as
President Roosevelt repeatedly declared, is the making and maintenance
of prosperous homes. That object cannot be achieved unless such of the
public lands as are suitable for settlement are conserved for the actual
home-maker. Such lands should pass from the possession of the Government
directly and only into the hands of the settler who lives on the land.
Of all forms of conservation there is none more important than that of
holding the public lands for the actual home-maker.

It is a notorious fact that the public land laws have been deflected
from their beneficent original purpose of home-making by lax
administration, short-sighted departmental decisions, and the growth of
an unhealthy public sentiment in portions of the West. Great areas of
the public domain have passed into the hands, not of the home-maker, but
of large individual or corporate owners whose object is always the
making of profit and seldom the making of homes. It is sometimes urged
that enlightened self-interest will lead the men who have acquired large
holdings of public lands to put them to their most productive use, and
it is said with truth that this best use is the tillage of small areas
by small owners. Unfortunately, the facts and this theory disagree. Even
the most cursory examination of large holdings throughout the West will
refute the contention that the intelligent self-interest of large owners
results promptly and directly in the making of homes. Few passions of
the human mind are stronger than land hunger, and the large holder
clings to his land until circumstances make it actually impossible for
him to hold it any longer. Large holdings result in sheep or cattle
ranges, in huge ranches, in great areas held for speculative rise in
price, and not in homes. Unless the American homestead system of small
free-holders is to be so replaced by a foreign system of tenantry, there
are few things of more importance to the West than to see to it that the
public lands pass directly into the hands of the actual settler instead
of into the hands of the man who, if he can, will force the settler to
pay him the unearned profit of the land speculator, or will hold him in
economic and political dependence as a tenant. If we are to have homes
on the public lands, they must be conserved for the men who make homes.

The lowest estimate reached by the Forest Service of the timber now
standing in the United States is 1,400 billion feet, board measure; the