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Senator ODDIE (presiding). Will you do so, Mr. Kelsey?

Mr. KELSEY. I am not going to make any statements that I do not know to be absolutely true. Therefore I am going to say that that resolution where it states:

Whereas it is unfair to the people of the United States to deliver the administration and control of the unreserved public domain into the hands of any organization or class which is directly interested in its exploitation

that is a rap, if I may say, at the desires of the stockmen who desire-frankly, they tell you, I am sure, that they desire, in effect, to control a lot of the public domain, and we can not afford to let the stockmen have any such control as that, and you must make the effort to keep the control of that public domain, so that those people who would exploit it, and they certainly would, they are commercializing it, and yet they do not want the public domain considered as commercialized, and yet they are commercializing it-so that those people who would exploit it may not do so. Now I am a layman in this matter, I am not interested in livestock at all, but we have to be careful in preserving our rights in this matter.

Senator KING. Well, I just wanted to know whether you had the cattle and sheep interests in mind in the resolution. I am expressing no opinion as to the merits of the inference or charge made. That is all.

Senator ODDIE (presiding). What is your idea regarding the present users of the public domain for grazing?

Mr. KELSEY. The unreserved public domain, as I understand it, is now free to everybody, unreserved or unappropriated public domain, anybody can go in there and use it without cost. Now why should not the public get some little grazing fees out of this public domain? The Forest Service gets a little grazing fee out of it, and there are a great many of the stockmen who are on the Forest Service, enjoy it, and consider it valuable. Why should not a grazing fee be changed on the public domain?

Senator ODDIE. If an idea of that kind were adopted, would you favor making the tenure of the users more definite than it is to-day? Mr. KELSEY. It is pretty dangerous to do so. It is pretty dangerous. You can not fairly permit them to trade in a tenure; deal in it. You can not give them a 10-year lease and let them sell it to somebody else.

Senator ODDIE. Is the majority of the public domain good for anything but grazing?

Mr. KELSEY. I do not know.

Senator ODDIE. How about those vast areas which can be put to no use but for grazing?

Mr. KELSEY. I presume most of the public domain would have been taken up before this if it were any good.

Senator ODDIE. You mean for agricultural purposes, but a vast amount of the public domain is used now for grazing only.

Mr. KELSEY. Yes. Has it not a rental value? Is not the public entitled to a rental from it?

Senator ODDIE. Do you believe that the part of this public domain which is adjacent to ranches, and which has been used by the owners of the ranches for a long period, should be looked on as a definite unit of the ranch property?

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Mr. KELSEY. No; just because they got there first-I can not concede it.

Senator ODDIE. Do you believe that the value of ranch properties in the vicinity of public domain is dependent on the use of the public domain for grazing by the owners of those ranch properties?

Mr. KELSEY. Why, no. Their property is worth just as much as the public domain is, but they are getting the use of the public domain for a very low rental, and it is pretty soft.

Senator ODDIE (presiding). Do you believe if the grazing privilege on the public domain were taken away from the owners of these ranches that have been using it for years, that it would depreciate the value of the ranches?

Mr. KELSEY. They would be put on the same basis as the man off in the valley who has no public domain. He has had a handicap because he has had to buy his property. The man with the ranch property close to the public domain has the advantage of the public domain. He is certainly sitting pretty.

Senator ODDIE. Do you think that the livestock industry as a rule is on a profitable basis in this western country?

Mr. KELSEY. I know they have had pretty hard sledding; yes. Senator ODDIE. If the cattle industry were deprived of the use of the public domain would it work a hardship on the livestock industry?

Mr. KELSEY. I do not see any occasion whatever for depriving the stockmen of the use of the public domain. I do not advocate that at all. I just want to take the stand in this one particular case that where you form a game refuge it se ms rather absurd to the layman to permit grazing in a game refuge, when all the game refuge is for is to preserve game. And you permit the stockman to graze off the feed that the game should have.

