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“I therefore deemed it my duty to arrest that audacious and destructive robbery—not that I had intended to prevent the settler and the miner from taking from the public lands what they needed for their cabins, their fields, or their mining shafts, but I deemed it my duty to stop at least the commercial depredations upon the property of the people, and to that end I used my best endeavors and the means at my disposal, scanty as they were. [Applause.]
“What was the result? No sooner did my attempts in that direction become known than I was pelted with telegraphic despatches from the regions most concerned, indignantly inquiring what it, meant that an officer of the government dared to interfere with the legitimate business of the country. Members of the Congress came down upon me, some with wrath in their eyes, others pleading in a milder way, but all solemnly protesting against my disturbing their constituents in this peculiar pursuit of happiness. I persevered in the performance of my plain duty.”
Mr. Schurz was not then fully successful in the important work he undertook. The country was not then ready for the direct application of honesty and common sense to the treatment of our national forests. But since then great progress has been made in forest preservation, and a powerful public sentiment has been aroused both West and East which supports the national policy he tried to institute. What Mr. Schurz accomplished as a Cabinet officer for the important cause of Civil Service Reform I leave to my successor on the programme to state. The principles which guided the course of Carl
