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Show USE AND ABUSE OF SETTLEMENT LAWS, 1880-1904 467 Secretary of the Interior, compiled a devastating indictment of the attempts of cattle companies and stockmen to control the range and bar settlers. One of the frequently reiterated charges was that stockmen had monopolized approaches to water by using dummy entrymen to acquire land for them through preemption and homestead entries. These entries were often so located as to gi\e color to the cattlemen's claims that they had enclosed only their own land. Hundreds and thousands of acres of public land were illegally fenced and threats of violence made against anyone who cut the fences. A mail carrier told how he either had to go miles out of his way to deliver mail or halt where public land was fenced, get out of his buggy to let the bars down, drive through and then get out and put up the bars and risk his skittish horses running away. Settlers and small stockmen were threatened with expensive lawsuits and even with death if the fences were cut. Efforts of the Land Office to declare the fences illegal produced no results for it appears that the larger cattle companies, some with a capitalization of more than a million dollars, were able to control the courts and the law officers. Two companies, one owned by Scottish capitalists, were said to have enclosed over a million acres each; 18 other companies, partnerships or individuals were named who had enclosed from 16,000 to 200,000 acres each in Colorado, Kansas, or Nebraska. Whole counties in Kansas were reported to be fenced; in Wyoming 125 large cattle companies were charged with fencing public lands. Elsewhere, in Montana, New Mexico, and Utah fencing in of public lands was common. The Acting Commissioner of the Land Office summarized his evidence by saying that "the practice of illegally inclosing the public lands is extensive throughout the grazing regions ... many millions of acres are thus inclosed and are now being so inclosed to the exclusion of the stock of all others than the fence owners, and to the prevention of settlements and the obstruction of public travel and intercourse."11 Although the cattlemen and their political friends seemed to triumph over the settlers, ultimate victory was bound to come to the latter as their numbers grew. The Senate resolution of February 14, 1884, was an indication of the way the wind was blowing and the facts divulged by the resulting report gave further impetus to the cause of the settlers. In 1884 and 1885 the House and Senate took up the fencing question and adopted a fairly stringent measure giving to the Interior and Justice Departments adequate authority to prosecute persons illegally fencing public lands. The facts that fencing of public lands could have existed for several years and that numerous clashes of a serious, indeed a fatal, character should have developed between cattlemen and settlers before action was taken was attributed by N. C. McFarland, Commissioner of the Land Office, to the complexity of the land laws. As he pointed out, there was no law under which parties could be prosecuted criminally, and to maintain a civil suit necessitated long and painstaking investigations. First it was necessary to determine precisely what public lands were enclosed. After the testimony had been carefully studied by the Land Office it had to go to the Attorney General who would give equally careful study to the legislation, court decisions and precedents, and then send the record to the district attorney for prosecution. All this would take months, if not years, and meantime warfare on the range was continuing and the right of settlers to proceed upon the enclosed lands was denied.12 11S. Ex. Doc, 48th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 6, No. 127 (Serial No. 2167), p. 2. 12 Cong. Record, 48th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 4768-83, esp. 4772; Act of Feb. 25, 1886, 23 Stat. 321. |