Interior Report

When the president of a famed university enters the Cabinet, he may be expected to bring to his job an attitude of mind different from the general run of officeholders. Such a difference Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, who still is president of Leland Stanford University, exhibited lately when he took the liberty of changing the Department's seal from an eagle to a buffalo. Such a difference he exhibited again last week when submitting to President Hoover his department's annual report. The Wilbur eye was cocked on the future rather than the past. He outlined in language vigorous yet literary a set of new policies for his huge governmental agency to follow:

P: Of chief concern to the Interior Department is the public domain. Warned Secretary Wilbur: "Homestead thinking must be replaced by watershed thinking. Unless we care for the lands now in possession of the U. S., the west will repeat the degradation of Korea and parts of China with man-made barrenness, floods, erosion and decay. . . . I know of no more painful act than to place a man and particularly his wife on a piece of land where they are foreordained to a prolonged agonizing failure."

P: Some 350,000 Indians are the Interior Department's wards. Reported Secretary Wilbur: "The Indian Service has before it a definite and unique goal--that of working itself out of a job . . . within a period of 25 years. The fundamental aim will be to make the Indian a self-supporting and self-respecting citizen. . . . Leadership, rather than custody, is the object. The new policy [means] a new deal for the young Indian and a square deal for the old Indian."

P: On hydroelectric power: "A policy will be followed which will insulate the U. S. as completely as may be from interference with local interests and regulation. The proper office of the U. S. ends with the construction of dams . . . leaving it to municipal or private initiative to develop and market the power under lease of rights to the falling water. . . . That policy is being followed . . . on Boulder Dam."

P: Educator Wilbur reported thus on Education: "There is a distinct menace in the centralization in the National Government of any large educational scheme. ... A department of education similar to the other departments of the Government is not required."

P: Objectives set up: elimination of fraud from pensions, preservation of large areas of the national parks in their natural wilderness, reduction of the Alaska Railroad's deficit by the exploitation of reindeer herds as a meat supply, by development of Alaska's coal fields.

P: On U. S. pension rolls at the year's end were 477,915 persons to whom was paid $229,889,986. Civil War pensioners fell off 14,984 whereas Spanish War pensioners rose 14,096. Eleven widows of the War of 1812 were the oldest on the rolls.

P: From 2,681,270 acres of land reclaimed by the U. S., crops valued at $143,573,070 were produced.

P: From the public domain 2,494,647 acres were transferred under final patent to 8,236 homesteaders, 3,271 stockraisers. Preliminary entries last year totaled 4,612,722 acres.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.