subject to now.

Mr. BOWDEN. Could you sell your ranch property if you could not pass your permit to the prospective vendee or buyer?

Mr. BAER. I doubt it very much, for this reason, that our ranch is a stock ranch. We are located 51 miles from a railroad. We have no market for any products that this ranch might raise except on foot. In other words we drive our stock to the market. And I doubt very much if anybody would come along and want to buy our plant if part of the production plant-and now I mean forest reserve-was taken away.

Mr. BOWDEN. There are other permittees in the same condition, I take it, that you are in?

Mr. BAER. Yes, sir. In fact, everyone of them there.

Mr. BOWDEN. What is the maximum limit for class A users on your forest?

Mr. BAER. Well, now, I am a little bit ignorant as to what you mean by "class A."

Mr. BOWDEN. Are you protected up to 2,000?

Mr. BAER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BOWDEN. Are you subject to reduction for redistribution to

smaller users?

Mr. BAER. To smaller numbers or smaller territory?

Mr. BOWDEN. To smaller users; to smaller permittees.

Mr. BAER. Possibly. I really could not answer that question, because we never have been reduced that I know of.

Mr. BOWDEN. Now, if you were reduced below your 2,000, what effect would that have upon the value of your ranch property?

Mr. BAER. Well, I believe that it would reduce the value of my ranch property, for the reason that I figure that it takes about 2,000 head, under normal conditions, to make a reasonable percentage on

the investment.

Mr. BOWDEN. Then, if within your forest the forest policy established was that large users would be reduced down to 200 to make room for newcomers and to increase the size of the small users, that policy, in the course of years, would wipe out most of the value of your ranch property?

kiss it good-bye.

Senator CAMERON. That is all, Mr. Baer; thank you very much. Congressman Taylor, do you have a statement you would like to make before the committee?

STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD T. TAYLOR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM COLORADO

Representative TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a short statement for the record concerning the legal status of this land over in western Colorado. If you will look at the map of the United States behind you, you will see that where we are now sitting formerly belonged to Texas, and that the territory in western Colorado, the greater part of it either belonged to Texas or to Mexico. And after the Mexican War in 1845-46 all of that territory west of that red line was taken from Mexico, you might say, or Texas, and became a part of the United States.

At that time the Ute Indians were occupying the greater portion or all of this western half of Colorado west of the Continental Divide, which is represented by that red line on the map.

By a treaty with the Ute Indians in 1848 the Government of the United States recognized the right of the Ute Indians to this country. And after the Meeker massacre and the Thornburg massacre in 1879 or thereabouts the Ute Indians were removed from here and put over into Utah. A few of them were left down in the southern part of the State. But their old reservation, including 11,000,000 acres, is represented by a line probably 2 inches from the top of the Colorado boundary and about halfway in the center of those green lines-from there to the New Mexico boundary, substantially About 11,000,000 acres of this territory in here where we are now located therefore belonged to the Ute Indians.

When we made a treaty with the Ute Indians in 1880 that treaty provided among other things that the land formerly belonging to the Utes should some time or other be sold by the Government for cash, and that whenever that land was so sold for cash the Ute Indians should receive $1.25 an acre for it. So that when all land in this country comes into private ownership there is dedicated and put to the credit of the Ute Indians $1.25 an acre.

That makes a charge upon the public domain in western Colorado that they do not have in the public domain in other portions of the country. There is no other condition like this in the United States. There is no other place in the United States where the old preemption law is still in vogue as it is in this Ute Indian Reservation of the $1.25 an acre. And when a homestead is taken the Ute Indians nevertheless get the $1.25 an acre.

When President Roosevelt and Mr. Pinchot came through this country making forest reserves many years ago they just made a blanket forest reserve of that green land that you see on the map behind you in the State of Colorado-14,000,000 acres of forest reserves. Among those 14,000,000 acres were something like 3,000,000 of Ute Indian Reservation lands. The fact that the land was transferred into the forest reserve did not change the title to the land at all. It is still theoretically and according to law subject to homestead entry. Even if you can not get a homestead out of it the law says you can. It is still subject to entry under the mining laws and under the coal and the oil laws. It is still to be sold by the Government of the United States.

