Arizona republican., 1903-01-27

growth there has been in Arizona in the matter of postoffiCe receipts. This table, sent me hy the third assistant postmaster general, shows that for he year ending June 3O 1S9O the postofice receipts in Arizona amounted to $2S.- 416.G6 and for the year ending June 30,
 1902, to $129, ,267.95. The internal rev
 enue receipts from Arizona in 1892 were
 $17, ,965SO, and in 1901 they were $61.- SSO.96.
 MT. President. does that look like 9 stagnant community"
 The opponents of the statehood bill
 have stubbornly ignored the fact that the great development of these terri
 tories has been during the last ten years-that until the court of private land claims removed the cloud which
 hung over nearly all titles in the south west affairs were, indeed, in stag naEt" condition. In a superb manner Senator Foraker brought out the facts:
 No community in the United States and the senator from Indiana cannot find one when he comes to address the senate and point it out-can show q greater development of an industrial character than that of New Mexico. l mean that he cannot find one where among 200,000 people, situated as that people are, there has been an equal growth of postOffice and postal receipts and of internal revenue receipts and of land entries during the same period of time. And all this is true and equally true, in proportion. of Arizona
 Now l come to the question of pop ulation, and before l take 1t up speci- fically let me make some general ob-
 servatiOns. In the first place, the sena- tor from Minnesota told us with great
 particularly how long it had been since the first settlements were made in Arizona and in New Mexico, and then he commented upon the fact that
 they were among the oldest settled ter ritories in the United States; and then
 he pointed to the fact that notwitt- sanding they had been settled for two or three hundred years they have only
 this population, insufficient, as he claimed. to entitle them to statehood.
 Mir. President, why is it there has
 been this backwardness in the growth of population? You do not need to go outside of the speech of the senator
 from Minnesota to find the answer. He pointed it out when he told us that New
 Mexico and Arizona were until only
 very few years ago inhabited by wild and savage Indians. and he might have added Indians against whom for our
 people there the government did TO. interpo5e any sufficient protection. Be ing thus overrun by Indians, people would not go there until it was made safe, when they could go to some other
 place where the tide of population was running. But that is not all Taka New Mexico. We acquired that terri
 tory from old Mexico. We entered into
 stipulation with respect to private
 property there-that all rights should
 be protected and titles be made secure.
 But how did we discharge that obliga-
 tion? Not until 1891, I believe it was. did we take any effective steps or measures to settle the disputed Spanish
 land grant titles in New Mexico. We then created a court, the court of pri-
 vate land claims, and set it to work.
 It is now completing it's labors. I be-
 lieve the time in which it was to com plete it's labors was extended at the last session until June, 1903. At that time its work will be concluded.
 .''I have here the report of the Unite ] States attorney for that court Ac- cording to it it appears-I will not stn;, ; to read it-that that court has heard and has settled the title to more than 20,000.000 acres. These Spanish land grants, long years ago made, overlap
 ping each other and duplicating each other, made it almost impossible for anybody to go into New Mexico and
 --6~
 might have said that the same was true of large portion of Arizona.) Out of
 about 26.OOO,0OO acres that were involved in these Spanish lang grant claims the | court rejected all except about 2,OOO. 900 i acres. thus returning more than 2O,OOO,-
 900 acres to the public domain.
 Tt has been only within the last two or three years that man going into New Mexico had any assurance that he coulu acquire a good title to land when
 he went there. That was enough to keep people out. Did the committee which visited that territory tell us any thing about that? There is report after report on file in the interior de partEent and in the department of jus tice as to the effect of this condition or the territory, retarding development there, retard1ng settlement there, keep ing back the growth of population; and
 report after report as to the good effect that would follow from their adjudica- tion; and the good effects are follow | ing.
 "lt is because these claims have been settled that men can go there now and get title which they could not hereto fore, and for that reason they arc going. It is for that reason that their postoffices are multiplying, their postal receipts growing, their internal revenue receipts growing. It is no wonder the t the population has not grown more rap idly. The only wonder to me is that it 1 has grown as rapidly as it has grown. % The senator then discussed at cor-
 siderable length the question of popu- lation. He showed by the records that
 very few of the states when admitted
 had the Population which Arizona Uhe
 least populous of the three territories)
 has now. Discussing the unreliability
 of the census, he made this home thrust: