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NE of the striking things you encounter traveling over the West is the fact that Conservation is no longer regarded as mere "conversation." It is a fact-the liveliest kind of a fact. It is no longer politics. It is a fight-the kind of a fight that splits the old party lines and leaves your professional politician dazed with one policy one day and a reverse policy the next.

Ask one man what Conservation is; and he tells you it is a kid-glove fad. Ask the next man; and he tells you it is a job for the iron hand of the law inside the kid glove-that from being a drawing room fad-Conservation has become a life and death struggle out in the open for right or wrong; that, in fact, one man was shot to death over it, with a "hung up" jury that refused to convict and ought to have been hanged.

It is an impracticable scheme to keep the settler from developing natural resources says one side. It is a rallying cry to keep the predatory interests from fencing natural resources off from the

settler-says the other side. What are the facts? Has anybody tried to fence natural resources off from the average citizen? What is all this vague talk about land loot? Who is doing the looting? What are they looting? Where and how?

Nobody denies that every citizen over twenty-one years of age has a right to a hundred and sixty acres of free homestead as long as the free land lasts, and three hundred and twenty acres of desert land, and one hundred and sixty acres of coal land at the legal price, or six hundred and forty acres if he has $5,000 to expend on them as long as the land lasts and will go round. On this, Conservationists and Anti-Conservationists are in perfect agreement.

The point is-if one man wants 260,000 acres of free land-which was what Mr. Yard of Plumas County, California, tried to obtain-is he to get it? If one company wants not 320 acres of coal land, but 50,000 acres at $2.50 an acre under the Timber and Stone Act, worth on the market $45,000 an acre-as

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the Colorado Iron and Fuel Company obtained big holdings wants this land from the Public Domain, legally if possible but if impossible, then illegally-is the company to be permitted to get it? In the early days when there was no local traffic, it was the will of the settlers and the wisdom of Congress that the railroads should be granted non-mineral lands to enable them to build into sparsely settled districts; but the point is-are they, under this act, to patent-as the Southern Pacific tried to patent-thou

sands and hundreds of thousands of acres of mineral lands, to the eviction of old miners, who have been making a living on those lands for thirty years? Having taken illegal possession of certain coal lands-as one company did in Southern Colorado--are they to be allowed to shoot down in cold blood the Federal officer sent from Washington? It was the wisdom of Congress that the humblest citizen who could scrape money together should be facilitated in buying coal lands; but are big companies to be

allowed to bring humble citizens in by the train load, "dummies" paid $100 to $300 each, to file on coal lands for the big corporations? And having obtained And having obtained hundreds of thousands of acres of coal lands as one big smelting company has obtained them-are they to be left undisturbed in possession of their illegal holdings? It was the wisdom of Congress that the settler should have free access for his personal use to the National forests; but the point is-are the big companies under cover of that settler's right to be allowed to send that settler in to take (steal?) hundreds of thousands of feet of lumber every year from the National forests, as one big smelting company of Montana did? These are but a few-a very few of the questions that have put the Conservationists and the Anti-Conservationists at daggers drawn, and have torn party lines to tatters all through the West and the Middle West. These are the real points that the Senate must either smother or uncover in the investigation which has been. undertaken.

that this was worthless stone and timber land nominally valued at $2.50 an acre. According to the story told me by the Federal officer investigating the matter, none of the dummies was paid more than $300 and some were paid less than $100 for acting as homesteaders of this

When the story comes to be written a hundred years from today, it will read not unlike a tale of the old time free booters, who found their backers among the mighty, chose their servants from the lowly and set off through the wilderness to take what they might find.

Take the case of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company now owned by financiers of the Standard Oil. Before the Standard Oil took hold, the Colorado Company had obtained 50,000 acres of coal land through dummy entries; that is -a man and his wife and his children sold their scrip on perjured affidavits

land. If purchased legally, it would have cost $20 an acre; and the land is today bonded at $150 an acre. Once, at a law suit, one of the company's engineers testified that as much as 15,000 tons of coke coal might be taken from one acre. This coal is worth $3.50 a ton and should have yielded the government five cents a ton or $750 an acre. Instead, the government got exactly $2.50 an acre; and the royalty of five cents a ton or $750 an

tered within the last few years; and action is being instituted by the Department of the Interior for the recovery of this amount. Whether the action will be pushed through or allowed to dawdle till the Statute of Limitations bars this, too,-remains to be seen. At the bonded value, the loss to the Public Domain is $7,500,000; at royalty-value, $37,500,000.

It isn't hard to see the line of cleavage

one would grudge the locator a good big reward for his find; but when that reward ran to 20,000 acres obtained by promoters at less than $5 an acre in ways not recognized by the coal laws of the land, and passed immediately to the Union Pacific Coal Company for a consideration of $1,250,000-the public began to ask about the $800 an acre royalty, which should have enriched the