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Plan for Transfer of the Public Lands

Excerpts taken from the 1932 Congressional Hearings on
Granting Remaining Unreserved Public Lands to the States.

It is futile to criticize without suggesting a remedy. This nation today is

ruled by organized minorities. That we do not like this system of government is no
reason why we should not use it if it is our only recourse. Bureaus can not exist
without appropriations. The Representatives from the western states are
comparatively too few in number, and perhaps too anxious to have the Bureaus
expend funds in their districts to offer much hope of curbing the Bureaus, but the
eleven public land states have twenty-two Senators and the Senate must approve all
Bureau appropriations. A little group of about half this number have been the
balance of power in the United States Senate for the last decade. If fifteen or twenty
of the western Senators will unite on any fair policy for the local control of western
lands they can insure its adoption.


The Governors of the western states possess the most powerful peace time
weapon, publicity. If you gentlemen will unite on a policy of resistence to further
Federal encroachment, and the curtailment of present superfluous activity by the
Federal Government in affairs that should be handled by officials answerable to the
people at the polls, and will arouse the citizens of your commonwealth your
Senators will be glad to carry out the wishes of your people, and the control of the
lands and resources of your states will be vested where they were intended to be, in
the hands of those without whose adjacent residency they would be worthless.
Lands and resources have always been obtained or retained by fighting. Human
nature has not changed. If the West desires to control its own resources it must
fight to do so.

Thomas Maddock, from a 1931 address to the Western Governors, added the 1932 Congressional Record in the
hearings on Granting Remaining Unreserved Public Lands to the States. Born in Roanoke, Va. in 1883, Thomas
Maddock first came to Arizona in 1898 from Newcastle, Pa. A Republican from Coconino County, he was elected
to the first Arizona Legislature and later served as Secretary and State Chairman of the Arizona Republican
Party. He served as Arizona State Highway Engineer from 1917-1922, and was a member of the Colorado River
Commission from 1923 to 1928.