Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1893 — GIGANTIC FRAUDS UNEARTHED [ARTICLE]

GIGANTIC FRAUDS UNEARTHED

The Minnesota S mate Springs Another Sensation on the Country. The Senate committee, at St. Paul, investigating the charges of fraud in the sale and taxation of Minnesota lands, has presented its report. It is the most sensational report ever made by a legislative committee and all based on sworn testimony. Frauds and conspiracies most gigantic and farreaching are said to have been unearthed. It is claimed that the State has been defrauded, directly and indirectly, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many persons hitherto above suspicion are said to be involved and besmirched by the committee’s findings. One Instance is a case where the timber on a piece of school land, estimated by the best judges to have been worth $7,525, was sold for a paltry $175. Some of the best pine land of the State is- said to have been falsely certified as swamp land and then patented to the railroads, and by them to the parties back of the deal. Innumerable cases of false homestead entries, soldiers’ pre-emp-tions and Indian allotments, all made on powers of attorney by men of straw in the interests of the corporations, are said to have been disclosed. Vast tracts of land and vast quantities of standing and cut pine are said to have escaped the tax rolls, and one interesting point is that there are miles of railroad in the woods used for other purposes than for transporting logs alone, which are not mentioned by the assessor, and which are not reached as personal property, nor do they pay any gross earnings tax. The law which is designed to prevent corporations from acquiring more than 5,000 acres of land is said to be a dead letter In the pine regions. The report says it is hardly possible to calculate the sums the State and State institutions have lost in the alleged pine-land manipulations, nor is it possible that any considerable portion of it can be recovered.