But some ingenious attorneys down in Washington conceived the scheme that the transfer of the land to a forest reserve thereby

created the obligation upon the Government of the United States to pay $1.25 an acre for it. Notwithstanding that was not sold at all. The title did not pass. It is still Government land. It is still under the control of the Government. And it is still subject to these various entries.

They brought a suit in the Court of Claims, and the Government attorney went in and confessed judgment, without trial, against Uncle Sam for about three and one-half million dollars. And in the judgment also they gave the lawyers $210,000 for their services in bringing that suit, which they promptly paid out of the Treasury and the lawyers promptly divided among themselves. But that decision was never appealed from to the United States Supreme Court, because they confessed judgment.

I have always felt that it was one of the most infamous outrages that I have ever known of since I have been in Congress during the last 17 years. I have always felt that they ought to be sent to the penitentiary. But instead of that, that judgment is still pending. And whenever I have been called upon, as I have repeatedly in Congress, to put some more of this land over in here in this western country into the forest reserve, usually for the purpose of protecting the water supply of some town, so that there would be some regulation which they could appeal to the forest-reserve officials and keep stock off of it, why, I have been confronted by the Interior Department with the objection or with the demand that unless we would pay $1.25 an acre we could not get it. And we have always been compelled to pay $1.25 an acre.

The city of Montrose has an open ditch providing that city with water. The ditch is 15 miles long. And it runs through the public land. The Utah sheep use it every year as their lambing ground, and they herd their flocks along the line of that ditch. The city tried to get me to put 110,000 acres in the forest reserve. I introducted a bill for that purpose and the committee reported it out, and I got a favorable report upon it from the Department of Agriculture and from the Acting Secretary of the Interior and from the commissioner. Afterwards Secretary Lane looked into the matter, and he said that the Government of the United States could not afford to pay something like $150,000 to protect the water supply of Montrose, and that unless they were willing to pay the $1.25 an acre the department would oppose it and Congress would oppose it, and they took it up before the Congress, and I was unable to pass the bill.

Now that presents a situation that I think you gentlemen really ought to know. If we are going to lease that land, if we are going to put it into a policy of public-land leasing the question is whether or not the Ute Indians won't at once come up and demand $1.25 an acre for all the rest of that 11,000,000 acres that are not already disposed of or in the forest reserve. And of the State or the people do it; it is not worth it. And we could not afford to put it in that anybody had to pay $1.25 an acre for it, why they would not form. It is a matter that I think you ought to consider.

or

It does seem to me that the United States ought to have that

decision reversed,

or in some manner obtain a decision that would

disapprove of the Government paying $1.25 an acre to the Ute

Indians for land that has never been sold as the treaty says in so many words it should be.

I have the decision of the court of claims here which recites these things, and also the report of Secretary Lane that goes exhaustively into the history of the Ute Indians and the history of the Government connections with all this western Colorado land. It is rather an elaborated and complicated history. And that is one. thing that we will probably be confronted with, whatever policy we may determine upon concerning the public domain, in so far as it pertains to the Ute Indian Reservation, which is practically all of this western Colorado, this side of Aspen and this side of Gunnison, and going on up north into Routt County. I think the line is marked out substantially on that map there in the red line of the former Ute Indian Reservation. I thought I ought to call your attention to that matter in connection with this situation.

I think possibly that decision of the United States Court of Claims on the matter and the report of the department presenting the status of the matter probably ought to go into the record.

I made a very elaborate speech in Congress on the subject and tried to show that it was absolutely wrong. I think I convinced Secretary Lane that it was wrong, and that it was not the law, and that the court had no authority to enter that judgment. At the same time he said the judgment was entered and it was not appealed from, and the department felt that it was bound by it.

So that with that status of the matter nobody can get any of this land, no matter how worthless it may be, or when it is acknowledged that 30 per cent of it is utter rock and absolutely no human possibility of using it for anything that we know of now. Even if the land was in any manner turned over to be used by the Government or for it to derive a profit from the land, that claim of $1.25 an acre would arise.

