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Show 428 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT or forged pieces of scrip to enter land in Dakota Territory for which patents were issued only to be recalled when it was later discovered that all pieces were fraudulent. The loss fell on innocent purchasers.79 Light was thrown on the allotment of land in Utah before Federal land law was effectively extended to the territory. The interviewee was a Mormon who said that allotments of 10 and 20 acres were made only with the approval of the bishop. Favoritism was charged in making allotments. In anticipation of the introduction of American land law, churchmen made claims everywhere on likely land "to keep the Gentiles from taking part of the land." There was much confusion and litigation in reconciling the Mormon land tenure, with its small but intensively used allotments, and the Federal system of quarter-section homestead and preemption filings on land not being developed, numerous relinquishments, and subsequent delay in opening the forfeited or relinquished land to entry.80 A commission to settle all the confusion and litigation carrying over from the period of church control of land was recommended. Despite the inordinate allotment of space to testimony of people from California, Colorado, and Nevada (58 percent) and the relative neglect of the areas in which home-steading was most active, the commission brought together a mine of information, highly subjective though it may be, that gives an insight into the working of the land system at the turn of the period when the settlement laws were being abused increasingly by various interests to accumulate land. The commission made more conservative recommendations than Powell's famous report and than Williamson in previous years. Its first recommendation, as was becoming good bureaucrats, was that the "Ibid., pp. 56, 327. 80 Ibid., p. 492. staff of the General Land Office should be increased by nine, that the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner should have their salaries increased by 50 percent, that some of the other members of the staff should have small increases, including laborers who might have their income augmented by 9 percent, or $1.20 a week. Here the commission was virtually taking over previous recommendations made by the Commissioner. On surveying, to which much of the testimony of the interviewees was devoted, the commission recommended that surveying of swamp and grazing lands should be confined to township lines and that no further "land parceling" of such lands should be made, that "a proper system of monumentation" be established (although it did not indicate what would be proper), and that the contract system for surveying be ended and regular salaried deputies be substituted. It made no mention of the proposal to abolish the surveyor general positions which was too hot for it to handle, though it did suggest that they should have scientific and practical knowledge of surveying. But if it did not venture to deal effectively with the surveyors general the commission did propose to abolish the office of receiver, of which there were 94; this took some courage. Its argument was that the register and receiver duplicated each other's work and the General Land Office had sufficient supervisory authority to prevent any misuse of authority by the register without having a receiver to provide a check upon his every act. The proposal to classify the lands, as recommended by Powell and by the commission, into arable, mineral, arid but irrigable, pasturage (for grazing), and timber-land was not new but the report made little effort to establish criteria for classification or to determine how it was to be achieved. Like Williamson, the commission favored the repeal of the preemption laws. Al- |