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Show EARLY EFFORTS TO PROTECT PUBLIC TIMBERLANDS 557 other hand he adopted completely McFar-land's recommendations for the repeal of the Preemption and Timber Culture Acts.71 When William A. J. Sparks took command of the Land Office in 1885, the West had occasion to recall Rehoboam's adjuration, "My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." If Schurz, Williamson, and McFar-land had been strict, timber depredators and persons trying to take advantage of the Federal land laws found Sparks much worse. "Depredations upon public timber are universal, flagrant and limitless," reported Sparks in his first accounting. Twenty-three special agents reported 396 cases of trespass involving timber worth nearly $3 million. Whole ranges of pine timber had been cut over, steam sawmills promiscuously established on public lands, and large operators were employing hundreds, in some cases even thousands, of men cutting timber on public lands. Unlike his predecessors, Sparks mentioned by name some of the largest of the companies accused of violating the law, including the powerful Sierra Lumber Company of California, against which a suit was pending for the recovery of the value of 60 million feet of lumber taken from government land, and the Montana Improvement Company, essentially a subsidiary of the Northern Pacific Railroad.75 In 1886, 1,218 cases 74 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1883, pp. xxx-xxxiii, and 1884, pp. xiv-xvii. 75 The Northern Pacific Railroad held 51 percent of the stock of the Montana Improvement Company. Among the charges brought against the company were: it claimed control of all the timber on the alternate section lands of the railroad from Miles City, Montana, to Wallula, Washington Territory and all on the government reserved sections; though the railroad was completed in the vicinity of the Flathead Reservation on which it had temporary cutting privileges it was continuing to cut, operating its mill night and day; its policies prevented competitors from engaging in the lumber industry and were threatening to wipe them out, including the charges of the Northern Pacific Railroad for the carloads of company lumber, $23 each, of trespass were brought involving over a half billion feet of lumber, 153,743 logs, 239,397 cords of wood, 2,265,000 railroad ties, together worth $9,339,678. Succeeding reports suggest that Sparks had begun no mere flurry of investigation but was out to press charges as rapidly and as far as his funds permitted. Sparks could find no good in the Timber and Stone Act which, he maintained, was being used in California, Oregon, and Washington Territory to acquire land for capitalists at $2.50 an acre that was worth $10 to $25 an acre for the standing trees. Misuse of the act to acquire redwood lands of northern California was begun in 1878 on a wholesale scale by a group of California and Wisconsin speculators in tim-berland who ultimately brought into their enterprise several Scotch capitalists. As the Secretary of the Interior brought out in 1888, the group proposed to acquire the best of the redwood land in Humboldt County through capital provided by the Scotch investors in the California Redwood Company. The local promoters agreed to pay $5 for recruiting men who would enter already selected quarter-sections for them and to pay the entrymen $50 each upon the completion of the entry and execution of the deed. Residents of a sailors' boarding house, among others, were induced to make such entries, taking the usual oath that the entries were not being made for the benefit of others. In one day 349 deeds from these entrymen were filed for registration which, one might think, would have excited suspicion, but apparently no concern had been felt in Washington. The Scotch capitalists who paid $7 an acre for the land proceeded to value the lands at $10,500,000 and to float a debenture issue of $1,500,000. Rumors of fraud in such large acquisitions whereas competitors had to pay $47 each. Decisions of the Department of the Interior and General Land Office Relating to the Public Lands (73 vols., 1881-1966) , 4:65 ff. |