Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1879 — SUPREME COURT DECISION. [ARTICLE]

SUPREME COURT DECISION.

Land-Grant Railroads are Settlers on the Puldie Lands. [Washington Cor. Chicago Inter Ocean.] The Supreme Court has announced a decision that is of the utmost importance to Western railroads and settlers on the public lands. It will be remembered that laH July, in what was known as the Dudymont case, Secretary Schurz made a decision opening to settlement by homestead and other entries all the public lands, embracing millions of acres of the best territory in the West that had been granted to the several Pacific railroads under the act of 1862, which required the railroads to forfeit to the United States all lands included in their grants that were not sold or disposed of within a certain time. Under this decision, Secretary Schurz issued a circular offering for sale, under regulations governing the public lands, all unoccupied railroad lands, and a great many entries were made under this circular. One of them was made by a man named Platt, on the lands of the Union Pacific railroad in Nebraska. The Union Pacific Company brought an action to eject him from his entry, and he filed a bill in equity in the United States District Court for that State to restrain the Union Pacific Company from prosecuting action of ejectment. The company in that action filed an answer, in which they set up the claim that the mortgage which had been made by the company to secure their land-grant bonds was in fact in law a disposal of the lands under section 3 of the act of 1862, incorporating the railcompany. The same question was argued before Secretary Schurz in the Dudymont case, but ir his decision he held that to mortgage a piece of land

was not to dispose of it. Judge Dundy, of Nebraska, of the United States District Court, before whom the case of Platt was tried, held the reverse, and decided in favor of the Union Pacific Company. Platt appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and the case, which was argued about three weeks ago, was decided to-day, Justice Strong pronouncing the opinion affirming the decision of Judge Dundy, and holding that the act of the Union Pacific Company in mortgaging their lands to secure bonds of the road was a disposal of these lands, and that no railroad lands which have been mortgaged are subject to pre-emption. This overrules the decision of Schurz in the Dudymont case, and makes the entries that were made under his circular of August last illegal. The decision affects not only the Union Pacific lands, but grants to all railroads that have issued mortgages on their lands. Justice Bradley read a dissenting opinion, which was concurred in by Miller and Clifford.