The Plymouth tribune. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1901-1911, 1907-11-07
WAR ON WESTERN FRAUD.
Stealers of Timber and Coal Lands
to he vigorously Prosecuted.

Stealers of Timber and Coal Lands
to BE vigorously Prosecuted.
After a series of important confer
ence held with the Attorney General
of the United States, M. c. Burch, spe-
cial assistant attorney general in the
field, has returned TO the Far West,
commissioned to go ahead with govern
ment land fraud suits, both civil and
criminal, ON a scale larger by far than
anything yet undertaken in this line
by the government.
The numerous indictments already re-
turned for timber and coal land frauds
all through the West are to be prose-
cuted without exception, and new in
dictments will be added to the list. The
docket of practically every United
States district court in the Mountain
States is to be crowded with civil suits
by which the government will seek to
regain its title to the millions upon
millions of acres of valuable timber
and coal land obtained by fraudulent
entry.
The indictments already include
many of the most prominent and
wealthy men in the West. Mr. Burch
is instructed by the President and the
Attorney General to inflict upon them
the criminal penalty wherever possible.
By the civil suits it will be sought to
take away from them such of their
The scope of the machinery the gov
eminent has set in motion against the
land thieves is little comprehended,
says Washington correspondent. In
addition to the force of district attor-
neys, Burch, well-known Michigan
lawyer, has been assigned by the De-
partment of Justice to general charge
of these prosecutions. Cooperating
Wheeler. who received his training in
Washington, is the largest secret serv-
ice staff in the country. Mr.. Wheeler
has more than 100 men. They are scat
Mountain States. all burrowing for evil
dence against the men who have pi-
rated Uncle Sam out of his valuable
coal and timber resources. These men
employees, since the secret service is
supposed solely to be engaged in ferret
ing out counterfeiterS and protecting
the person of the President. Mr..
MI IN cfoff n c
special agents of the Department OF
Justice. In fact, however, their bust
ness is that of a secret service, spe-
cialy created by the President to camp
on the trail of the railroad corporations
and the mining and timber millionaires,
who have been the chief INSIDERS in
land thevery.
The prosecutions in charge of Mr.
Burch are not to be COMPOUNDED with
the much-storied chapter of fraud in
Oregon The work of Mr.. Burch and
Mr. Wheeler lies chiefly in Idaho, Mon
tana. Wyoming, Utah and Colorado
Though not SO well known, the land
fraud inquiry and prosecution in the
latter States have been conducted on
much wider lines and with more star
thing results than in Oregon. The gov
eminent investigation has brought
about the most startling of all the dis
closures by its probing into the coal
land frauds. 1t has been brought out
concluSively that in Wyoming, in Colo.
RADIO, in Utah and in Idaho, the Harri-
man railroad system, the Hill interests
and the Gould lines, respectively. have
secured grip on the bulk of the coal
deposits in the West-deposits now
known TO be large enough to furnish
the nation with fuel for years when the
Eastern coal mines shall have been ex-
hausted.
The last batch of indictments for it,
legally obtaining coal land came OUT in
Colorado and included seventy promi-
nent men, some of them resident West
erners and others from Eastern and
Middle Western cities, who thought
they saw good thing and ravenously
joined in the wholesale grabbing fol-
rich public lands.