Los Angeles herald., 1891-08-19
two stories before him. He pays his
money and he can take his choice.
STEALING TIMBER LANDS BY WHOLE
SALE.

Inc n0e JlmDer luUub III tlle SleTTdS OF
Fresno and Kern counties is being rap
idly taken by dummies for the behoof
of great lumber monopolies. A Michi-
gan lumber company, at the head of
which is General Alger, a prominent
Republican candidate for the presiden-
tial nomination of that party, has taken
up about 10000 acres of these timber
lands. The way in which these lands
are acquired by the timber monopolies
is no secret. Men are engaged in San
Francisco or elsewhere to take them up
under the land laws. They are
conveyed to the localities by their
employers, so as to inspect the lands
they are engaged to locate, in order that
they may be able to answer with some
degree of intelligence the questions the
law requires the land register to put to
them. After the entry has been made
by these dummies the government price
of the lands is paid over in money fur
nished by the companies, and then the
titles issued to the men of straw are at
once turned over to the timber syndi-
cate. In this way the Alger timber land
syndicate has got possession OF $4,000
acres of the best timber land on
the Pacific coast. 1t will be re-
membered that the fine redwood timber
lands of Humboldt county were secured
by Scotch and Michigan companies IN
the same way, and that Benson, the
government land agent, whom United
States District Attorney Garter is trying
to relieve from the indictments hanging
over him, was implicated in the frauds
perpetrated upon the land department
by these companies. The Fresno sier-
ras embrace some of the finest timber
lands in the country. By expert survey
the region taken up by the Michi-
gan syndicate contains eight billion
feet of redwood, sugar pine, yellow
pine, fir and cedar, and there are single
trees in the belt that will yield from 30,-
600 to 100, 900 feet OF lumber. The ordi-
nary citizen, who believes that the land
laws as well as all OF her laws should be SO
administered that enormous frauds could
not be committed under them, would
like to know how it is that these timber
syndicates can secure title to these
lands in spite OF the fact that every
man, woman and child in Fresno county
knows that the law has been grossly out
ragged to accomplish this purpose.
The law requires each locator of
quarter section to show to the satis-
faction of the land Office, that he is a
bona-fide purchaser for himself and not
the agent OF another. Is it possible that
the government officers in the land Of
fee, alone of all the people in the dis
trict, are ignorant of the fact that dunn
mics are using their Office for fraudulent
purposes, and that the most essential
principle of the law, the prevention of
monopoly of the public lands,
is being subverted by wholesale
frauds under their very noses? OF
course these officers know it; and so
do the district attorneys ard the judges J;
but not one of them seems to have the
courage to make this business of acquir-
ing vast stretches of valuable govern
ment land by perjury and subornation
OF perjury crime too dangerous to COM
NIT with impunity. What respect can
the people have for the laws when they
see them outraged and violated by syn
dicates composed of men OF the Alger
status for the purpose Of gain? Every
one Of the 10000 acres claimed by the
Michigan syndicate in the region OF
Fresno county has been got by fraud,
and the whole country knows it.