Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1886 — LAND FRAUDS AND LAND GRABBERS [ARTICLE]

LAND FRAUDS AND LAND GRABBERS

The Republican Assaults on Commissioner Sparks for His Efforts to Head Them Off The Commissioner Defended in Congress—A Lively Debate in the House. The Honse went into committee of the whole on the sundry civil bill. The clause relative to the expenses of the collection of revenue from sales of public lands having been reached, Mr. Laird (Neb.) made a A severe attack upon Commissioner Sparks in his administration of the General Land Office, and quoted from a number of letters written by homestead settlers in his district denouncing the Sparks orders and characterizing Sparks as a scourge worse than the grasshoppers. Mr. Cobb is Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands and Mr. Payson a member of that committee, and having held the same official relation to the public land question in the Forty-eighth Congress, they were perfectly familiar with the laws and the facts that have been developed in regard to the dishonest acquisition of millions of acres by cattle syndicates and other associations and individuals. Mr. Cobb sat down veiy hard upon the young Nebraska Congressman, Mr. Laird, who had on this and a previous occasion howled himself hoarse in overzealous attacks upon the Commissioner of the General Land Office and vehement denials that frauds existed to any great extent in his district. Mr. Cobb produced and read a copy of a report taken from the files of the Interior Department, from a ltepuhlican special agent of the land office, showing the intimate relations of Mr. Laird himself with certain land-sharks who had fraudulently obtained possession of a river front and many thousands of acres, of continuous public lands. Very naturally, Mr. Laird became excited on account of the unexpected exposure of the cause of his extraordinary interest in the efforts of Mr. Sparks to check the land robbers, and there was an excited passage of words between Mr. Cobb and Mr. Laird, which the latter was glad to drop at the first opportunity. With an awkwardly assumed air of innocence, and with the official sworn evidence before his face, he denied its truth and declared that the special agent’s report had been traversed by an agent subsequently sent out to investigate the matter. It appeared, however, a little later in the debate • that the witness upon whom he relied for his exculpation was an agent selected by Mr. Laird himself, and appointed at his solicitation. Mr. Payson, though a staunch Republican, was not willing to permit the question of preserving the lands against fraudulent acquisition to be treated as a party question. He frankly affirmed his confidence in the integrity of the intentions of Commissioner Sparks, and heartily approved of the order temporarily suspending the issuance of patents pending an investigation of allegations of frauds in the entries. He stated that, as a member of the Public Lands Committee, he had been consulted prior to the issuing of the order, and had expressed himself earnestly in favor of it. He only regretted that Secretary Lamar had not sufficient backbone to stand by the order, which had the approval of President Cleveland and Mr. Lamar before it was promulgated and was not only •demanded by the interests of the Government and of the people who really desire homes upon the public domain, but was also authorized by the law and a long line of precedents. Mr. Payson spoke with great earnestness, and so clearly presented the facts and the law in controversy that he was loudly applauded by Representatives on both sides of the chamber. Incidentally, Mr. Payson recalled the fact that certain men who had thrown obstacles in the way of the consideration of a bill in the last Congress to prevent the unlawful seizure and fencing of thousands of acres of public lands were now found here opposing the efforts of Commissioner Sparks to slop the patenting of lands obtained by evasions or actual violations of the 1 iw. There was no doubt as to who were the persons referred to by Mr. Payson, although he did not mention names and designated no one J until persistent challenges from the opposition obliged him to name Mr. Peters. Mr. Peters denied that he had voted against the passage of Mr. Payson’s bill to prevent the unlawful inclosure of the public domain. “Let us be exact,” said Mr. Payson. “I did not.say the gentleman voted against the bill. I said that he had obstructed the consideration of the bill. Does the gentleman wish me to be more particular?” Mr. Peters said he did. “The gentleman from Kansas will remember,” said Mr. Payson, with deliberation, “that op three occasions I arranged with the Speaker to be recognized to ask unanimous consent for the consideration of that bill, and that on two of these occasions the gentleman from Kansas said he would object, and did object.” The Record shows that Peters did twice, by his objection, prevent the consideration of the bill to prevent cattle companies from shutting: settlers out of the public domain by barbed-wire fences, but on the passage of the bill he weakened and voted for it. When Mr. Payson pilloried him before the whole House, the only thing Peters could say was that he did not remember objecting. Two of the tracts of land, embracing thousands of acres, that were unlawfully inclosed with barbed wire by cattle syndicates were in Mr. Peters’ district. Mr. Weaver, of lowa, clipped the wings of Mr. Perkins, another of the gentlemen who were most active in decrying Commiss’oner Sparks, and try ing to strike out of the sundry civil bill the appropriation of $90,000 “for the protection of the public lands from illegal and fraudulent entry or appropriation.” Mr. Weaver read a iittle advertisement of a “land and loan company” in Kansas, of which Mr. Perkins is advertised as the President. Mr. Weaver’s pertinent comment on the situation was that the outcry against Gen. Sparks came from the cattle syndicates, the loan agents, and the land speculators. Mr. Weaver said: Mr. Chairman, it is a strange position that is occupied by those who are assailing the Commissioner of the General Land Office. It must be remembered that the testimony upon which that officer has proceeded is all drawn from Republican sources. His action is based upon the investigations and the testimony of Republican officials who had been for years in the public service, and were perfectly familiar with the dishonest •raids that were being made upon every part

