Transcription:
ARNOLD ARBORETUM, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Jamaica Plain, Mass., April 6, 1897. My dear Muir: I am glad to get your note
of the 29th and enclosures. We have been summoned to Washington again and things look as badly as possible. The President's
intention now is to suspend some of the Reserves, especially those where big corporations want to continue to steal timber,
and, what is still worse, it is proposed to pass a general forestry bill giving the Secretary of the Interior extraordinary
powers to open reservations for all sorts of purposes but providing no machinery for it to protect them. This means, of course,
that the we western people, getting by this law all they want, will never consent to establish a forest service which will
interfere in the smallest degree with their liberties. General Abbot and I urged this to the extent of our ability both to
the President and the Secretary of the Interior, but the matter had all been arranged before we got there and Hague, Brewer
and Pinchot, declared that the passage of such a bill would be an immense advantage and that it ought to be done. Hague, I
fancy, has been working against us more or less from the start. He generally carries Pinchot with him, and in this case Brewer
seems to have lost his head. The General and I left Washington utterly discouraged and I cannot see today any salvation in
the situation. 02248