Public Lands

The Senate Public Lands Committee (TIME, Aug. 17, Sept. 14, 21) last week saw a great deal of public land, and heard a great many public complaints. The western Senators who are on the Committee--Stanfield, Oddie, Cameron, Gooding--come up for re-election next year, and are very keen to please the complainants. So much will be heard of those complaints next winter in Washington.

Particularly cattlemen, who have been almost ruined by recent conditions, want permits to graze in the public for perpetuity with fees only large enough to cover the Government's administration expenses. The Forestry Bureau is unwilling to surrender the nation's forest reserves to the tender mercies of the hard pressed cattlemen. The other chief point on which the contest will be waged is why the Government has delayed undertaking irrigation projects authorized by Congress (see CABINET).

On the concluding lap of its journey the Committee last week traversed three hundred miles of desert in southern Oregon and northern Nevada, the largest single piece of unreserved public domain remaining. Every ten or fifteen miles the deserted hut of some overambitious homesteader was passed. Every 50 miles or so was a little shack where gasoline could be purchased. Herds of wild horses watched the party as it passed, galloping away in a billowing cloud of dust if the automobiles paused. Running with one of these herds was a lone mule. Here and there lay the dismembered bodies of colts slain by cougars. Now and again a jack rabbit would scamper across the trail. Towards night the distant yelping of coyotes was audible.

"Well," said Senator Oddie, "those coyotes must carry a canteen and a haversack in this country."