Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1907 — WAR ON WESTERN FRAUD. [ARTICLE]

WAR ON WESTERN FRAUD.

Stealer* of Timber and Coal Laadx to Be Vigorously I'riueculed. After a series of important conference held with the Attorney General of the United States, M. C, Burch, special assistant attorney general in the field, hhs returned to the Far West, commissioned to go ahead with government land fraud suits, both civil and criminal, on a scale larger by far than anything yet undertaken in this line by the government. The numerous indictments already returned for timber and coal land frauds all through the West are to be prosecuted without exception, and new indictments will be ad9ed to the list. The docket of practically every United States district court in the Mountain States is to be crowded with civil suits by which the government will seek to ?e£ain its title to —the millions upon millions of acres of valuable timber and coal land obtained by fraudulent entry. The indictments "already include many of the most prominent and wealthy men in the West. Mr. Burch is instructed by thePi'esklent and tlie Attorney General to inflict upon them the criminal penalty wherever possible. By the civil suits it will be sought to take away from them such of their wealth as has been illegaly obtained. DThe scope of the machinery the government has set in motion against £ae land thieves is little comprehended, says a Washington correspondent. In addition to the force of district attorneys, Burch, a well-knowu Michigan lawyer, has been assigued by the Department of Justice to general charge of these prosecutions. Co-operating with him under the direction of L. C. Wheeler, who received his training in Washington, is the largest secret service staff in the country. Mr. Wheeler has more than 100 men. They are scattered over the immense, area of the Mountain States, all Burrowing for evidence against the men who have pirated Uncle Sam out of his valuable coal aud timber resources. These men do not call themselves secret service employes, since the secret service is supposed solely to be engaged in ferreting out counterfeiters and protecting the person of the President. Mr. Wheeler and his staff are known as special agents of the Department of Justice. In fact, however, their business is that of a secret service, speciqly created by the President to camp on the trail of the railroad corporations and the mining and timber millionaires, who have been the chief misdoers in land thievery. The prosecutions in charge of Mr. Burch are not to be confounded with the much-storied chapter of fraud in

Oregon. The work of Me.: Burch and Mr. Wheeler lies chiefly in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Though not so well known, the land fraud inquiry and prosecution in the latter States have been conducted on much wider lines and with more 'startling results than‘in Oregon. The government investigation lias brought about the most startling of all the disclosures by its probing into the coal land frauds. It has been brought out conclusively that in Wyoming, iu Colorado, In Utah and in Idaho, the Ilarriman railroad system, the Hill interests and the Gould lines, respectively, have secured a grip on the bulk of the coal deposits in the West—deposits now known to be large enough to furnish the nation with fuel for years when the Eastern coal mines shall have been exhausted. —___— * The last batch of indictments for il-, legally obtaining coal land came ou| in. Colorado and included seventy prominent men, some of them resident Westerners and others from Eastern and ♦Middle Western cities, who thought they saw a good thing and ravenously joined in the wholesale grabbing for rich public lands.