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Show GENERAL GRANTS TO STATES 327 sidered by the railroad officials as part of their grants. Thus in the fifties the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was contesting selections of swamplands that the state of Missouri was trying to have approved. A little later the Burlington and Missouri was in the midst of a long drawn out legal battle with state officials in Iowa over the selection of land in the vicinity of Glenwood, and the Cairo and Fulton Railroad in Arkansas was contesting state selections near its line. In 1855 the surveyor general for Wisconsin reported that "it seemed almost impossible to bring this business [swampland selection] to a satisfactory conclusion." The Wisconsin selections were daily being called into question by people anxious to enter them as public lands. By 1856 the area of contested swampland selections was 1,168,451 acres,23 much the larger proportion being in Illinois and Iowa. Since states, and in some instances counties, were making the original selections and the process involved some expenses not easily provided for, some states allowed individuals to make the selections and compensated them with a share of the land they chose and for which they secured the patents. After Louisiana had selected and gained patents to the lands most easily proved to be swamplands it made a contract with John McEnery whereby he was to receive one-half of any additional land he persuaded the officials in Washington to convey to the state as swampland. Between 1884 and 1892 he received from the state as a result of his efforts deeds to 107,712 acres.24 It was by making such agreements as this that the states were able to obtain the services of some of the sharpest land lawyers whose com- 23 S. Doc, 34th Cong., 1st and 2d sess., Vol. I, No. 1 (Serial No. 810), p. 200. For an intelligent effort to explain his decisions and recommendations respecting contested claims see the statement of John Loughborough, surveyor general for Illinois and Missouri in ibid., p. 212. Also H. Ex. Doc, 35th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 997), p. 202. 24 Compiled from the entry volumes of swamplands in the State Land Office, Baton Rouge. pensation was far higher than were the salaries of the lawyers in the Justice and Interior Departments. These men managed to secure for their states approval of large acreages that, with abler protection at headquarters, might have been reduced. From California came reports that the state's agents were selecting land not shown by the plats to be swamp or overflowed, and that it was permitting persons to take up land upon which settlers were already located and waiting to file their declaratory statements for preemptions. Even more damaging was the report that the state selecting agents were interested in gaining ownership for themselves of the land they were selecting.25 Like most of the states, California followed the practice of allowing the selection agents a certain proportion of the land for which they secured patents. The agents operating for the state and a clique of San Francisco capitalists engrossed such a large proportion of the swamplands of the state that a Joint Committee of the Legislature was appointed to inquire into the concentration of ownership these interests had established in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys. The list of large holdings compiled by the committee shows how effectively this group had worked in acquiring great blocks of land that later, when irrigated, were to become very valuable. Many of the entry men were acting for Miller & Lux whose total of swampland came to 80,350 acres and James B. Haggin and Lloyd Tevis whose patented lands were 34,000 acres. Part of the Miller & Lux and all of the Haggin and Tevis patented land ended up in the possession of the Kern County Land Company.26 In Mississippi, cypress land in the Yazoo Delta and longleaf pine land, some of it on 25 S. Doc, 35th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. I, No. 11 (Serial No. 919), p. 226. 26 Report of the Joint Committee to Inquire into and Report upon the Condition of the Public and State Lands Lying Within the Limits of the State of California, 1872. Data respecting patents for swamplands is from the patent books in the State Land Office, Sacramento. |
