Senator CAMERON. How large an acreage have you up there? Mr. WILSON. Three hundred and ten acres in one and 720 acres in another, and they do not join by a mile.

Senator CAMERON. Patented lands?

Mr. WILSON. Patented lands; yes, sir. It has been patented for a number of years. I think my water right dates back to 1881. I did not deed this land that I now have, but I did deed a piece of land that is about 2 miles from the lower piece.

Senator JONES of New Mexico. Is that a part of this Ute Indian land?

Mr. WILSON. Yes; and it has been patented, a portion of it that is on the west side, and, as I understand, belongs to the Union Oil Co. of California.

Representative TAYLOR. All this oil shale in this whole country was on the Ute Indian Reservation.

Mr. WILSON. But there was a big portion of that on the east side that is in the naval oil-shale reserve. I thing half or two-thirds of it on the east side of this creek or Big Canyon. The canyon walls are about 2,000 feet high. We have a settlement about 15 miles from the river, which is just a narrow canyon. And all these creeks come from the top of this mountain and roll over this oil-shale ledge, which is some 600 or 700 feet high, the ledge alone, and that tumbles down into the creek, and all the prongs of that creek go down through our ranches and through our places.

Senator CAMERON. Have you any wells there?

Mr. WILSON. There are very few wells. There are some wells, but most of the wells have proved unsatisfactory.

Senator JONES of New Mexico. Are those lands in private ownership now?

Mr. WILSON. To oil shale; the top of this mountain has all gone into oil shale, into the naval reserve. There is no Government land, so I understand. It is the third oil-shale naval reserve that was created a short time ago. I think the third oil-shale naval reserve almost covers all of the Government land that was in and around Grand Valley.

Representative TAYLOR. That is one of the things for them to con

sider.

Mr. WILSON. I am here as an individual and I have felt that my rights are impaired in this way, and I wanted to take it up with somebody that would give us some kind of a hearing on it.

As far as I am concerned about the forest reserve, I would like the forest not to be dealt out to big corporations, woolgrowers' associations, and big banks and big corporations, and that such fellows as my son, if they wanted to, could get in on the forest reserve. Of course, we have only got a small portion of the forest reserve on the south side of the river that is close to our land. But even if I wanted to get on the forest reserve, or my son did, I should think instead of you people allowing your forest reserve permits to run for 5, 10, or 20 years an unlimited length of time-that you would consider our children, consider their applications as they come along and want them.

That is all I have got to say about the forest reserve, as I have never run any cattle on the forest reserve.

I saw in Utah one herd of sheep that was sold at $9 a head when the actual price was only $4.50, because they had a forest reserve permit, and if you are going to throw the forest reserve into a gambling proposition and give it to the big man and cut our children out. I think it is unjust.

That is only an opinion from an outsider, an individual.

Senator CAMERON. This committee is trying to get all the information possible, so as to know what we had best do.

Mr. WILSON. I understand, and I want to give you the conditions as they are.

Senator CAMERON. And we have no opinions formed, and that is why we came out as a committee to see the people, and we have tried our best to get information that we hope will be beneficial.

Mr. WILSON. That is the reason I wanted to talk to you. Senator CAMERON. We want to get all the information we can, so that the committee will be able to act wisely in its judgment.

Mr. WILSON. Well, I have heard a good deal since I have been in the room about the forest reserve management. Now, I rode with those boys in the valley where it is nearly all forest reserve in there, and they told me that there were ever so many young fellows that grew up in the valley and they asked for forest reserve permits, and they said, "Do you own any land?" The boys would answer, "No." In some instances they said, "Dad owns some." "Well, but you don't own any. Why do you ask for a permit?" "Well, we want a permit because we are young men; we want to go into the stock business; we don't know anything about any other business." "No; you can not have any permit, because you are not a taxpayer." But when the war came along they asked them to go over as soldiers. But they were turned down at that time on the forest reserve. And I do believe that it was an oversight by the Forest Service in not allowing any new recruits to have forest reserve permits. And I don't believe that the Forest Service's intention is to make one piece of land more valuable than the other because there is a forest reserve permit in connection with that piece of land.

Those are the conditions as they came before me, but not as a user of the forest reserve.

Senator CAMERON. Have you anything further to state, Mr. Wilson?

