Oftentimes, as a community of settlers becomes
sufficiently large to support it, a small saw-mill
springs into being, and the wants of this little com-
munity are supplied by the local mill, drawing its
timber from the government land without any au-
thority whatever. Both of these classes, the settler


251] Condition of Forests on the Public Lands. 67


and the local mill man, are then criminals under the
law, and are also liable in a civil action for damages.
The special agents employed by the General Land
Office to protect the public domain from timber dep-
redations are supposed to collect such testimony as
is necessary to sustain a prosecution, and to superin-
tend this prosecution in behalf of the government,
the government being represented by the United
States district attorneys. Do I need to tell you
that before a local jury such prosecutions almost
invariably fail.
The sympathies of the entire community are
always with these depredators of the public timber,
and quite often the jurors themselves have been
freely using such timber. Indeed it is a matter of
the greatest difficulty to induce a grand jury to indict
persons who have confessedly been cutting govern-
ment timber for years to supply their saw-mills, the
product of which is used quite likely by the very
members of the grand jury. In the rare cases where
a verdict for damages is rendered for the govern-
ment it will be for merely nominal damages.
