fed the press? Have vast domains of
timber lands been stolen in blocks of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of acres through "dummy" entrymen? Have the federal law
officers been shot to death above stolen coal mines? Have Reclamation
Engineers, and Land Office field men, and Forest Rangers undergone such
hardships in Desert and Mountain, as portrayed here? Have they not
only undergone the hardship, but been crucified by the Government which
they served for carrying out the laws of that Government? In a word,
are latter day freebooters of our Western Wilderness playing the same
game in the great transmontane domain as the old-time pirates played on
the high seas? Is this a true story of "the Man on the Job" and "the
Man on the Firing Line" and "the Man Higher Up" and the Looters?

I answer first that I am not writing of twenty years ago, or yesterday,
or the day before yesterday, but _to-day_, the Year of our Lord
1909-1910 in the most highly civilized country the world has ever
known; in a country where self-government has reached a perfection of
prosperity and power not dreamed by poet or prophet. The menace to
self-government from such national influences at work need not be
described. The triumph of such factors in national life means the
wresting of self-government from the people into the hands of the few,
a repetition of the struggle between the Robber Barons of the Middle
Ages and the Commoners.

It seems almost incredible that such lawlessness and outrage and
chicanery can exist in America--many of the outrages would disgrace
Russia or Turkey--yet every episode related here has ten prototypes in
Life, in Fact; not of twenty years ago, or yesterday, or the day before
yesterday, _but to-day_. For instance, the number of sheep destroyed
is given as fifteen thousand. The number destroyed in two counties
which I had in mind when I wrote that chapter, by actual tally of the
Stock Association for the past six years, is sixty thousand. Last year
alone, five thousand in one State suffered every form of hideous
mutilation--backs broken, entrails torn out; fifteen hundred in an
adjoining State had their throats cut; three men were burned to death;
one herder in a still more Northern State was riddled to death with
bullets.

Or to take the case of the timber thefts, I refer to two hundred
thousand acres in California. I might have referred to a million and a
half in Washington and Oregon.

Or referring to