Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-04-14
Especial Telegram to the Globe. !

| WASHINGTON, April 13.-An officer of the
interior department says it is not the fault
of that department that the Minnesota
land frauds just exposed were possible.
As long ago as Feb. s President Arthur
called the attention of congress to the ur-
gent necessity of stringent measures to
suppress the rapidly increasing evasion
and violation of land laws, but congress
chose TO do nothing of consequence upon
the subject. The most that was done was
to make larger appropriation for special
agents. Those agents are now in the field.
Some of them are about st. Paul and Bis
marck. Secretary Teller has frequently
called the attention to frauds in Dakota,
and to the common practice of locating
soldiers homesteads on valuable timber on
forged certificates. Commissioner McFar-
land maintains that vast tracts of timber
and grazing lands have been flooded by
spectators to the exclusion of actual set
tiers. He says that the territory of Dakota
cast only 5000 votes at the last election,
yet the number of the agricultural entries
to the present date exceeds 10000, and
such entries are now being made at the
rate of $4,000 yearly. Because the timber
lands Of northern Minnesota have been SO
largely entered by false afidavits of settle
ment under these laws, he felt compelled
during the past year to place 100000
acres on the market at the minimum price
of agricultural to avoid such wholesale
criminality. HeI states that partial inves-
tigation of frauds in Alabama and other
states have disclosed the fact that the gov
ernment has been defrauded out of mill
ions of dollars through the unlawful entry
of coal and iron lands under agricultural
laws.
Other similar cases to which his atten-
tion has been called have not been investi-
gated for want of means. The general
land Office has never been
furnished with facilities or means
to secure compliance with the require
ments of the public land laws, and the
Office has only been able to make investi-
cations to the extent of demonstrating the
necessity and utility of such service. But
the little that has beed done has shown
that it is within the power of the depart
ment to check the frauds, and that the
cost, while it may appear large, would be
trifiing compared with the pecuniary saw
ing. There are now before the department
claims covering titles to more than 200,-
100000 acres of land, of which some 5O,-
100000 are embraced in individual entries.
Many of their clans are without merit,
yet the land Office has been and is COM
PEELED to treat doubtful claims as valid,
because it could not investigate facts, and
congress has never given adequate power
to make this investigation. Commissioner
Mcfarland thinks eff small portion
of the money to be recovered for
the use of the United States from the can
collation. of fraudulent entries, or
still smaller portion to be saved from the
avails from the sale of mineral and timber
lands that are now illegally appropriated
could be made available for the expense of
Investigations and the cost of trials, this
service could be properly performed.
There ought to be in each land district in
| the United States, in my judgment, at
least one competent and reliable special
| agent, and in the Office at Washington
sufficient organization to supervise and di-
rect the work of such agents."
Within the scanty limits of the appro-
priations made at the last session efforts
are being made to detect these frauds. A
special division of frauds has been estab-
lished, to which all such matters are to be
referred. Special agents have within
few months visited regions where the
frauds in sales of timber land have been
committed. Agent Marshall late last
fall wrote: ''New surveys in the northern
part of the st. Cloud and Duluth
districts are opening up vast tracts of val
liable pine, almost the only remaining gov
ernment region of white pine east of the
Rocky mountains. 1 have reliable inform
alton that most extensive operations are
now in progress to cover these lands so
soon as the plats reach the land Office,
with pre-emption and homestead claims as
baseless and fraudulent as those exposed
in the Duluth district. Lumbermen who
desire to in some honest way purchase
these timber lands enrnestly appeal to the
government to prevent these frauds. If
the lands can be protected from the fraud
Hlent entries until sold at public sale, it
will give honest men chance to buy them,
thing impossible if the lands are open
to pre-emption with men ready by false
swearing to monopolize them.'
According to the exposure these frauds
were not prevented. The frauds
spoken of as having been prac-
ticed in the Duluth district are
fully explained in another letter of a pre-
vious date. In this, Agent Marshall states
that he examined 200 pre-empted tracts.
In the case of ffty-fv of them, small log
pens from one to four feet high with no
doors or windows and only little green
bush for roofs, were found on half of them.
On the remainder there was no semblance
of human habitation Or signs of human
occupancy. But, Mr.. Marshall says face
tiously, ''the party Investigating travelled
mostly on snow shoes, and some evidences
of the work of the pre- emptors might have
escaped notice, the snow in the woods be-
ing several feet Deep"
Western Associated Press
WASHINGTON, April 13.-The treasury
department has issued a circular stating
that articles arriving at Philadelphia, Bos-
ton, New York, Baltimore and New Orleans
e. IL Il L