St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-03-29
IT SAILED THROUGH
The Staples Bill Passes the
House Without Serious
Difficulty.
ITS MAJORITY WAS LARGE.
Remarks Made Upon the
Matter Were Of a Spicy
Character.
THE HOWARD CHARTER BILL
Goes Through and Is Fol-
lowed by the Sheehan
Charter Bill.
THE HOWARD CHARTER BILL

State Auditor Dunn met his Water
loo in the house yesterday. He was
the head and front of the opposition
to the Staples pine land bill, which
was discussed and objected to by
his friends, but they were decidedly
in the minority when it came to vOt-
ing, for the bill was passed 70 to So
MR.. STAPLES EXPLAINS.
AS the bill was read Mr.. Staples ex-
planned its different sections. The first
section required duplicates of certifi-
Gates of purchase. This, Mr.. Staples
said, was to preserve a copy of such
certificates in the office of the COM
missioner. In answer to a question
from j. D. Jones as to the necessity of
having the purchaser sign, acllnoWl-
edge and seal each certificate he re-
piled that the state entered into con-
tract. There was not more than $500
additional expense to be incurred by
the precautions to be observed in the
section.
Mr.. Jones-Doesn't it mean the keep
ing of a set of abstracts by the land
office?
Mr.. Staples-Yes, you might say so,
but is it not good plan?
1t seemed to Mr.. Jones that the sys-
tenn required was cumbersome and ex-
penSive, and at least twenty additional
men would be needed
Such remarks as these Mr.. Staples
characterized as being aimed to pref
udice.' He did not care to go into de-
bate on the details of a plan which was
so easily understood and so recon-
mended itself as guarding the state S
interest.
Mr.. Jacobson thought it an absurdity
that the great state of Minnesota
could not at the present time furnish
duplicates of certificates. The need of
such a record was so apparent that he
wondered that Mr.. Jones had sought
to attack the bill on this point. The
United States kept a record on lands
and could not the state of Minnesota
conduct its affairs in as business-like
manner. A final word as to the
necessity of the duplicates was spoken
by Mr.. Staples, in quoting from the
experiences of the chief clerk of the
land commissioner Today that office
knew nothing of the condition of lands
which it had sold
On some lands no taxes had been
paid for years. On other lands the
records had been lost, and for year
after year it had been impossible to
discover anything of the amounts due
on them.
SALE OF LANDS.
Section provided for the sale of
lands on which unpaid interest was
due. 1t was in part an addition to the
present law, as now land was seldom
sold for this reason. The only change
IN the next section was the REQUIRE
ment that record of patents be kept.
This had appealed to the pine land
committee as wise provision, and Mr..
Staples thought it would recommend
itself to the house.
BY section Z the right of petition to
the board of timber commissioners,
Tor the subdivision of land into small
parcels or village lots is granted The
Old law made no such provision, and
III certain cases the state, so Mr.. Sta
pies said, had lost thousands of dol
lars because of refusal to divide
land into smaller lots.
Section also considered the same
subject. it providing for the appoint
ment of appraisers, one by the gov
efnor, one by the commissioner of the
state land office, and a third by the
county commissioners where the land
IN question was situate. Their SER
wees were to be paid for at a rate of
50 per diem. The section made the
registration Of appraisers a necessity.
and thus aimed to correct the evils
existing under the present law in
cases where appraisals were made by
persons of whose names no record was
kept
BY section the trespasser on state
land was made liable in double dam
ages in the event of his being an in
voluntary trespasser, but trebly liable
were he a voluntary trespaSser In
theory lumbermca sometimes made
mistakes and cut on state lands, and
out of respect to this fiction Of law the
two degrees of liability were estab-
lished
PROPER PROTECTION.
Section 10 looked to the proper pro-
lection of the state by doing away
with appraisements after they had
stood four years.
In the past lands had been seldom
reappraised, and there were a number
of cases where land appraised years
ago at 50 an acre had been lately sold
for that price, although it was easily
worth from SIS to $50 an acre. The
next section provided for publication
of sale for four successive weeks in a
st. Paul and local newspaper near
the site of the lands to be sold, and
for the inclusion of the description of
the land in the notice. This was to
guard against the present practice of
private sales'-sales where sufficient
publicity of notice was not given, and
where no description of the lands was
attached to the notice.
The bill limits all future sales of
timber to injured pine, and section IS
expressed its vital point The object