The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-10-13
GO AFTER THEM.

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incompetent as any man who has ever
stood at the head of the General Land
Office. From the time he assumed
charge of the Office he has been in a
quarrel with the public and with his
superiors and the trouble arises over
some trifing matter or because of his
arbitrary, unreasonable rulings. For
instance, his order that il man in one
of the Territories wants load of wood,
or bunch of shingles, he must go into
the canyon and cut one, or saw the
other, and cannot employ man to do
the work for him. is most ridiculous
Interpretation of a wise law intended
to save the wood and shingles for the
Territorial citizen who requires them.
The suits that have been instituted
against the owners of saw mills, who
never ship board or stick of timber
cut of the Territory, are not justified
By the law. Many other things which
Sparks does are equally un-
warranted. His course has caused
him to be overruled and squstted
upon by his superiors more times than
any other Commissioner has ever been
reversed and suppressed. Sparks is
going out of Office with the entire west
denouneing him as head-Strong if not
malicious upstart who assumes it to
be the duty Of public officer to put the
people whom he serves to as much
trouble and expense as possible.
But there is one work in which Sparks
is engaged that it is to bs hoped he will
accomplish, and that is the putting &
stop to fraudulant land entries, and the
breaking of such entries already made
where the loss will not fall on innocent
parties. In times gone by the desire of
government seemed to be to get rid Of
its land. Liberal laws were enacted to
enable people to obtain titles to public
land. and these laws were so loosely
interpreted and enforced that it
was no trick at all for an enter
prising man with money to acquire
the ownership of vast tracts
of soil at his own price and on his own
terms. Millions of acres Of the public
domain have thus passed from the gov
eminent into the hands Of. capitalists
and spectators. The frauds have been
practiced until desirable tracts of public
land are scarce, and bona fde settlers
for whose benefit the land was to be
held, find it difficult to get favorable To-
cations. At the rate things have been
going on, all our land laws will be use
less in twenty-five years, for there will
be no public domain, the governments
title to soil being confined to reserva-
lions and national parks. The stealing
has been largely done through the
agency of the presumption and desert
acss, which have enabled spectators to
get titles to land to which they have no
more genuine right than they have to
tracts on the moon, Over in Wyoming
there are ranches fifteen miles square
taken up under the desert act, four-fifths
of the land in which has produced
good CROPS of hay since before
the memory of man. In Idaho the
same condition of things prevails.
where desert entries haYe been made of
IS choice meadow land as can be found
on the continent. If the land is desert
now, it always has been and always will
be. There has been fraud in all these
claims, and the effort of Sparks is to
void the entries and restore the land to
the public domain for the benefit of
poor men needing homes. The Com
missioner has already broken many
crooked entries, and permitted honest
settlers to file on the land. It is to be
hoped that he will go ahead with the
good work, and void every fraudulent
entry, and that next winter Congress
will repeal all laws which enables any
but bona fde settlers to get title to pub
lie lands.