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Show 158 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT clubs to cooperate by acting together at the sale and in fact most accounts speak of them as working as a unit when the auction began. Despite the self-assurance of the clubs, the presence of numerous capitalists anxious to invest in land worried the settlers who were afraid that their claims clubs might not be able to protect them, especially as many squatters lacked the money with which to buy their claims. One youth, whose cabin had been frequented by persons looking for land, refers to the presence in Burlington of a small group of men who did not wear plain clothes nor have the rough manners of the pioneers, but a "smooth manner and a ruffled shirt. .., and a bit of jewelry, marking them as speculators." The speculators were denied information respecting lands occupied by settlers and in turn they reminded the people that anyone could purchase the lands and that the purchaser would have the right of possession, thereby increasing the uneasiness and excitement at the sale. Another participant at the auction said that "the hotels were full of speculators of all kinds from the money loaner, who would accommodate the settler at fifty per cent. . . and a worse class of money sharks . . . who wanted to rob the settlers of their lands and improvements . . . holding that the settler was a squatter and trespasser, and should be driven from his lands."37 Before beginning the auction, General Ver Planck Van Antwerp and John C. Brecken-ridge, receiver and register of the Burlington land office, read the Act of Congress of March 31, 1830 "for the relief of the purchasers of public lands and for the suppression of fraudulent practices at the public sales" with its threat of severe punishment for anyone combining with others to intimidate or prevent competitive bidding and with its proscription of contracts between moneylenders and settlers for the purchase and sub- 37 Charles R. Tuttle, An Illustrated History of the Slate of Iowa (Chicago, 1876), pp. 102-103. sequent resales of the land at a higher price and at frontier interest rates. A contemporary later said that when these two clauses were read "a silent smile on the settlers' faces spoke their contempt" for measures they proposed to nullify completely by the massed power of their claims club and the authority it had come to have at public land auctions.38 Preceding the public offering, some 110 settlers who had established themselves on land early enough to qualify under the Preemption Acts of 1824, 1834, and 1838 acquired their claims at the government minimum price. As soon as sales began it was seen that the club was in complete command and able to prevent competitive bidding on all tracts registered with it. With the bidder for the association standing by the auctioneer, all tracts for which the claimants could pay were knocked down at the minimum price of $1.25 an acre. There was some competition for 11 tracts not claimed by settlers which ran prices up to a high of $2.86 per acre.39 Claims associations as such were not opposed to investment in public lands by absentee or nonresident capitalists and they raised no objections to large purchases even though public opinion in the West was not favorable to them. Their primary objectives were to protect the settler who had made improvements from competition at the auction and to provide an organization to record the boundaries, conveyances, and mortgages of claims. If settlers were not able to raise the money to buy their 80- or 160-acre tract, the 38 A major difficulty with Section 5 of this act was that it declared null and void all contracts providing for the entering of the land by a moneylender who would then resell to the settler at a higher price, thereby making it almost impossible for the settler to recover his land from the usurious dealer unless he could in one way or another invoke the state usury law in the state or territorial courts. 4 Stat. 392. 39 George C. Duffield, "An Iowa Settler's Homestead," Annals of Iowa, Third Series, VI (October 1903), 213. The data concerning land entries is taken from the abstract of land entries in the Burlington and Dubuque land office, National Archives. |