about it and has never made a trip into this western country to learn anything about it. When I appeared before them on the Phipps bill last spring they said to me, "Why don't you people on the Appropriations Committee"-of which I am a member-"appropriate money for us to make a trip out there and we will come and take a look at you?" Well, it takes all Congress to appropriate money for them to come out there. But even so, that is where this matter starts. And if you read the arguments in Congress, in the House, that is where you will find all the trouble begins.

Now, there are 48 States, each one of them having two Senators, and of the 96 Senators one-third come from the West, and I do not need to argue this matter to you gentlemen from these Western States, because you know our condition. But you are just like I am; you do not have the final say. But you can in a greater measure control the thing in the Senate. But in the House there are only about 4 or 5 per cent of the 435 Members that come from the 11 forest-reserve States. And we never get the benefit of support from the Congressmen from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Diego. We have to rely upon the men from the mountain areas, and we have to rely upon you Members of the Senate. And we have a hostile Agricultural Committee all of the time. That is the inception of all our troubles here. And, as I say, they know nothing about the conditions, the handicaps that the cattlemen in this country labor under.

I feel that we could take all day showing the fallacy of the Rachford report in not considering the credits that we ought to have as against the people who raise their stock on privately owned land. Mr. Rachford, a high-class man, has done a lot of work here for four or five years and filed a report. But he starts out with the proposition that the grass, the forage, is a commodity. That it is a commodity for sale. That the demand is much larger than the supply. And therefore it ought to be sold at a price commensurate at least with its value. And to determine the value he estimates it by comparison with privately owned land in the vicinity.

I think he tries to make a fair estimate. But there is nothing in his report that shows to us who live out here that he has taken into consideration the very things that these men have detailed to you here to-day, the hardships and the losses that they have to sustain in order to raise cattle for the market.

To start out with, the birth rate, as one witness says, is 50 per cent; another witness said that it went as high as 61 per cent. That is on these lands out here. On the private lands it is as high as 85 to 90 per cent. That is a tremendous thing. There is no credit for that in the report or in anything that I have ever seen put out by the service.

And then take the loss by predatory wild animals. Why, every year there is such an enormous loss that it is actually discouraging and appalling to the forest reserve grazing rancher. I have the figures here from the last report. For instance, 6,000 cattle and horses, and 15,000 sheep from poisonous plants on the forest reserve every year. The forest officials do not give credit for that. They can not give that much credit from anything that they say there. And then 4,000 cattle and horses and 35,000 sheep from predatory wild animals.

I have tried my level best to get the Government of the United States to appropriate enough money to go out and clean out all of the predatory wild animals there are on the forest reserves of the United States. If they would appropriate money and go at it in a systematic way they can exterminate them all in two years and stop this terrible loss. But there is not a man from the West that is on the subcommittee of the Agricultural Department of the Appropriations Committee, and they cut us down to a nominal sum every year-a mere pittance. I feel that the Government of the United States ought to repay the stockmen for every hoof that is killed by the predatory wild animals, until they exterminate those animals from the forest reserves, because the forest reserves are the breeding grounds of these predatory wild animals. That is where they breed, and they roam down on the private grounds below. But they breed in the forest reserves the lions and wolves and the coyotes that kill all these thousands and thousands of animals every

year.

There isn't sufficient credit given for any of those three mattersthe smaller birth rate, the destruction by deadly poison plants, or the destruction by wild animals.

Then there are 10,000 cattle and horses and 35,000 sheep and goats that die on the forest reserves every year from other causes. There is no sufficient credit given for that. They do not give credit for the enormous territory that the cattle have to travel over to get enough to eat. It seems like it is almost impossible for many of them to put on any fat for that reason.

Then they compare the forage on this sparsely covered territory with the clover fields of Kansas or with the private lands that are adjacent. If the private lands were not better than they are in the forest reserve, the forest reserve would have been taken and the private lands would have been left, years and years ago. These private lands were taken up, many of them, 25 or 30 years ago. Then there is the altitude and the climatic conditions that they are under that is wholly different-and the very short season, and the long drives to get up there and the drives to get back.

