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Show USE AND ABUSE OF SETTLEMENT LAWS, 1880-1904 485 480 acres, as conditions seemed to make necessary.63 Reminiscences and various documents suggest that the Timber Culture Act had been used by settlers chiefly to hold quarter-sections until they could arrange to preempt or homestead them or gain valuable relinquishment rights for resale. This is fairly evident from the fact that of the 290,278 original timber culture entries only 65,265, or 22 percent, were carried to patent by fulfilling the obligations of the Acts of 1873 and 1878, as compared with 53 percent or original homestead entries that were completed and patented. Commutation of timber culture entries was permitted persons who had complied with the requirement . for the setting out and care of trees on 10 acres for 4 years with a payment of $1.25 an acre.64 Only 7,108 persons took advantage of this provision. Timber and Stone Act Extended Instead of plugging up the loopholes in or repealing the Timber and Stone Act, Congress on August 4, 1892, extended its provisions to all the public land states- "Sparks wrote in 1886 (Report, 1886, p. 101): "The necessity for empowering registers and receivers to summon witnesses in public-land cases has repeatedly been brought to the attention of this office. The State of Minnesota, by legislative enactment, has given such authority to United States local land officers in that state, but a general act of Congress, extending such power to all registers and receivers, is required, both in the interest of the Government and of private parties." Sparks said that fraudulent claimants had no difficulty in assembling their witnesses but the government case broke down commonly because of this lack of authority. Until 1903 Commissioners continued to beg Congress for an act authorizing the power to compel the attendance of witnesses but without success. M Land Office Report, 1921, p. 65. The number of final entries there appears somewhat smaller than the figure for 1904 at the end of this chapter. I cannot reconcile the difference. an interesting commentary on the power of the speculators and dealers in timber.65 It has been seen that the preemption laws were most important in areas where lands were not yet open to sale and subject to unlimited entry, and that after 1841 they also gave protection to the settler on unsurveyed land. Preemption entries were lumped together in the records with other cash entries; hence, until 1881, there are no separate preemption entry statistics. Thereafter, with the area of offered land diminishing rapidly and the greater part of newly surveyed land being reserved for homesteaders and not offered for sale, the Preemption Act became increasingly important as a supplement to homestead, providing the means by which settlers could acquire 320 acres in 5 years and 6 months at the shortest. It was also the quickest and easiest way for cattle, mining, and timber companies using dummy entry-men to gain ownership of many quarter-sections quickly. Successful preemptions were first listed in 1881 with 5,050 entries; the following year they reached 9,255; 15,221 in 1883; and 21,286 in 1884. Sparks' campaign against fraudulent preemption entries may have been responsible for the reduction to 15,800 entries in 1885 and to 15,712 in 1887, but Cleveland's reversal of Sparks' suspension order and the Congressional attack upon him leading to his removal coincided with a big increase in entries to 23,151 in 1888 and 19,586 in 1889. A total of 170,110 preemption entries for 25,288,900 acres were patented between 1881 and 1891. These totals do not seem large in comparison with the 523,748 original homestead entries in the same period but there was abundant evidence that many preemption entries were being filed for parties other than those making the entries. The persistence of fraud and evasion of the purpose of the measures and the difficulty of distinguishing legiti- 65 27 Stat. 348. |