Now, I feel like I ought to, on behalf of the stockmen of western Colorado, make a statement somewhat as to my own ideas about this forest reserve.

I will take that up first. I have lived over in this country, in this congressional district, since the spring of 1881, and I have been associated with these stockmen all during that time, and I am an honorary member of several stock associations.

I have read the Rachford report, which, as you know, was filed with the Secretary of Agriculture on the 4th of last November. It has not been acted upon yet, but is the proposition that is now before us.

Let me go back a little. I want to exonerate the Forest Service a good deal for the larger part of the clamor for increase of fees. The demand for the increase of the stock-grazing fees started primarily in Congress and not in the Forest Service. It was started by the Congressmen in the House from Kansas and Nebraska, and especially from Iowa, and supplemented by the Missourians and men from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Those are the men that have made this trouble for us. They started very vigorously in 1920, because of the high price that they are compelled to pay per acre for pasture in those mid-Western States, while they seem to feel that we of the West are getting something compara

tively for nothing. They say they pay from $5 or $6 to as high as $12 per acre for pasture, while we get a whole summer's pasture for 70 cents; and that we put a steer on the market with a pasture charge of $1.50 or such a matter, while they have from $24 upward of pasture charge; and for that reason it is not fair to the mid-Western stockmen.

We have had a long and bitter argument in Congress upon that matter. And it rises principally from the fact that the Agricultural Committee does not have in it anybody representing this country. To-day there is not a man on that committee from any one of the 11 States that have forest reserves in them. And, as I say, they are the fellows that are creating the trouble.

These Congressmen are headed by Mr. Haugen, of Iowa. The Secretary of Agriculture did come from his State. Those people are continually hammering away at us out here and are assuming that we get something for nothing, without ever coming out here and looking at us or knowing anything about our conditions and assuming that it is all velvet with us.

To-day the Agricultural Committee of the House has Mr. Haugen, of Iowa, as chairman. The other members are Mr. Ward, of New York: Mr. Purnell, of Indiana; Mr. Voigt, of Wisconsin; Mr. McLaughlin, of Michigan (he is one of our bitterest opponents; he says we can raise our stock out here without any of them taking a drink of water); Mr. Tincher, of Kansas; Mr. Williams, of Illinois; Mr. Sinclair, of North Dakota; Mr. Thompson, of Ohio; Mr. Clague, of Minnesota; Mr. Clarke, of New York; Mr. Ketcham, of Michigan; Mr. Aswell, of Louisiana; Mr. Kincheloe, of Kentucky; Mr. Jones, of Texas; Mr. Swank, of Oklahoma; Mr. Fulmer, of South Carolina; Mr. Rubey, of Missouri; Mr. Johnson, of Wisconsin; Mr. Doyle, of Illinois; Mr. McSweeney, of Ohio; and the Delegate from the Hawaiian Islands. Not a man in this whole western country is on that committee. And that condition has practically prevailed all of the time for the past 18 years. Once we did have a man on there from Montana. But after he had been in Congress a year and a half it was stated on the floor that some of us had never seen him in our lives. I was one of them that started that. I never saw the fellow. So that he did not take any part in it. His name was Riddick. Mr. Hawley, of Oregon, was on the committee away back in the early days, but he was appointed on the commission to create forest reserves in the Appalachian country. Back beyond that was Mr. Cook, of Colorado; but that was away back in the Sixtieth Congress. Soon after he was out of Congress; as you all know, he was adjudged insane and died. So we have had no representation and have none now on that committee. that is the cause of 90 per cent of all the trouble and the grievances of the stockmen of the West, in my judgment-because we do not have any representation on the committee that is dealing with our affairs all the time, and it knows nothing whatever about them. Senator CAMERON. Let us take the forest reserve out of the Department of Agriculture and put it some place else, then.

And

Representative TAYLOR. Well, I would be glad to do it, but we can not do it very easily. I hope we can. I don't want to abolish the Forest Service. I am not criticizing the Forest Service. But I am criticizing the Committee on Agriculture that knows nothing