Mr. WILSON. No.

Senator CAMERON. The committee will give your views due consideration, as all other questions that have come before us.

Mr. WILSON. I thank you very much.

Senator CAMERON. Mr. Hatton.

FURTHER STATEMENT OF JOHN H. HATTON

Mr. HATTON. Before taking up, Mr. Chairman, the three or four points that I did not get to yesterday, perhaps I ought to tell the committee some of the considerations and qualifications that I presume entered into my assignment as chief of grazing when the western districts were established.

So often I have heard the statement made that our men are all eastern men and a good many of them are-and I am not making this statement in any disparagement of my fellow workers who have

come from the East. I have found in the study of the situations in the Forest Service that very often an eastern man planted out West and given 15 or more years of experience, contact with the West, learns a great deal about the West, its conditions and its problems, and sometimes he has the advantage over the western man in that he has a more open mind about things. He is not bound by old-time prejudices. I just want to say that in favor of some of our men who have made good and who have come from other States.

As to my own case, I can give you my qualifications best by saying that my father pioneered to South Dakota from northern Iowa when I was a boy of 10. Took up his homestead and his timber culture claim or tree claim," as they called it, and settled on those lands with his family, afterwards acquiring considerable additional holdings through purchase.

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The next 19 years I spent with him and other members of the family in a pretty large farming operation and livestock operation under those conditions in North and South Dakota. The last 4 years of the 19 I spent the school part of the year in the South Dakota Agricultural College. Specializing in such subjects as animal husbandry, veterinary science, scientific agriculture, horticulture, forestry, and such other subjects as are required in a general science course leading to a bachelor of science degree. It was my intention in going to this school to go back to the farm and ranch and try to make more interesting and profitable the life of the farmer and the stockman. But I became interested in the Forest Service, and immediately on graduation entered the service. That was 24 years ago.

Now the first four years in the service I spent in the various States of the west looking over lands to be included in these national forests about which we are talking. The next four years I was on the general inspection force in the West looking into all phases of national-forest work and reporting upon all phases. So that up to the time the district offices were established I had worked in 10 of the 11 States we are talking about. The only one I had not worked in was Idaho. Besides that I had done a lot of work in North Dakota. South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. I simply wish to give you that as illustrating the effort of the service to pick men for its grazing work that had really had grazing experience.

Now added to all that, I have been interested, with my family. both in South Dakota and eastern Colorado in a farming and livestock operation. My brothers are looking after it, and we have cattle, hogs, dairy stuff, and last winter I put a bunch of sheep out there to see if I could not salvage the cattle business.

Now, I have had an opportunity to consider the difference in conditions as between our plains conditions in eastern Colorado and our mountain condition. From the standpoint of the value of the product that we produce, when it touches your pocketbook you know pretty nearly down to a cent just what your business is doing for you. And we have found consistently that there is a difference in the cost-and now I am not saying this in disparagement at all of what the cattlemen and stockmen have presented-in running on the forest reserves and on the closed pasture. We all appreciate that the expense is very much greater. But no one has brought out, as offsetting at least in part the difference in the product that you get from your mountain country an that which we get from our eastern plains

country. We always have to take, I should say conservatively, a dollar a hundred less for our feeders. We seldom have anything that is fit for the butcher. You say you have 23 or 24 per cent.

Just the day before yesterday my brother sent me a report of the returns from the lambs that were delivered on the 2d of October. They weighed an average of 564 pounds. Our neighbors under similar conditions raised lambs weighing 50 pounds and 52 pounds. Mr. Everhardt, who grazes in the Rio Grande Forest told me yesterday in Pueblo that his lambs weighed 67. Ex-Governor Gunter, who grazes in the same vicinity, averaged 66 pounds. Mr. Everhardt's lambs weighed 70 pounds the previous year. Now, that makes a difference of $1.50 a head in value as between our lambs raised under plains conditions and lambs raised on the forest.

I may say that this ranch operation does not interfere with my official duties. I handle it by correspondence, what I have to do with it, or long-distance telephone, and of the 15 days' leave I have I spend week ends out there. That is no way to run a ranch. But I simply wanted to insert this as my personal experience, and I understand the committee wants the experience of different ones, whether they are in the Forest Service or anywhere else.

