Then men

beef on the butcher's block rose more than forty per cent. said that there must be something the matter; and the United States. hydrographers went out into the arid region, where they found that, although the Japan current was still supplying moisture, the crust of the earth was dry. The watercourses had been cut into deep channels, were torrents when rain fell, and then ran immediately dry. Springs had lost their affluence. The blear desert had overspread the meadow.

The hydrographers were followed by the agrostologists of the Agricultural Department. They found that the grasses, forage plants, and browse shrubs were gone. All nature's nice adjustment to prevent evaporation from the soil and to open it for absorption by the plant roots had disappeared. Her equilibrium had been destroyed. The water no longer went steadily and slowly through the soil to feed springs and maintain the even flow of streams without deepening their channels; but it rushed over the denuded surface, eroded it, and appeared at once in the drainage channels as a mad torrent. The flocks and herds, grazing as free commoners, had eaten the forage, destroyed the stable moisture, and left desert and desolation behind.

The pioneers of all that widespread region could be called as witnesses regarding the former and present physical conditions, and the destruction of its sole potentiality of wealth. Let one witness utter the testimony of all, whether they come from New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Nevada, or any other State or Territory in that domain.

Mr. Bayless, of Oracle, Arizona, in a letter to the Government agrostologists, says that the rich grasses of San Pedro valley are gone, and that the river channel is cut down from three to twenty feet. The valley is a sandy waste from bluff to bluff. Cutting down the river channel impairs or prevents its use for irrigation. These results are due to the use, free and in common, of the land for grazing. The average rainfall still comes, but nature's mode of conservation has been destroyed; and where, twelve years before, 40,000 cattle fed and fattened, 3,000 famine-smitten creatures now eke out an existence. Mr. Bayless adds that very few of these cattle were sold or removed from the range, most of them having been left until the pasture was destroyed, when they perished by starvation. The same story can be told of a vast majority of the four hundred million acres of grazing lands in the West, which belong to the Federal Government. Cattle have grazed below the point of sustenance for them, and sheep have followed to eat what remained to the roots, and tramp the surface into dust. The agricultural settlers have their freeholds invaded by nomadic flocks and herds. Rival

stockmen hold a portion of the range with winchesters. Homicides redden the struggle for survival, and a great industry is dying of starvation. The whole region has less water for irrigation, and yearly grows less inviting to the settler who seeks a home supported by that means. Is it not possible to end the struggle, to call back the forage, to stop the march of the desert, to restore the equilibrium of nature?

The Secretary of Agriculture, the hydrographers and agrostologists, and every thoughtful observer who lives in contact with these distressing conditions are agreed in their suggestion of the means of restoration. They are not without a precedent to support their advice. The stock ranges of Australia, under the same physical conditions, had the same history. Nearly twenty years ago the Colonial Governments called the stockmen into council, and there was devised a leasing system protecting the rights of agricultural and pastoral freeholders and of large and small stockgrowers. Each one got a leasehold. Each one got a leasehold. He confined his stock to it, changed its grazing ground, and carefully nurtured the reseeding of the forage, with the result that the carrying capacity of the Australian range is now restored to its virgin state.

Texas owns her own domain. A vast area of it is pastoral and arid. When used free and in common, the land became bleak and repellent, its forage being destroyed. A steer could barely live on a hundred acres. Less than a decade ago, against the opposition of the stockmen, Texas made a leasing law. Now an area of seventeen acres supports a steer. The range is restored, and a proposition to repeal the lease statute would convulse the State. The United States found the range on the Indian reservations destroyed. It leases them; the leaseholders protect a restoration of the forage; and the desert has retreated before the meadow. Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming lease their State lands, the school sections, lien lands, etc., for grazing, at an average of one cent and eighty one-hundredths per acre, and derive from that source an aggregate income of $1,108,754 per anThe forage on these State leaseholds has been protected to the point of restoration.

num.