Senator ODDIE. In case that some disposition in the form of a lease were to be made of the public domain would you favor a lease on an area basis or on the basis of so many head of stock in a given area?

Mr. KELSEY. I could not go into that. I am uninformed. I could not express myself on that.

Mr. BOWDEN. Would you charge the landowner for the water that he uses that comes down a stream?

Mr. KELSEY. Would I charge the land owner down the valley for the use of the water? That is provided for by law that appropriations of water have priority, is it not?

Mr. BOWDEN. Would you cancel that right of priority?

Mr. KELSEY. Would I cancel that right of priority to water? I am not prepared to express myself on that.

Senator KING. I don't think the Government could cancel the right of a man who has got a vested interest in the water. That would be taking property.

Mr. KELSEY. His property is no good without the water. That is a different case. You think that is a parallel case, but it is not. Now a prior use of public land for grazing adjoining a man's farm, that is not going to destroy his property by taking away the right to use that land for grazing.

Senator ODDIE. Will it not depreciate the value of it if he has been dependent on that grazing land?

Mr. KELSEY. It does not depreciate the value of his land. It cuts off a privilege he has had and makes him divide up with somebody else perhaps.

Senator ODDIE. In case that land should be a long way from market, and the only market that that man might have for his hay and grain would be livestock, feeding it to livestock, would deprive him of that range which he had used for a certain number of years, have the effect of depreciating the value of his ranch properties? Mr. KELSEY. I can not see it. His ranch is productive.

Senator ODDIE. But if he is dependent for a market for the products of his ranch on those cattle or sheep which he would feed, would not the taking away of that range privilege which he has enjoyed for a number of years have a depreciating effect on the value of his ranch holdings?

Mr. KELSEY. I can not see it. What he produces on his land he can feed to his stock.

Senator ODDIE. But if without the range privilege in certain cases he would not be able to raise as many animals?

Mr. KELSEY. That is true enough. As I say, he has it pretty soft. He has a great advantage over the man down in the valley who is raising stock and hasn't any grazing privileges. And if you give him priority rights because he has been using these grazing privileges, then he has always got the best of the man down below. It is not an equitable thing at all.

Senator ODDIE. I am asking you some questions that relate to a section of the country far removed from railroads and markets, and there are such sections where the valley land and the land higher up would be under certain conditions dependent on a certain amount of range for raising stock.

Mr. KELSEY. Now, your question is: Does taking away his grazing rights depreciate the value of his property?

Senator ODDIE. Yes.

Mr. KELSEY. It is going to depreciate his returns. He is not going to be able to get this grazing land at any such figure that he got it before.

Senator ODDIE. In case a law was passed legalizing the use of these grazing lands, who would you suggest as the permittee, as the lessee? What rules would you set up for determining who should have the first right to the leases?

Mr. KELSEY. I had no desire to get into this grazing discussion, but I did that since Doctor Clements was not here; I had to make an effort to explain that first question that you asked, but I am not competent to go into that.

Senator ODDIE. It is not fair, then, for the committee to ask you these technical questions.

Mr. KELSEY. I will just give you the layman's point of view.

Senator ODDIE. I might make an observation that the committee has held extensive hearings in eight of the Western States now, and this problem has been very prominently before the committee in all of these States, and we have had many divergent views.

Mr. KELSEY. Yes. I don't want to get into it for that reason. I knew exactly how big a subject it was.

Senator ŎDDIE (presiding). Thank you for the information you have given us.

We will now take up the question of "Homesteading Public Lands." Mr. Claude Moore.

STATEMENT OF CLAUDE MOORE, REPRESENTING THE HOMESTEADERS' ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA, TAFT, CALIF.

Senator ODDIE (presiding). Will you give your name and address and your occupation to the reporter?

Mr. MOORE. Claude Moore. Oil worker by trade. Taft, Calif. Senator ODDIE (presiding). Mr. Moore, if you have a statement we would like to have you present it to the committee in your

own way.

