The U. S. owns one-fifth of the U. S. Last week President Hoover was inclined to give half of this away to persons who apparently did not want it. His offer, in the name of Conservation, had strings to it.
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The public domain once consisted of all U. S. land outside the 13 original States and Texas. Free land was the great natural resource upon which the new country was built. For generations it served as a prime political issue. In 1836 Henry Clay, then a U. S. Senator from Kentucky, pointed with pride to "the prodigious sum of one billion and eighty million acres" of public domain (about one-half the present size of the U. S.). Prophetically he exclaimed: "Long after we shall cease to be agitated by the Tariff, the public lands will remain a subject of deep and enduring interest."
The Federal Government through the years had doled out its domain to its citizens to homestead, to the railroads to develop new territory, to prospectors to exploit. For the asking and a promise to live there homesteaders could, and still can, get 160 acres, stockmen 640 acres. In 1902 when most of the good farming land was gone the U. S. began reclaiming the desert by irrigation. Today some 600,000 persons cultivate 3,200,000 acres of land reclaimed at a cost of $182.000,000.
U. S. land has dwindled until now there remains only about 600,000 sq. mi. (U. S. square mileage: 2,973,000). Of this . amount 209,000 sq. mi. is in national forests, carefully conserved. Oil and mineral reserves take up 62,000 sq. mi., national parks, 11,700 sq. mi. There remain 302,000 sq. mi. of just plain common land, unreserved and unappropriated. It is fit only for cattle-grazing for which it has been used so hard that in a score of years it has deteriorated 50%. In another 20 years it will become worthless. Before that happens President Hoover wants to turn it back to the States in which it lies.
Three hundred thousand square miles is a lot of land. It is six times the size of New York State. It is bigger than Texas, Chile or Turkey. It is almost half the size of Mexico. It comprises 190,000,000 acres, enough for President Hoover to give one acre to every man, woman and child in the U.S. and still have enough left to do a wholesale real estate business. If it were worth $100 per acre-which it is not-its sale would wipe out the national debt. It lies in 16 "public land" States throughout the West. Nevada heads the list, with the U. S. owning 75% of its surface territory. Utah is next with 47% U. S. ownership and Wyoming third with 27%.
Last week the Governors of eleven Western States met at Salt Lake City. To them President Hoover sent Assistant Secretary of the Interior Joseph M. Dixon with a 2,000-word message, containing a proposal that these 302,000 sq. mi. be turned back, free, to States in which they lay. The President proposed the appointment of another commission (his ninth) to investigate the matter. But there were important reservations in the Hoover offer: The States would get only the "surface rights" to this land, the U. S. retaining the all-profitable mineral rights. Forest reserves, power sites, national parks et al. were to be held, as now, by the U. S.
Declared President Hoover in his message: "Our Western States have long since passed from their swaddling clothes and today are more competent to manage much of these affairs than is the Federal Government. Moreover we must seek every opportunity to retard the expansion of Federal bureaucracy and place our communities in control of their own destinies. . . . These suggestions are, of course, tentative pending investigation . . . but it is my desire to ... reduce Federal interference in affairs of essentially local interest and thereby increase the opportunity of the States to govern themselves and in all obtain better government. . . ."
The President admitted that the lands were not of much account,. that they brought the U. S. no revenue, that they were hard to administer from Washington. He suggested that the States might somehow use them to produce revenue for school purposes. Of course once back under State sovereignty the U. S. could not be expected to undertake an)' new irrigation projects to make them fertile.
The Governors at first were openly dubious. Said Utah's Governor George Henry Dern: "What looks at a distance like a fine large horse may turnout on closer inspection to be a white elephant." They slept on the idea. The next day they were in a more open frame of mind. Governor H.* Clarence Baldridge of Idaho, chairman of the conference, declared they ought to cooperate with the President through the investigational stage at least. He was applauded. The conference adopted a resolution endorsing the President's plan for an inquiry.
In Washington the Hoover proposal found no such courteous reception. Western Senators were openly hostile. Conflicting with the Governor of his State, Senator William Edgar Borah of Idaho declared: "The purpose of this proposal is to put off on the States something the Federal Government doesn't want. Well, we don't want their leavings. I can't get excited about skimmed milk. . . . Practically all lands that are worth anything have been taken up. These lands are on the mountain sides and in the desert where a jackrabbit can hardly get a living. The burden of administering them on the States would be heavy. I doubt if some of the States could stand it. ... The present system was adopted 25 years ago against our protest. We have adapted ourselves to it. Now we ask that it be continued."
Even Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, staunch friend of the Hoover administration though he is. could see no good in the President's plan. He complained that State administration on the surface and U. S. administration under the land would be more bureaucratic than the present system.
Said Senator John Benjamin Kendrick of Wyoming: "If President Hoover wishes to put local problems under local control, he should transfer the mineral rights as well as the surface rights to the States."
Professional conservationists throughout the land were quickly alarmed. Dean Henry Solon Graves of the Yale School of Forestry, who succeeded Gifford Pinchot as National Forester of the U. S. in 1910, bridled, refused to endorse. Eastern editorial writers, suddenly conscious of their part-ownership in this vast public territory, advised the President to move cautiously, warned him of the greed and rascality of Western politicians, deplored any break-up of the National Domain. An immediate connection was seen between President Hoover's policy on lands in the great open spaces and the great open questions of Prohibition. Wets hastened to point out that the President could just as effectively use the same arguments-the competence of local governments, communities in control of their own destinies, reduction of Federal interference-to support a modification of the Volstead Act whereby the States would handle their own liquor problem in their own way (see below).
*This H., like the D. in Owen D. Young stands for nothing. Mr. Baldridge adopted it in the belief that his parents did not give him a good name for politics.