Now I have no intention or desire nor inclination to take any controversial or argumentative position about anything affecting the national forests. I realize that the stockmen who have appeared before this committee have stated what they believed, and have stated their convictions. Of course, we have 31,000 permittees using the national forests of the West. I do not know what percentage of those have appeared before the committee, but probably in person and by proxy there is not 5 or 6 per cent. Maybe less than that.

I have wondered if a larger majority have appeared who have complaints than the entire 31,000, but that is for the committee to decide. We feel that 95 per cent of our permittees are pretty well pleased. And we have found that possibly 75 per cent of our grazing activity, our administrative problem, is in trying to deal out justice as between people who claim rights or preferences; somebody claiming that he is better qualified than the other. When it comes to close decisions, why a great part of our work is in trying to adjust these things equitably. Now, the other 25 per cent would be toward better management of the range and protection of the range.

I started to talk yesterday about poison and there was not time to finish. The poison situation on the forest is really a serious one in many places. But it is not a general one. But it is not a general one. Unfortunately the burden of the loss falls on a rather small percentage of those who use the forest. We undertook in 1918 to get a figure on just what was lost, for instance, from poison from larkspur, and we found that of the 1,519,560 cattle and sheep grazed that year in Colorado, there was a loss of 3,542 from poisonous plants alone. Now this amounts to one-quarter of 1 per cent, or 2 out of every 1,000.

Representative TAYLOR. That loss measured in percentage does not seem very great, because it is the percentage of the whole number of cattle.

Mr. HATTON. And unfortunately it falls on a few.

Representative TAYLOR. Yes; but the loss falls on a small number. Mr. HATTON. Yes; and that is really a problem and a situation that ought to be met.

In Wyoming we have figures for the same year. It was just an attempt to get an idea how general this poison loss was. We grazed 504,097 cattle and sheep that year and lost 414 head. One-tenth of 1 per cent, or 8 to the 10,000.

We have felt that the Government should do more to make these ranges habitable for the stock. We have advocated more money for this purpose, but we have not been able to get it. But in the range-improvement funds that I spoke of yesterday we have up until the last year or two, used quite a little for this poison work. In fact, we have spent of Government money since 1915 to 1924, $9,827.98. Now the stockmen have put up in work and money as against that $12,563.33. So with what the stockmen have helped us, we have spent in labor and money in digging poison $22,391.21. An average cost of $3.74 an acre. We have done some regrubbing, which has cost $1.26 an acre. Some of this work was done on the White River forest mentioned this morning.

A year or two ago I looked over some of the work after 5 years, and we found that we were again beginning to lose a head or two of cattle on areas where we had lost 12 to 18 before. So that the work is really absolutely effective, you might say, if done as we require to be done, which is to take it out by the roots for about five years. Then we have to look to it again.

Senator CAMERON. How much would you figure it would cost to exterminate it altogether on all the range?

Mr. HATTON. Oh, it would cost an awful lot of money.

Senator CAMERON. Well, how much? It could be exterminated, could it not, if you had money enough?

Mr. HATTON. It would probably cost $100,000 for our district. Senator CAMERON. I say it could be exterminated, could it not? Mr. HATTON. Yes, it could; but in some places it can be handled better by putting sheep on it. It does not hurt sheep. And as I said yesterday, that is one of the considerations in dividing the ranges between cattle and sheep.

Now we found last year on the Gunnison Forest that we can pull it out about twice as cheaply as digging it out when the ground is soft, and it pulls by the roots, but you have to have conditions just right.

So much for the larkspur work. It is really a problem, and it is unfortunate that the loss falls so heavily on a few, and that they do not all have to share the loss.

Representative TAYLOR. If it is going to cost you $100,000 to exterminate it all, that would not be more than one year's loss of the stock?

Mr. HATTON. Well, I worked this out in figures. We began this work when I was on the California district experimentally. I think my picture is in one of the bulletins, where we undertook this work, and made a success of it. We found that we can dig it out with two-fifths the loss in a single season, to say nothing of the saving in future seasons for this five or six year period that I mentioned.

Representative TAYLOR. Why don't you do it?

Mr. HATTON. I haven't the money.

Representative TAYLOR. Why don't you appropriate the money out of some other fund or go to Congress and ask for it?