St. Landry democrat., 1885-12-19
Wholesale Public Land Fraud.

The reader of the annual reports of
| the officials recently placed in charge
of the bureaux at Washington will come
to the speedy conclusion that the books
were thrown open none too soon. Ii is
such Il long record of frauds that it
makes man heartsick to follow it, and
leads to the wonder whether a century
of Republican government has rOtted
| the moral sense of the people so thor
oughly that honesty is impossible. The
annual report of Commissioner MCFar-
| land to Secretary Teller for the year
1898 occupied tlIirty-four pages; that
of Commissioner Sparks to Secretary
Lamar fills eighty-fOur, and the reader
will think before he has finished it that
| it should have been given $40, and sent
into the house OF every voter of sutf-
cient intelligence TO understand it.
| There seems to be no limit to the
| frauds which have been perpetrated
and which are now in course of p4rpe-
| tration, ranging from the petty survey
er who sWears he has surveyed and
marked parcel of land TO the gigantic
corporation which pays a host of petty
rascas to enable it to get semblance OF
| title to millions of dollars worth of
| valuable lands for few thousands.
! We are told of contracts sublet at one
third of the contract price. and of ficti-
tiOus field notes furnished by the con-
tractor. We hear of the continual pre-
sentatiOD of applications for amended
surveys and for re-surveys, chiefly
| made necessary in consequence OF frau
dulent or imperfect surveys. We are
told that an English firm obtained
100000 of the choicest redwood lands in
California, worth perhaps 800 per acre
sIv1xs
entries of possibly So per acre. We are
told that extensive coal deposits are
acquired in mass through expedited
surveys, followed by fraudulent pre-
emptiOns and committed homestead
entries. We are told how q defeated
claim, which could not rigltfully cover
mere than $4,000 acres has been sur
veyed TO cover $4,000 acres, and occu-
pants threatened with eviction ON the
pretense that the survey creates pre-
sumptive title in the claimants. We
are told how one grant was patented
for /, 200, 900 acres when the quantity le-
gally ciaimable under it could not have
exceed 96 5000 acres. We are shown
shame ON our administration THAT
valid property rights have failed of
protection. In regard to the railroad
land grants, the widely divergent prac-
tice of the officials and the iOOseneSs of
administration of these important
trusts challenge belief. Excuses of
allowances TO companies claiming all
lands within the possibilities of their
reach are numerous and great. Grants
| have been presumed by departmental
construction where no clear title was
shown, and the claim rested at best
upon uncertainties or ambiguity in the
statutes. The rule of law that public
grants are to be constructed strictly
| against the grantee and that nothing
passes by implication, might as we'll
| have been reversed, so fai as the praG-
tice of our land business has gone.
| There are enormous quantities OF pub
| lie land now reserved and set aside for
one claim or another which ought To be
| thrown open to the settler Immediately.
There are t00,000,000 acres of railway
grants to forfeiture, and these alone
| cover an area equal to that of the CONF
bined States of New York, New jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and
Virginia. 1t is clear that our land laws
require immediate and rigid revision,
and probably half of them should be
abolished.
The present Commissioner is the Hon.
William A. j. Sparks. who sat in Con-
gress eight years from Illinois, after
Serving in both houses of the State Leg
islature, and in other public capacities.
He is fifty-seven years old, and was a
receiver of the Land Office during the
Administration of Franklin Pierce.
The attention of Congress can scarcely
fail to be arrested by the display of the
necessity of reform which his report SO
strikingly makes.-Picayune.
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