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Senate Bill 5228: Senator Simmon's speech

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  • man who I think has knowledge of these matters that the land thus appropriated by the Government if now owned by the Government would be worth at least $100,000,000. If those lands had not been appropriated by the Government for this specific purpose they would have been subject to sale, and when sold the money would have been covered into the Treasury and become a part of the property of the people. Mr. President, while the most of these reservations were carved, as I said, out of the national domain, that is not true of all of them. I do not wish to argue, although I think it would be arguable, that the purchase by the Government of lands for the establishment of military and battlefield parks is a precedent for the proposed legislation, because I think that would be a doubtful argument and I do not wish to get upon doubtful ground, but there is one purchase by the Government for the purpose of a park reservation that is not only analogous but is identical to that proposed here; as lawyers sometimes say, it is on all fours with it, and that is the purchase by the Government in 1896 from the Blackfoot Indians of a large body of land. I do not know how many acres there were, but I presume a great many, because the price paid by the Government was a million and a half dollars, and the subsequent use made' of this land so purchased was to enlarge the Flathead Reservation in Montana. So, Mr. President, I submit that if the purchase by the Government of these large bodies of land in the West for forest reserves is differentiable in letter it is certainly not differentiate in substance and spirit from the proposition in this bill. Hence, Mr. President, the friends of the bill insist that it does not commit the Government to any new line of policy, but that the establishment of parks and forest reservations has become a well- settled policy of the Government. If it is not already the settled policy I think it is a wise policy, and the sooner we enter upon it the better. There is hardly a European government, Mr. President, which has not realized the importance and necessity of bringing its mountain forests under government control and ownership. In a number of European countries, notably France and Italy, where deforestation has resulted in the destruction of immense tracts of agricultural lands, impoverishing a great number of farmers and peasants, the government has entered upon the more costly and the more difficult scheme of reforestation. I shall not discuss that feature of the subject further than to say that in the last thirty years France has spent $40,000,000 in an attempt to restore conditions to where they were before the mountain side deforestation began, and Italy, comparatively a poor country, has spent at least $12,000,000 in attempting the same thing in order to save the valley lands that are being destroyed by reason of the deforestation of her mountains. Although I had intended to do so, I shall not enter upon that line of discussion, because the distinguished Senator from New York [Mr. Depew] , who spoke on Saturday with a knowledge gained from actual observation of these matters, covered that branch of the subject very thoroughly and very effectively. Now, Mr. President, I wish to refer to a suggestion which has been made, though not upon this floor, but on the outside and in private conversation with Senators, that there was some private 5333
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