Albuquerque Morning Journal

THE PUBLIC LAND QUESTION

Notwithstanding the fact that the Denver Republican has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Roosevelt policies in general, and even an advocate of the third term, it is now apparent that it has cooled off some crude degrees, in the fervor of the support it is giving some of the administration's policies especially the public land policy. In a leading editorial on this subject it said:

There is too much tendency to take it for granted that the remaining lands are of themselves valueless to the individual and therefore should be subjected to some different treatment from what has been accorded in the past. Some of the disputants go so far as to say that the lands are no longer desirable for farming and the residue should be withheld either as timber reserve or wanted for cattle and sheep grazing.

It is the same old idea that the great majority has held toward these lands from the beginning. When Colorado was first opened they said the lands were worthless, but the common man went out and took up a farm and made each acre of it worth something not in a day, as coming and going after it in the interim. He can sell for enough to keep him in comfort and provides competence for his family.

The same was said more than twenty years ago; they are not quite so worthless as today but the home seekers by the thousands are filing new claims every day and will go on filling them until the age of the so-called surplus land is entered has passed into private hands and been made of use.

It may be a hundredth man who will. These lands are for the common man, not for the few who at best are a way to use them. The way of the early day legislators grasped the great truth that through them the nation would be able to.

a way to lift out of poverty and set them on the high way to independence. No other one thing has done so much to make the richest country on earth and raise the standard of the people as has this system of disposing of the public land by giving it to whoever could best use a fraction for mining, farming or what he would. By using it for the good of himself the user furthers the interests of the whole.

It is the foresight of the common man that gets the work of the world done for the good of the whole and he must be left free to pick and choose where he will if this western country is to continue to advance. Hedge the government lands as the crown lands of the old world are hedged, tie them into huge tracts as Mexico tied its lands by grants, and the bar to advancement which is raised for all time. The longer this government refrains from such treatment of the public domain the farther off will be the day when the limit of growth will be reached and the United States begin to settle back toward old world conditions of the rich getting ever richer and the poor ever poorer."

After such expressions as the foregoing the Republican may safely consider itself in the list of the non grata, and no amount of third term talk can ever restore it to favor. The man of the paper that has sufficient independence to oppose any one of the administration's many crotchets whether it be a matter of much importance or a mere trifle, commits the unpardonable sin and may thereafter be regarded as outlawed. The Morning Journal takes pleasure in welcoming the Republic to that class a class, by the way, which is increasing at an unprecedented rate all over the country. Men who travel much will tell you that this revulsion of sentiment is plainly to be seen on the cars in the hotels and everywhere, in short Secretary Taft detected it some time ago and protests vigorously against the action of those who imagine they are improving his presidential chances by trying to make it appear that he is Roosevelt's man."

Mr. Lincoln's homely though forceful axiom was never more apt than at the present "You can fool part of the people all the time and all of the people part of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."