Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-09-06
OUR SCHOOL LANDS.
Actual Settlers Going on Lands Formerly Held
by Speculators-Land Sharks Howl.
PANHANDLE, Tex, Aug. q, 1889.

by SpecuGtOrS-Land Sharks HOWL
PANHANDLE, Tex, Aug. "a, 1889.
To the Gazette.
In your issue OF August l appeared an
article as unmanly and undignitied as 1t
was erroneous and i'll tempered. If the
writer had been afflicted with rabies he
could have scarce been more snarlish and
snappish. Without cause or prOyocatiOn
he attacked and vilifed with. severity
the legislatures that passed the land laws,
the governors who approved them, the
commissioner who is so laudably trying
to enforce them, and then opens the
phials of his wrath on the actual settler,
bv him termed ''clam jumper. -
His ebuIltlons of temper are no worse
than his errors of fact, his perversions Of
law and his plumbers in logic. In the
sEerS face of the plain acts of 1888 he tries
to maintain that actual settlement on
agricultural school lands is unnecessary,
except to enable the purchaser to prove
up and pay out at the end of three years.
Actual settlement has been the cherished
policy of the legislature from the first
organization of the state, and the seven
section act is about the only serious de-
parture from that policy in the
history of our legIsla ton,
The courts also have always
favored the actual settler. Actual set
Element was the leading purpose of the
act Of 1888. Section . of that act gives
to the actual settler on the land on the
lst OF January, 1888, preferred right
to the land he occupied. Section says:
agricultural school lands shall only be
sold to actual settlers Section says:
: No 10 Cfo iprrlf school
be perfected until the proposed purchaser
files an affidavit that he intends that the
lands shall be actually settled within six
months; and in case of failure TO settle
the same within that time the proposed
purchaser shall forfeit the money already
paid on the land.
Now, if the failing to actually settle
within SIX months forfeited the money
already paid, what is the condition of
the land? Is tnot forfeited also? And,
if forfeited by noncompliance with the
conditions imposed by law, is it not again
part and parcel of the public domain and
subject to settlement and sale? And yet,
though forfeited by non-settlement, and
again part of the public domain, if an
honest settler 90 on it in compliance with
law, is he TO be denounced as a thief,
as was done in the Vernon article?
But OF all the unOIuSnlng lmpuOence
isfound in that article is the charge that
our land laws have been made i'll the in
| terest of the rich to the detriment of the
poor, or in the interest of spectators.
| If that writer had known the facts of the
case he surely would not have made such
| a mistake. We on the frontier have had
| sorrOwful occasion to know that as the
railroads advance through the country
| spectators keep well to the front and
| ahead; that in one way or another the
choicest lands are lariated out by them
! taken off the market and held for specu-s
| lation. And yet not one section in
| twenty so lariated out has been settled
| at all. One instance, when the South=
| eTn Kansas of Texas railroad was located
| througa Carson county there was a rush
| ofstaEfG gTabbers here, and during the
sseHF 1887 $50 sections of school lands
Es@ere awarded. Fifteen months thereaf-
/ ter Gen. McCulloch, agent of the land
! office, came to the Panhandle looking
after the condition of school lands, and
after careful investigation he found seven
! sections occupied as required by law and