Moved by these examples, and stimulated by the decadence and drought that follow the extirpation of the forage, the National Live Stock Association, in session at Fort Worth, Texas, two years ago, resolved in favor of a Federal grazing lease. Similar resolutions were passed by the American Cattle Growers' Association, in annual convention at Denver, March, 1901, with only four dissenting votes, and by the Pacific Stockmen's Association, in annual convention at San Fran

cisco, January 14, 1902. The Secretary of Agriculture ably supports. this proposal in his last report. The President of the United States, in his message of last December, draws a graphic picture of the destruction wrought by the free use in common of the grazing domain. The legislation committee of the American Cattle Growers' Association has drawn a bill for a Federal leasing act, which after having been introduced into the House by Mr. Bowerock, of Kansas, appears in Senate Bill 3311, introduced by Mr. Millard, of Nebraska. It leaves every leasehold open to the homestead entryman under existing and future laws, and also to the mineral entryman, thus offering no obstruction to the actual settler. In allotting the leases it provides:

Preference for leases shall be given to owners of cultivated agricultural land for leasable lands abutting upon their freeholds, in proportion of ten acres of leasehold to one of freehold. A preference of ten acres of leasehold to one acre of freehold shall also be given to stockgrowers who are also freeholders. This preference shall apply only to lands within counties upon which their stock habitually ranges. If, in case of either of the preferences above provided, there shall not be sufficient leasable lands in the county to give each person entitled to the preference the maximum proportion of ten acres to one, then said lands shall be prorated between the persons entitled to such preference. The further preference to lands not leased under the foregoing provisions of this section shall be given to stockgrowers who were in actual use and occupancy of said lands during the year ending January 1, 1901, to be leased to them in proportion to their respective interests in and use thereof. Where the States lease State lands, the bona-fide holders of such State leaseholds shall be beneficiaries of the preference given to stockgrowers who are also freeholders: Provided, That such State leaseholds are not held by any one person in tracts exceeding six hundred and forty acres in one body.

At the price fixed, the leasable area will produce a revenue of $8,000,000 annually. It is provided that this shall go into the Federal Treasury, as a fund for irrigating all irrigable lands in the region where it is earned. Whenever the Federal Government, a State, or private enterprise provides water storage and distribution for irrigation, all lands subject thereto are cancelled out of the lease without compensation to the leaseholder. The fund will be large, and will protect the Treasury against any call for tax-derived revenue for irrigation.

Why should the East oppose such a measure? It protects equally freehold rights and those of small and large stockgrowers. None can be excluded. The lands which the revenue irrigates will not compete with Eastern farm lands. They cannot produce grain for export, as it will not bear transportation. With inappreciable exceptions, the most profitable use of this land will be in the production of hay as winter feed for stock. But unless the dry summer range is leased and protected, and its forage restored, there will be no stock to eat the winter feed. The

symmetrical, economic development of the arid region and its profitable use depend upon the restoration of the summer range. The proposed law is good business. It derives an irrigation fund from an existing public asset an asset that has enriched the user who has enjoyed it free of cost until a large part of it has been destroyed, while the rest is following in the same direction at a rapid pace.

If free use in common of the public domain east of the Missouri River had destroyed its potential wealth, dried up the springs and streams, poisoned it with desert conditions, and made it unfit for settlement, does any one imagine that such use would have been permitted and its effects borne without any effort being made for a remedy?

JOHN P. IRISH.

THE DISINTEGRATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CURRICULUM.

ACCORDING to a trite commonplace, it is easier to pull down than to build up, to destroy than to create, to disintegrate than to reconstruct. In educational matters few more forcible illustrations of this observation can be found than that which is afforded by our experience in this country during the last twenty-five years with the courses of study in use by the institutions of the higher education. But, as I showed in a previous article,' the curriculum of the university, by its excellence or its badness, determines in a very important way the success or the failure of its institutional activity in every one of its three chief distinguishing functions. Neither the individual teacher nor the whole body of teachers can train to the best advantage the multitude of students under them if teachers and students are working in connection with an ill-advised or loosely organized and administered system of instruction. This is quite as true of the more distinctly practical and moral elements of training as it is of those which are more distinctly theoretical and intellectual, or quite abstracted from the daily life of the average citizen.

Moreover, it is extremely difficult to secure, and indeed almost foolish to expect, out of a body of men thus ill disciplined, any considerable number of great explorers, or of truly creative and distinguished masters in science, art, literature, and philosophy. And, although men who have really not had the highest kind of university training do often succeed admirably in imparting to the public the beneficent results of such knowledge and ideas as they have, this success must be considered as attained in spite of, rather than because of, the lack of such training. At any rate, it could scarcely be maintained that the public at large is likely to be the more richly blessed by educational institutions which. employ the least efficient means for the thorough mental and moral culture and symmetrical development of their own members.

The problem offered by the present disintegration and prospective reconstruction of the curriculum of the institutions which profess to give 1 THE FORUM for March, 1902.