of the public domain. The reports of these officials are on file. Take, for example, the report of Mr. A. R. Green, late a Republican State Senator in Kansas, and at this very time, I believe, a Republican editor, and a man in good standing in his party in the district of the fentleman who lias just taken his seat (Mr. ’erkins). Let me read some things that Mr. Green says about these frauds; “The hopelessness of the attempt was apparent to every one who was familiar with the soil and climate of the region proposed to be reclaimed at the outset, but the opportunity forgetting a quarter-section of land for a trifle induces men to go through the merest form of compliance with the law and make up the rest by perjury. I hesitate to make the statement that in a large proportion of cases no pretense of complying with the law has been made, but I believe such to be the case. I have traveled over hundreds of miles of laud in Western Kansas, Nebraska, and Central Dakota, nearly one-fourth of which had been taken under the ‘timber-culture’ act, without seeing an artificial grove even in incipiency, and can scarcely recall an instance in any one day’s travel where the ground had been more than scratched with the plow for the purpose of planting trees. “I have seen small patches of land (possibly five acres) where the prairie sod had been ‘listed’ in furrows six or eight feet apart each way, and occasionally a sickly cottonwood-sprout, tWo or three feet in height, of the thickness of a man’s thumb, standing thereon. In other cases the land had evidently been honestly plowed at some time, but through neglect had grown up again to grass, and the trees (?) were holding up their tiny cattle-browsed, fire-burnt branches in mute protest against the farcical absurdity of the ‘timber-culture act.’ “As to the proportion of land entered under the timber-culture act that is not improved as required by that act, I give it as my opinion that in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota the proportion is 90 per cent, to 10 per cent, of bona fide and possibly successful cultivation. ***** “A more vicious system of fraudulent entries has been successfully practiced by and in the interest of cattle-men and stock corporations. If the law had been enacted for their benefit it could scar ely have been more successful. “I have been told that entmnen engaged in this character of frauds seldom make a pretense of plowing or planting trees, or complying in any particular with the law. My own observation confirms this statement, and I believe it to be true. This is largely the case in Colorado, Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, and New Mexico, where immense stock ranches have been established and all the valuable grass land and water has been secured. This system also obtains to no inconsiderable extent in Kansas, I believe. “The method is simple, effective, and infamous.” Thus I might go on for a score of pages’ in this report, but I will not further trespass upon the time of the House by reading. The gentleman from Kansas | Mr. Perkins] is not ignorant of the fact, and ought not to be unmindful of the fact that large numbers of fraudulent entries have taken place within his own district, and that those transactions are notorious throughout the entire State of Kansas. Now, I have said, and I believe it to be true, that the objections to the policy of the Land Office come, as a rule, from the cattle syndicates, the loan agents, and the laud speculators. I protest against a land policy which enables the speculators to get hold of the virgin lands of the West to the exclusion of the poor settler who seeks to se - cure a home. Mr. Holman and Mr. Plumb, of Illinois, re-enforcedjthe arguments already presented by Messrs. Payson and Cobb. Mr. Plumb described the methods of the land-grabbers, and Mr. Holman commended Commissioner Sparks in the name of every laboring man and every homeless man in the United States.