TOTAL NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS IN SPECIFIED YEARS, 1870 to 1909.

By Sex and Age; also Immigrants Debarred and Returned Within One Year After Arrival, and Illiterates Over 14 and 16 Years of Age.

[In part from reports of Commissioner-General of Immigration, Department of Commerce and Labor.]

There are two things that must today be admitted beyond cavil about the Payne law. First, that it is a good revenue producer, and, second, that it gives substantial revision downward. Under its operation the great deficit in our revenue has vanished. If some of its critics will only condescend to study the actual Treasury returns, and even take the test that the Democrats are constantly putting forth of the average ad valorem upon dutiable goods, they will find that its average per cent of duties is twenty per cent lower than the Dingley act, and is as low even as in the Wilson act.

If they will take the average ad valorem upon all imports dutiable and free they will find that it is still lower than either the Dingley or Wilson bills. It is not a perfect bill. The day will never come when you will see in this country a general tariff bill which is perfect according to the notion of everybody. But it is a good bill, and as good a one as was practically obtainable at the time.-Representative McCall..

The Conservation Policy

The policy of conservation was inaugurated during the administration of President Roosevelt. Its beginnings are to be found in parts of his annual message of 1906, dealing with public land questions. The first step in definite action to make ready a program was the appointment by the President of the Inland Waterways Commission; and in his letter notifying the members of their appointment the President formulated the fundamental principles of the policy. The findings and recommendations of that Commission, transmitted to Congress by the President on February 26, 1908, with the special message which accompanied it, was the next step forward; and the White House Conference of May 13, 14 and 15, 1908, which was presided over by the President and attended by the Governors of the States and Territories, including Alaska, Porto Rico, and Hawaii, fairly launched the movement before the country at large.

In his message to the 60th Congress, which assembled December 2, 1907, President Roosevelt said:

We

"The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life. We must maintain for our civilization the adequate materia? basis without which that civilization can not exist. must show foresight, we must look ahead. As a nation we do not only enjoy a wonderful measure of present prosperity, but if this prosperity is used aright it is an earnest of future success such as no other nation will have. The reward of foresight for this nation is great and easily foretold. But there must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."

The Forest Policy.

The Forest policy of the Government is not a party issue, for it has had the support of both the Republican and the Democratic parties, but it has been developed mainly under Republican leadership.

The law authorizing the creation of National Forests was passed by a Republican Congress (the Fifty-first) and action under that law was begun by a Republican President (Harrison). The law authorizing the administration of these Forests along the present lines was passed by another Republican Congress (the Fifty-fifth). The law transferring the control of the Forests from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture was passed by the Republican Fifty-eighth Congress. The appropriations for the Government's forest work have from 1898 to the present time been increased by sucessive Republican Congresses. It may justly be claimed that the Republican party, the party of action, has contrived and put into effect this great and now accepted policy, though the Democratic party, the party of opposition, has never disputed its wisdom.

Under these laws, there have been set aside and placed under the administration of the Forest Service over 166,000,000 acres of the public domain. This land is kept in public ownership for the public benefit. The National Forests embrace the more mountainous parts of the West. They maintain the flow of streams, conserving water supply for irrigation and power, as well as maintaining a steady supply of timber for the West. They also permit the best use of the forage crop without injury to other interests. They do not close the land to prospecting and mining development, nor to agriculture where the land is more valuable for agriculture than for forest growth, but they protect the general welfare by preventing the evils which follow forest destruction. They are administered

the policy embodied in existing law by the The fundamental principle of this poli Before the administration of these Forests their resources were closed against the pub for all the use that can be got out of th better so long as it is real use, not spendthri for all kinds of use, not for one kind merely the public, not for the personal benefit of might be able to get hold of them, regardles might do the public.

Development of these Forests is taking pl expenditures by the Government, but these wise because they will greatly increase the Forests.

This development of the Forests is for the sa ment and permanent welfare of the country, r the Government as their owner. The Govern position of a landlord. If private interests oped them it would be for the sake of the be made to yield in money profits. The Gov oping them for the sake of the return they yield in sustained prosperity. The standing t is needed by the people without decreasing the also needed by the people-without causing ri to fill up with mud as they are all the time East, and without loss of the power of the la forests for future use. The preservation and ful of the water of the United States, for use in means of transportation, and as a source of p our future welfare.

Forest preservation concerns every great W The interests of the farmer, the stockman, the berman, the merchant, and the transportation that of the labor which they employ, demand a continued supplies of water or wood from the ests. It is true that what is sometimes calle could be brought about faster by giving these F Congress should open the National Forests to try without restrictions, some of the States with Forests in them would develop very rapidly-fo National Forests are now open to homestead ent land is chiefly valuable for agriculture. Some steads" applied for have from $10,000 to $ of timber on them. If all timberland were open man who will stop to think twice knows what w sult. There would be a big boom while the tim lowed by a collapse. It would be good for the peo pocket the proceeds and move away, but bad fo It would be good for the lumber business whi were being cut, but the death of the lumber b they were gone. It would for a few years make p put money in circulation, and stimulate trade, in the long run mean the decline and ruin of ma ties and the impoverishment of the State.

