OCR Text |
Show 586 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT occasion to regret the inclusion of the lieu land provision in the Management Act of 1897, and yet it was included for legitimate and doubtless proper reasons. The misfortune was that in drawing this act, like the Timber and Stone, Timber Culture, and Preemption and Homestead Acts, inadequate care was taken to make sure that abuses would not follow. By permitting owners of near worthless land within the forest reserves to exchange them for equal acreages of the very choicest timberlands outside, Congress was setting up a system that invited wholesale abuse and deprived the government of valuable resources. Dealers searched out school sections 16 and 36 within the reserves, bought them from the state, and then relinquished the land for the lieu scrip. Scandal after scandal broke in Oregon and California involving the use of lieu scrip and dummy entrymen. The Oregon frauds-which involved a Senator and a Congressman, registers and receivers, and led to the indictment of 70 people for fraud, false swearing and bribery -were bad enough, but in California the frauds were even more startling.64 Suspected irregularities first came to light in 1902 in the Hyde and Benson case involving some 1,200 selections embracing 250,000 acres. The fraud, when finally detected after 200 selections had gone to patent, involved "the employment of fictitious names forged to state applications" for worthless land high in the mountains, inducing people to apply for state lands on which they had no intention of settling, procuring notaries to affix their signatures 64 A highly personal account of the Oregon land frauds which seems to comport with the facts as can be determined in other sources is S. A. D. Puter and Horace Stevens, Looters of the Public Domain (Portland, Oreg., 1908), passim. The lurid description of Puter's difficulties with the law and the easy way he cast blame on big lumber interests, while admitting his own misdeeds, seems to have persuaded historians to discard it as a source. The Nation, 80 (June 22, 1905), 492. for applicants who did not appear before them, bribing land office staff to hasten the selections improperly, and "corrupting forest officials" to recommend the inclusion of such selections within national forests. After conviction of Frederick Hyde and Joost Schneider four land officials were dismissed for being in the pay of the conspirators, and a forest superintendent, forest supervisor, and a number of other officials were discharged. Steps were being taken to halt further patenting of entries proved to be based on fraud and suits were pending to set aside the patents obtained by fraud.65 The principal beneficiaries of the forest lieu provision were the Santa Fe. the Northern Pacific, and the Southern Pacific Railroads whose alternate section land grants in arid mountain areas had little value. However, there seems no reason to think the railroads had any major part in placing the lieu land provision in the Act of 1897. The Santa Fe Railroad had 1,368,060 acres in two forest reserves in Arizona, part of which was too valuable for its timber to relinquish for scrip. Where the timber amounted to no more than 10,000 board feet to the acre, the Santa Fe was privileged to cut the timber, relinquish the land, and receive restricted scrip subject to entry only south of the Tehachapi Mountains in California. For relinquishing lands barren of timber the railroad received unrestricted scrip that was subject to entry anywhere on the unreserved public lands. Naturally, the unrestricted scrip brought the best price. The Santa Fe received 406,000 acres of restricted and 521,000 acres of unrestricted scrip. It sold 205,000 acres of the restricted scrip to J. J. Hagemann for $1.50 an acre and the balance to other persons for $2.50 to $3.50 an acre. For the unrestricted scrip it received as much as $16 an acre, though the average price obtained probably was 65 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1908, pp. 99-101. |