Mr. MOORE. I have been listening to the remarks made by the various speakers, and I have formed my own ideas on conservation, and the idea of conservation, as represented by Mr. Barnes, I am heartily in accord with. I must pay tribute to his views and knowledge on that matter.

But conservation as it is administered in the administration of the public lands, against the interests of the home builders, I must take exception to. As representative of the homesteader in the vicinity of the oil fields, who has undertaken to make his living in the oil fields and homestead, I have come square up against the policy of the Federal Government. And in trying to solve that problem, and I realize that it is a gigantic one, that the people themselves know virtually nothing whatever about it, and in investigating the whole question, I have looked back over the history of this Nation, and we find what it means to the Nation.

The country was builded by settlers. The public domain belongs to the public. It is held in trust under treaties for the States. The States created the Federal Government. And I would like to see the trust administered by turning the lands that the Government now claims in fee simple title back to the States where they belong. I think that is your only solution of the public land question.

The other questions that are arising, I can not side-step them as questions or issues, but that is up to the States and the citizens. The citizen can not be forbidden by the Federal Government through an enforced land tenure on him to conform to any ideal or good citizenship as an American citizen. In other words, I do not believe that a man can be a good citizen as a lessee or a tenant at will under Uncle Sam. I do not think he can go out into the public domain and compete as a lessee instead of a freeholder, with freeholders. I think that a republic of freeholders is quite a satisfactory condition for this country.

Senator KING. You do not believe in Federal landlordism?

Mr. MOORE. I do not. I believe in no landlordism or no land tenure system.

In looking back over the history of this Nation you will find that land frauds have been perpetuated under Federal mismanagement.

Hundreds of millions of acres of land have gone to railroad corporations. Some of the greatest scandals and swindles in history have been perpetuated under the Federal Government. The Mexican land grants. If you were to go to buy a lot in Los Angeles and try to get it located by a surveyor he could not find it. You would have to take it as it is. It is the result of your land system, or rather, the mismanagement of the whole thing.

Your railroad land grants, over 400,000,000 of them, have gone to vast corporations that have brought about a system that has victimized our citizens made them helpless before those corporations and employees of those corporations in spite of themselves.

Under your system of land tenure as recently inaugurated under the oil and land leasing bill-the law bears the name of oil, you will notice the entire State of Wyoming, so far as its known oil reserves were concerned was turned over to one corporation under various names. The homesteaders in that State, and they are in the majority, have been wiped out like flies. To have said to them by the Federal Government that they had no business out there homesteading to have public land withdrawn from the public to whom it belongs, and arbitrarily held by bureaus and in bureaucratic and autocratic management and turned over through one man, the Secretary of the Interior, who is given executive, judicial, and legislative authority is something that I as a citizen can not stand for.

And in seeking a solution of that I have got to come back to fundamental law because I can not go elsewhere. And the fundamental law is the constitutional provisions of this Nation. They are very plain. There are three articles of the Constitution referring to the disposition of the public lands. Any one of the three would preclude the possibility of its administration as it is administered at the present time. And I am familiar with the decisions by the Supreme Court on that matter.

Senator KING. As I understand you then, you would be in sympathy with a measure which I had the honor to introduce in the House of Representatives in 1900, and I have offered a similar measure every session of the Senate since 1917, ceding to the States all public lands within their boundaries, except mineral lands? Personally I would be willing to cede the mineral lands, but I found source of objection. But the bill limits the cession to all other lands. And leaves the States to handle them and make disposition of them, believing, as I did, that the States could handle that problem far better than a bureaucracy over in Washington.

Mr. MOORE. Certainly.

Senator KING. I am glad to have one supporter here.

Mr. MOORE. You have got more than one, Senator, if I am any judge of the people who have an understanding of the question. I want to read as a matter of record here a late patent issued by the General Land Office, with the remark that a patent to land has got to be somewhat like a patent to an invention. It is a matter for a lawsuit to a final decree to find out what you have got. In the first place a homesteader is a man who is poverty stricken, and driven to public land by an irresistible desire for land. And he is

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