The age-herald., 1902-02-20
Washington Day by Day

I
 further granting of public lands In Ala
 bama for school purposes, as well as
 to existing conditions regarding lands 1 already donated to the cause or | education, and lands classed as mineral exists in the minds and consciences of number of the Alabama people, more especially the farmers and stock-grow- 1 CTS.
 1 There Is vigorous protest against the
 passage of certain bills now pending in | Congress to grant government land in 1 that state to the cause of education, and | if what is asserted to be actual conditions
 in the mineral region be true then such
 protest cannot be too vigorously made. Upon the authority of a citizen of one
 of the counties adjoining Jefferson whose | character and standing are unimpeach- | able, it Is declared that if proposed land 1 granting legislation is enacted and the
 government land of the Birmingham dis | trict generally Is set aside for schools
 of one class or another. 1t will work a great hardship on private owners of ad- l joining lands. as the schools hold and | will hold the lands for higher prices. Some statements submitted are so seri- 1 ous as to challenge the thoughtful consid- 1 eration of all citizens and of Congress l itself
 There are thousands of acres that
 were donated indemnity lands for
 valueless Sixteenth Sections which are | still lying as when they were trans ferred by the government These lands are of no value to the schools and are l not subject to taxation, but remain a bit l ter curse to adjoining owners. There are ten detached forty-acre blocks In one cer- | tain tract of private land, and it will re- quire five miles of fencing by the private
 owner to make boundaries between his
 land and the detached forties The only 1 persons who have ever benefited by this
 particular donation of government prop
 erty were the timber thieves who cut off
 the timber and sold it in the form of rail-
 road crossties.
 "If possible, let the government lands
 here be opened to homestead entry; or
 better still let these lands be sold at
 public outcry to the highest bidders over
 the governments fixed prices, and if not | sold in that way, then open the lands to homestead entry The main point
 in favor of public sale is that, private | owners whose property is cut up by odd | forties of school lands would have the op- portunity of buying themselves out of | the serious trouble and expense entailed by the location of such blocks of land | in cutting up their tracts for these for | ties would not be entered as homesteads. | because they are too small, but would remain to curse the adjoining owners. As far back as 1883 Congress passed an | act providing for just such emergencies;
 but the school lands here are withheld
 from sale.
 People here"-in the Birmingham dis. trict-"are deeply interested Tn this mat ter. One man here who bought land for stockraising purposes, paying 5000 for breeding stock alone is seriously handi- capped by the present land lovers. as he can not get titles to solid block of land His tracts of land corner with each oth- CT, and that condition greatly hampers his business, besides requiring a great amount of expensive fencing that might be avoided.
 This man lives in a section where there is no mineral of any value, and the land is fit for stockraising only. He is ready to invest still more money in cattle if he could secure land unbroken by odd forties.
 Many thousands of acres are held by the government as mineral lands in Wins ton County. the government price being $20 an acre, when in point of fact they contain neither coal nor iron and are suited for nothing but stockraising be- ing too poor for farming and private ownership of identical land changes hands at seldom more than a dollar an acre. These lands, held by the govern ment as specifically coal lands, are in detached sections and perhaps are so classed because they contain no coal Why there isn't twenty dollars of coal in whole township of the public lands referred to as so held in Winston Coun- ty; a fact possibly not known at the time the lands were classed coal
 '" School lands in this district are a curse to small landowners. and the peo- pie object to further donations by Con gress''
 Pending authoritative announcement of the precise items and the sum total of the Alabama rivers and harbors oppropria- tions to be recommended by the House committee, 1t Is timely to repeat the as- surance offered in this place weeks ago that the interests of Alabama are be- ing as carefully and effectively safeguard. ed as they possibly could be.
 Congressman Bankhead, the Alabama member and working leader of the Dem ocratic minority of the rivers and har- bors committee, has been working with his committee associates seven to ten hours day for six weeks, and his health is beginning to suffer from the prolonged labor and anxiety, and the continued close confinement in the foul atmosphere of the inadequate committee room in which there has been daily for all these weeks an average of forty or fifty per sons engaged in making representations in behalf of their respective localities This room is fairly comfortable for twen- ty persons, including the fifteen members who constitute the committed; but fright fully crowded as it has been and is still it has proved to be very trying to the health of the committee members. None of them is i'll; yet none of them is well. All are worked down and are poisoned by