e purpose
was to put the small sawmills out of business can not be definitely
stated, but the lumber trust has profited largely from the establishment
of the forest reserves.

So long as there was in the United States a large and open frontier to
be had for the taking there could be no very prolonged struggle against
an owning class. It has been easier for those having nothing to go but a
little further and acquire property for themselves. But on coming to
what had been the frontier and finding a forest reserve with range
riders and guards on its boundaries to prevent trespassing; on looking
back and seeing all land and opportunities taken; on turning again to
the forest reserve and finding a foreman of the lumber trust within its
borders offering wages in lieu of a home, it was inevitable that a
conflict should occur.

With the capitalistic system of industry in operation, the conflict
between the landless homeseekers and the owners of the vast
accumulations of capital would inevitably have taken place, but this
clash has come at least a generation earlier because of the
establishment of the National Forests than it otherwise would. The land
now in reserves would furnish homes and comfortable livings for ten
million people, and have absorbed the surplus population for another
generation. It is also true that the establishment of the National
Forests has been one of the vital factors that made the continued
existence of the lumber trust possible.

Prior to 1895 the shipments of lumber to the prairie states from west of
the Rocky Mountains were very small, and of no effect on the domination
of the lumber industry by the trust. Also, prior to that date but a
small part of the valuable timber west of the Rocky Mountains had been
brought under private ownership. But about this time the pioneer
settlers began swarming over the Pacific Slope and taking the free
government land as homesteads. As the timber land was taken up, floods
of lumber from the Pacific Coast met the lumber of the trust on the
great prairies. The lumber trust had looted the government land and the
Indian reservations in the middle states of their timber, and had almost
full control of the prairie markets until the lumber of the Pacific
Slope began to arrive. In 1896 lumber from the Puget Sound was sold in
Dakota for $16.00 per thousand feet, and it kept coming in a constantly
increasing volume and of a better quality than the trust was shipping
from t