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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 425 public lands immediately to the east and west of the 100th meridian.69 Nevertheless, the report contains a wealth of information and opinion given by people of substance in the Far West on problems of public land management. Much attention was devoted to the damage hydraulic mining in California was causing to the rich alluvial lands of the Sacramento and its tributaries. Some apologetic and defensive testimony was given to the effect that the resulting deposition enriched the land but the more convincing testimony related to the deplorable results being produced, for which there was no redress.70 Williamson's concern about the scandalous management of surveying was thoroughly documented and little defense was offered for the influence of politics in the appointment of surveyors general and the award of contracts on a patronage basis to incompetent or unreliable persons. Two topics that received considerable attention were of major importance to Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory. These were relinquishments and the extraordinary delay settlers endured in getting decisions on contested cases and cancelled entries through the bureaucratic red tape of Washington. The sale of relinquishments of preemption, homestead, and timber culture claims, to which the entryman might have devoted a good deal of labor and capital before he got title, had been banned by law. The purpose was to prevent dealers and landlookers from anticipating farm makers, but the prohibition had almost the opposite effect. Land agents early learned how to work through the red tape and bought and sold relinquishments as earlier settlers and dealers in Iowa had bought 69 "Report of the Public Land Commission," H. Ex. Doc, 46th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 22, No. 46 (Serial No. 1923), passim. 70 Cf. Robert L. Kelley, Gold vs. Grain, The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California's Sacramento Valley (Glendale, Calif., 1959), passim. and sold squatters' claims on government land before it was surveyed. They made no effort to disguise their dealings, even advertising relinquishments for sale in the newspapers in land office towns. But if a settler tried to sell a relinquishment of a homestead directly to a landseeker he might run into difficulty. As the Denver register pointed out, the local officers had to report cancellations of claims to the Washington office, and until the General Land Office had noted the cancellation and authorized the local officers to mark the tract on their charts as restored to entry, no application for it could be accepted. Buyers of quitclaims to homesteads had no standing or right until they were notified that the tract was restored to entry. The applicants could file on the tract though the buyer of a relinquishment might be already on the land and making further improvements on it. Attorneys in Washington, the register said, learned of cancellations and restoration to entry before the local officers got the information; where there was a contest, or where the tract was in considerable demand, they could get their information to contestants or rival entrymen before the purchaser of the relinquishment was aware of the need to file his application quickly.71 One wonders what Alexander Britton may have thought of testimony coming before him concerning the ability of Washington attorneys to obtain information about cancellations and restorations to entry and to inform attorneys in the field by telegraph before the local land officers learned of it, thus permitting their clients to gain rights to which anterior settlers had better claims. Though the Washington attorneys were not accused of doing anything illegal by gaining this desired information through some friendly contact, they were able to deprive a more legitimate 71 "Report of the Public Land Commission," pp. 83-84, 260-61, 324-25. |
