The herald., 1896-10-10
SOUTHERN PACIFIC LANDS

SOUTHERN PACIFIC LANDS
Last year the governments land de-
partment patented to the Southern Pa
cific of Kentucky's stool pigeon corpora
| tion on this coast the following amount
| of the peoples lands:
In California to the Central Pacific,
| 1345 acres.
In California to the Central Pacific,
| ia, ,S13 acres.
In California to the Southern Pacific,
220. 61O acres.
| In California to the Southern Pacific,
| SO. TAI acres.
In Nevada to the Central Pacific, 20s.-
$40 acres.
In Oregon to the Oregon and Califor-
mia, 1,01S,29S acres.
In Oregon to the Oregon and Califor-
MIA. 114,S91 acres.
In Washington to the Oregon and
California, ITO acres.
A total of public lands, 1.720. 1854 acres.
The conduct of the land office for
| twenty years under both the Republican
and Democratic administrations in CIV
nies. debtors of the people, to debtors in
defiant default, to debtors who divided
dividends while refusing to pay their
debts, to debtors who have bribed off1c-
ers and corrupted congress year after
year to rob the people, to debtors who
have robbed each other. fieeced the pub
lie, avoided their duties to the public as
franchise holders and built up trusts
and cinches by special privilege, we say
that the conduct of the peoples land Of
flee in constantly giving to these
thieves the public lands is wrong with
out excuse. 1t is an outrage upon de-
cency. The honor and fair dealing of
our great nation has been thrown down
and dragged in the mire of corruption.
The whole government land policy has
been characterized by bribery and ia
voritism to the Kentucky corporation.
The cruel murders at Mussel Slough of
settlers who had made a garden out Of
the desert, where men were shot down in
their own homesteads before their own
families is only an extreme phase of a
land policy which has stretched every
thing for the wealthy and brfbing rail-
roads and against the people and the
actual settler. The land grants to rail-
roads should never have been given;
the public lands should be for actual
home makers alone and should never be
given to great combines of any kind.
The Southern Pacific grant was never
earned The construction of the law
should have been strict. 1t has been loose
~ . IL r. l.. Il
grants owed the people. the people
should have had protection. They have
never had 1t. When to on-payment of
debts to the people was added the open
diversion of profit and next the open di-
version Of business from the defaulting
companies, the public lands involved
should only have been sold for the pub
lie benefit. When the companies default
was added their defiance of the state of
California. their mocking refusal to pay
any taxes, their impertinent effrontery
in demanding that the public taxes
should not be fixed by the state but by
their own railroad men, Black Ryan and
Morehouse, honest men and plain citi-
zens should demand halt. No more
public lands should be given to these
millionaire defaulters. Not only has the
railroad secured millions of acres that
1t ought never to have had, but, 1T is, now
and has been using its usual surrepti-
tious methods to procure vast bodies CT
public lands that never wSfe granted to
it at all. 1t is upon this important ques-
tion that the railroad company has at
last run up against an honest man.
Judge Call has been beyond their in
iiuence. The railroad has been unable to
fool or to bully this champion of the peo-
pie. The case is before the brave and
incorruptible Judge Erskine M. Ross.
1t commences to look as If justice and
the rights Of the Ar, erican peole would
at last govern the decision and so end
their long reign of wrong. The people
should know and stand by Judge Calls
brave fight. They should not lose sight
of the legal ability, the exact justice and
the unf1inching ability of our great
Judge Erskine M. Ross Heretofore if
congress was strong for right as under
Judge Thurman's lead, subordinate land
officers, the land commissioners, etc,
were lax; or the secretary of the interior
seeking strong measures for right and
justice found subordinates in the rail-
road pay. Government attorneys have
permitted endless delays, some have let
these land cases go by default against
the people and even judges have taken
extreme construction of law against the
people or have been complacent or blind
to the evident collusion of government
council in all these wrongs. The combi-
nation of a competent and incorruptible
counsel for the people with a brave
clear-sighted and honest judge, as the
people now have in Judge Call as gov
ernment counsel and Judge Ross as the
trial judge, gives at last chance for a