But it may be asked: If the Forest policy is Forests for the benefit of the people, not for the Government as landlord, why does it lay a tax on t them? The Government no more lays a tax on Forests when it charges them for value received

who own them, and to carry on the business incidental to their use, about $7,000,000. It has received from them in ten years about $4,600,000. The receipts from the Forests are now increasing rapidly, but so are the expenditures necessary to develop their usefulness. The cost of keeping them from burning up, of seeing to it that they are so used that the rights of everybody are protected, of seeing that the Forests are made to yield right along, year after year, as much wood, as much water, and as much forage as possible for the support of the Western people and their industries, added to the cost of permament improvements, is bound to be heavy. Therefore the consumers of the wood and forage which the forests grow, and those who sell for their own profits the power which streams within the Forests supply, are called on to make a reasonable contribution toward the maintenance and development of these sources of their individual gain. No other arrangements would be either fair or possible. Congress could not justly take from the National Treasury the great sums which must be spent yearly upon these Forests while making a free gift to a comparatively few individuals of wood, forage, and land for power development, that they may enrich themselves at public expense. The States in which the National Forests lie are still debtors to the Nation for expenditures on their behalf, and will probably remain so for a good while to come.

The Forest policy of the Government is not confined to the care and development of the forests which the National Government owns and holds as trustee for the people. It includes also the effort to bring about the best use of all timber lands and all forest products in the United States, in the interest of the general welfare, which is so clearly dependent on continuing supplies of wood and water. The Forest Service studies to find out both how to make the best use of what we now have on hand and how to get more as cheaply, abundantly, and rapidly as possible.

In holding and developing these great resources, conserving timber and water, regulating grazing, and controlling those who use the Forests for the development of power, the Government is fundamentally helping the home builder. At every point it is working to increase the number of those who own their own homes, the typical American as contrasted with the typical European, who is a tenant paying tribute to a landlord. The National Forest policy makes oppressive monopoly of the best resources of the West impossible. To the extent that the ordinary citizen has to turn to one man or one set of men for anything which he cannot do without and which he cannot get elsewhere-whether it is land, or water, or coal, or means of transportation, or opportunity to labor, or permission to engage in business-just to that extent he is in the grip of a monopoly. Just to the extent that this monopoly seeks to take advantage of his necessity is the monopoly oppressive. The only trustworthy guaranty that the ordinary citizen can have that a monopoly will not be used to oppress him is Government control of it. For the Government of this country is itself controlled by the citizens of the country.

Government control of the resources of the Forests prevents the control of those resources by private monopolies. These are things which some one must own. Is it better for the ordinary citizen that this some one should be the nation, or private individuals, or corporations? Is it better for him to buy timber from an agent of the Government, who holds his place as a servant of the public, or from the local representative of a timber monopoly which cares nothing whatever about the public? Is it better that use of the range in National Forests should be allotted on the basis of past use and residence, or on the basis of the highest price? Is it better that the development of hydraulic power-a matter capable of complete monopoly in the West should fall absolutely into the hands of corporations free to collect from the public whatever they choose to ask, with no return to the public for the use of its own resources, or that the Government should control the monopolists in the interests of equitable exercise of heir power over the industrial life of the communities dependnt on them?

In several departments there is presented the looking to the further conservation of our nat subject is one of such importance as to requi extended discussion than can be entered upon For that reason I shall take an early opport message to Congress on the subject of the imp ways; upon the reclamation and irrigation of ar lands; upon the preservation of our forests, suitable areas; upon the reclassification of the view of separating from agricultural settlement phate lands and sites belonging to the Governme suitable for the utilization of water power.

In 1860 we had a public domain of 1,055 have now 731,354,081 acres, confined larg ranges and the arid and semiarid plains. tion, 368,035,975 acres of land in Alaska.

The public lands were, during the earli treated as a national asset for the liquid debt and as a source of reward for our s Later on they were donated in large amoun struction of wagon roads and railways, in regions in the West then almost inaccessible land statutes were enacted more than a qu ago. The homestead act, the preemption act, the coal land and the mining acts were rapid disposition of the public lands under and the lax methods of distribution prevai to the belief that these lands should rapidly ownership, gave rise to the impression that was legitimate prey for the unscrupulous, a contrary to good morals to circumvent the prodigal manner of disposition resulted in th areas of valuable land and many of our natio the hands of persons who felt little or no resp moting the national welfare through their d truth is that title to millions of acres of fraudulently obtained, and that the right to re of such lands for the Government long since of statutes of limitation.

There has developed in recent years a dee public mind respecting the preservation and natural resources. This has been particularly the conservation of the resources of the pub problem is how to save and how to utilize, hov still develop; for no sane person can contend common good that Nature's blessings are only erations.

Among the most noteworthy reforms initi tinguished predecessor were the vigorous pro frauds and the bringing to public attention of preserving the remaining public domain from tion, for the maintenance and extension of sources, and for the enactment of laws amend statutes so as to retain governmental control o the public domain in which there are valuable of oil, and of phosphate, and, in addition ther control, under conditions favorable to the publ along the streams in which the fall of water generate power to be transmitted in the form many miles to the point of its use, known as