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Show USE AND ABUSE OF SETTLEMENT LAWS, 1880-1904 477 rank in other bureaus, and asked for funds to hire a higher grade of clerks for the complicated questions they faced.43 The last of Sparks' raspingly critical reports was dated September 28, 1887, 6 weeks before he resigned. Again he repeated his severe indictment of corruption that had made it necessary to do surveys over again, condemned the contract system, asserted that fraudulent private land claims and fraudulent surveys of legitimate claims were responsible for "the gross piracy of public lands," and brought forth additional evidence of the misuse of the settlement laws. Sparks had worn out his welcome with the easygoing Lamar who disliked the continued controversies between his subordinate and Congress. In November 1887, Sparks asked Lamar to reconsider a decision he had made rejecting a recommendation that action be taken to recover a substantial tract of land from a Wisconsin railroad. Sparks' closely reasoned appeal for reconsideration contains some slightly rough spots that a tactful subordinate official would have couched in more respectful tones but Sparks was making a lawyer's argument for his position, and an ably drafted argument it was. Lamar seems to have been worn down by the reformist zeal of his subordinate, who had caused him more trouble than all the other bureau chiefs together. Rather than give more time to the technical details of the question, which if the Commissioner's view were to prevail would return many thousand acres of lands to the government at the cost of the Omaha Railroad, Lamar replied in a curt, indeed angry letter, that as the New York Times said was "offensive or at least annoying." Lamar felt that the Commissioner should accept the Secretary's interpretation or resign and was said to have declared that either he or Sparks must leave the Department. A strong Demo- 43 Ibid., p. 107. cratic organ, the New York Times, which had been favorably impressed with the efforts of Sparks to root out corruption and prevent the public lands from being fraudulently acquired, expressed dismay at Lamar's hasty action in writing such a letter and immediately giving it to the press. It added that Lamar had displayed "neither the temperament nor the clear and calm judicial faculty" that one expected of a man being considered for the Supreme Court.44 Cleveland had to support Lamar in the controversy but at the same time he acknowledged, in accepting Sparks' resignation, the remarkable work he had done in improving the functioning of the land system.45 Thus went out of office the prickly, self-assured moralist, perhaps the ablest Commissioner the Land Office had in the 19th century, one who had done much to focus attention upon the failure of Congress to grapple with needed reforms and on the failure of the administration to use the powers government possessed to reduce, if not to eliminate, fraud in the transfer of public lands to private ownership. Flagrant Violations Prevail Williamson, McFarland, and Sparks had brought out much information concerning the misuse of the settlement laws in the timbered sections of Minnesota, California, and Oregon, and in parts of Dakota Territory and Kansas and Nebraska but Congress was slow to act. Though the Commissioners pointed their fingers at lumbermen, cattlemen, and speculators who had con- " New York Times, Nov. 12, 13, 1887. 45 John B. Rae, "Commissioner Sparks and the Railroad Land Grants," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXV (September 1936), 211-30. Cate, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, seems not to have been aware that all the major reforms and improvements in the administrative machinery of the Land Office were the result of Sparks' leadership which Lamar merely allowed to proceed as long as it did not rock the boat too seriously. |