Why, we could mention absolutely endless differences between the conditions on the forest reserves and private lands our short season, and the kind of lands we have as compared with the kind of lands they have when they feed on the private grounds.

Then there is another thing, as was stated here to-day, that only from 20 to 22 per cent of our products are sold for beef. As a matter of fact they are so poor by the time many of them get to market, especially if they have to ship them a thousand miles to Kansas City and Omaha, that they have to be sold for feeders. I have argued and tried to show that those people from the Middle Western States who buy our cattle for feeders were trying to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs; that they had better encourage us out here, and that then they would get feeders for less price if they would not put such heavy burden on us, because we haven't any enemies to fight from Maine or New Hampshire or Massachusetts or any of that country. It is these Western States that we sell our feeders to that make us all this trouble.

Senator CAMERON. You mean the Middle West, do you not?
Representative TAYLOR. Yes; I mean the Middle West.

Well, I could mention a good many others. For instance, you have heard of the condition of the industry at the present time. You have heard of its depletion. It has been frightful. Actually it is pathetic, and it is a tragedy to see the old-timers in this country that came in here afoot and have built up and helped redeem this country from a wilderness and an absolutely barren country, as it was in the Ute Indian Reservation, and then have them put out of business here in the last few years. And it is not so much a question of a few cents. It is a question of Uncle Sam treating these people in this manner. If a man is broke, if he is having a desperate time to survive, and if Uncle Sam owns something and has the monopoly of it and they can get it from nobody else, and if our Government says to them that "We don't care anything about your misfortunes, we will charge you three or four times what it is worth and what it costs us," why that is not a policy that builds up a country. That is not the system that is calculated to create highclass, patriotic citizens. When they have a drought in China or some other country we appropriate millions of dollars and buy them their seed, and we help them out. And we pursue that policy all But these cattlemen out here, who have been in desperate straights for several years, are all the time threatened with an increase of fee. Why, the mere threat of it itself is discouraging. It prevents them from selling their property. It puts a blight upon them that is far greater than the 10 or 20 cents or 50 cents, or even a dollar, that they may raise. It is a policy that we feel is unfair to the West; it is a policy that we feel that Congress ought to put a stamp of disapproval upon.

over.

Furthermore, I feel that the forest reserve is building up a topheavy administration down there. I feel that with a seven-story building full of clerks in Washington that the overhead is more than it ought to be. But that is a matter that is aside, you might say. Putting it on what it is actually costing, why, I feel that that of itself ought to be sufficient for Congress to change that policy.

And, then, I may call your attention to another thing. Who pays for the courts, who pays for the schools, who pays for the supervision and protection of the millions of acres of Government land in this country? It is not Uncle Sam. It is the local taxpayer that bears the burden. It is these horny-handed cattlemen that have built up this country. They are the ones that foot the bills preserving civilization throughout this territory. We protect these forest men and we build roads through their forest reserves for which they charge for their recreation plants and other things. In other words, it does seem to me that they do not take into consideration what the people of this country are doing for the Government, and the hardships under which they labor all of the time.

Now, there is another thing. You take the freight rates. Why, by the time Mr. Baer drives his cattle 75 miles or 50 miles to the railroad, by the time they get cars here, by the time they ship, especially if they ship beyond Denver, the freight rates simply eat up the value. The freight rates in this country, especially over the Rio Grande system that covers 30 counties here in western Colorado, are so high that actually there is no comparison. When the stock reaches the Missouri River, depleted and poor and run down, they have to come in competition with the people who raise their stock

right there within an hour of two hours' run to the market and on the clover fields of their country.

Now, there is a great difference. The stockmen have gone over it better than I can. But it does seem to me that as a matter of good conscience and as a matter of ordinary decency that the Government of the United States is in pretty small business, at least through the Agricultural Department, in this harrassing policy upon a downtrodden industry that means so much to the West. And it means so much to the whole country, because if these people are put out of business or even depleted, as they are now, it is reflected in every beefsteak that everybody buys. I do believe that presents elements that are not considered by Mr. Rachford. I know that they are not considered by the Department of Agriculture. And where this trouble comes from is the Agricultural Committee in the House. I know its Members do not know anything about it.

