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Show 482 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT and speculators. Sparks was aware that much of the abuse was occasioned by cattlemen who, to control the range they were using, had their employees enter tracts having access to water. Sometimes, reluctantly, the stockmen had their hands make even more extensive entries, though they recognized that ownership had tax liabilities that grazing cattle on the public domain did not involve. Large entries of this sort seemed necessary to protect ranchers from migratory persons who invaded grazing areas with their homestead privileges and the intention of compelling stockmen to buy them out. To invoke the law against these migratory and bogus "settlers" took courage. After Sparks' resignation the succeeding Commissioners retreated into a quieter acceptance of the laws instead of trying to lead, if not compel, Congress to adopt legislation they wanted. Their reports became more bland, less informative, and much less critical, though it is clear that the system of contracting surveys still piled up difficulties for later surveyors, landowners, and lawyers, and forced the re-survey of large areas. Incompetent, inefficient, and fraudulent surveys compelled Congress to allocate from 9 to 50 percent of the total appropriations for surveys for examination of the surveys and for re-surveys during the years 1885-1900. Beginning in 1896 Congress appropriated $55,000 for examinations and resurveys and in 1899, $75,000 or 20 percent of the total appropriation.57 "Beginning with 1885 the Commissioners broke down the appropriations for surveying, either as provided by Congress or as determined by the Land Office. Harrison's first Land Commissioner or someone on his staff prepared a supplement to the Annual Report, 1889, which is most curious for what it contains and what it leaves out. It seems to have been intended as a partisan history of the public domain for it concentrates on "The Notorious Yazoo Land Frauds," William Henry Harrison's "exposure of land frauds," "corrupt receivers of public moneys-wholesale defalcations-plunder Hostility to Large Ownerships The efforts of those Congressmen who favored repeal of the Preemption and Timber Culture Acts, extension of the period before homesteaders could commute their entries to cash, and revision of the Desert Land Act were in no way diminished by the dismissal of Sparks. Under the very able leadership of William S. Holman of Indiana and Lewis E. Pay-son, Chairman of the Public Lands Committee of the House-neither of whom was given to exaggeration or to the usual rodomontade that filled the pages of the Congressional Record at the time-the House was brought to see how these measures were abused by lumbermen, cattlemen, and speculative groups. Some of the lands they acquired were not at all fit for settlement but had valuable water privileges, timber, or coal deposits. Making the efforts of Holman and Payson somewhat easier was the bitter, almost xenophobic hostility of the times to alien landowners. English and Scottish capitalists had invested millions of dollars in the development of the cattle industry in the high plains, had enclosed great areas of land without title and at the same time had acquired title to large tracts of land through "easy administration of injudicious laws . . ." as Lewis Payson put it in his report to the House in 1886. Payson's report included a table showing the large holdings of aliens as, for example, Lord Dunraven's holding of 60,000 acres in Colorado, the Dundee Land Company's holding of 247,000 acres, and the Marquis of government and settler" and leaves the impression that until 1861 public land administration was thoroughly corrupt. In 1861 enlightenment, integrity, intelligent and forward-looking management replaced the "corrupt corps" with their "infamous schemes of systemmatic swindling." The 20-page statement (pp. 67-86) is unsigned, but of course the Commissioner was at least responsible for including it. |