class and to all society for that matter,
and also something about the basis of the lumber industry and the
foundation of the city of Everett. The first two items very completely
reveal themselves thru the medium of the testimony given by the
witnesses for the defense, while the other matters are covered briefly
here.

The plundering of public lands was a part of the policy of the lumber
trust. Large holdings were gathered together thru colonization schemes,
whereby tracts of 160 acres were homesteaded by individuals with money
furnished by the lumber operators. Often this meant the mere loaning of
the individual's name, and in many instances the building of a home was
nothing more than the nailing together of three planks. Other rich
timber lands were taken up as mineral claims altho no trace of valuable
ore existed within their confines. All this timber fell into the hands
of the lumber trust. In addition to this there were large companies who
logged for years on forty acre strips. This theft of timber on either
side of a small holding is the basis of many a fortune and the
possessors of this stolen wealth can be distinguished today by their
extra loud cries for "law and order" when their employes in the woods
and mills go on strike to add a few more pennies a day to their beggarly
pittance.

Altho cheaper than outright purchase from actual settlers, these methods
of timber theft proved themselves quite costly and the public outcry
they occasioned was not to the liking of the lumber barons. To
facilitate the work of the lumber trust and at the same time placate the
public, nothing better than the Forest Reserve could possibly have been
devised. The establishment of the National Forest Reserves was one of
the long steps taken in the United States in monopolizing both the land
and the timber of the country.

The first forest reserves were established February 22, 1898, when
22,000,000 acres were set aside as National Forests. Within the next
eight years practically all the public forest lands in the United
States that were of any considerable extent had been set off into these
reserves, and by 1913 there had been over 291,000 square miles included
within their confines.[1] This immense tract of country was withdrawn
from the possibility of homestead entry at approximately the time that
the Mississippi Valley and the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains had
been settled and brought under private ownership. Whether th