Now, concerning the 640-acre homestead law. I am not entitled to probably as much credit or blame as I am given. It was Congressman Ferguson from New Mexico, Senator Jones's State, that started this matter and worked on it for years and years. He died practically broken-hearted because of his failure in part to enact it. And I carried it on, and we put it on the statute books. It has been a good law; 40,000,000 acres of land have gone to patent under the 640-acre homestead law; 100,000 entries have been perfected.

But I really believe that so far as Colorado is concerned it has now practically outlived its usefulness. So far as Colorado is concerned, I do not believe that it is now working, and I think a great many of them that have taken homesteads have left them. And it does look to me as though the stockmen are right in recommending, as our people do in this State, at least in this part of it, the repeal of the 640-acre homestead law. They feel that if you should increase that to 1.280 acres or any other large sum that it will simply add to the speculation in this poor land; that they could not live on a half a township of it unless they had other land in connection with it. So that they do not feel that that is the policy to take.

As to the public domain, if you can put out Indian reservation lands, if Congress or the department of the Government will put those lands into a leasing policy, if we can escape the $1.25 an acre, I think the western part of Colorado is in favor of practically shutting off, as it will do, entry, at least for a number of years to come, of homestead lands, and systematize this grazing upon the public

domain.

Of course that is brought about here by these nomadic herds. We got along very well in western Colorado until they got to bringing in very large numbers of sheep. And that makes trouble.

When the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Governor Spry, authorized, as he did here a couple or so of years ago, a great driveway from the Utah State line about 125 miles along right up through a cattle country, up through the forest reserves, why, of course, that made trouble. Fortunately I was able to get someone to go to Governor Spry and get him to revoke that order, and it prevented bloodshed and trouble. But they are still trying to get up there.

Now, there ought not to be any trouble between the sheepmen of Colorado and the cattlemen, those that pay taxes and live here and

are bona fide settlers here. But these men that ship sheep in-there was one band up here the other day, 15,000, that they claim that were shipped from Montana, were going to Kansas City, and were to feed in transitu. Well, they feed in this State. They are driven over our sidehill roads, and after you drive 15,000 sheep over a sidehill road there isn't any road at all. And the county has got to foot the bill of going and building those roads again. And they get no taxes from them whatever. They pay their grazing fee and go on.

Well, now, that is an infamous outrage that ought never to be permitted in a State. I have been time and again to the Secretary of the Interior to try and see if there was not some system whereby the Interior Department could control the public domain without all this red tape and machinery and expense of leasing. But they don't seem to be able to do it.

Unless there is some other way, why, they would rather try something else than to endure the troubles they have at the present time. And they are not so much concerned with what department has it. They would like to have it in one department. We out here naturally favor the Interior Department. We think it pursues a more friendly and understanding policy toward us. I think the great mass of them wish that.

But we are not attempting to determine that. We are passing the details of the departments up to Congress. And in reading this compromise bill that they agreed upon here recently, why, it looks as though it is reasonably workable. There are some things we do not like about it, but it looks as though it is a step in the right direction.

As far as western Colorado is concerned, in these 24 counties that I represent I feel that we have reached a point where we are willing to jeopardize the future of homesteading and try to work out some policy that will revive the stock industries of this country and at the same time protect the bona fide Colorado taxpayers from those people that simply forage on us and go on. Now, I don't care whether they are cattlemen or sheepmen, or who they are, they do not pay taxes and they do not help maintain our courts or schools or even the roads that they destroy. And I do feel that that is something that this committee should consider in fairness to this western country.

We represent five-sixths of all the public domain in the State of Colorado now. It is over in here, especially, where the forest reserves are. If you will look at that map, the green portion on the map, you will see that that green is nearly all in my congressional district.

I want it understood that these men out here that are trying to administer the forest reserves are carrying out the policy from Washington, and we do not complain about them personally. I think they are doing the best they can. It is the policy back in Washington, it is the policy of the Agricultural Committee of the House of Representatives. And it is a policy brought about, we think, at the instance of cattlemen and small farmers of the midWest very largely that do not understand our situation, and we can not go and explain to all of them all of the hardships that we have here. And they do not know anything about them. They are honest. They think that we are putting a steer on the market for