Imperial Valley press., 1910-04-30
WASHINGTON WAYS
 OF KILLING BILLS Small Prospect of Action For Protection of Valley
 Settlers.
Gleason Interferes With Flint Bill and Arouses Opposition Before House committee-Failure to introduce Or iginal Measure May Delay Action During this Session.

Writing from Washington under date of April 21, l. w. Gleason informs the Press that an amended and extended version of the Flint bill for the pro- tection of innocent ,assignees of des- ert land entries, approved by Secre- tary Ballinger, has been approved by a sub committee of the House of Pub lie Lands Committee and will be re- ported favorably eff it is possible to crowd it into the crush of business that is coming on at the close of the session."
 The bill as it now stands bears but little resemblance to the bill original ly prepared by Imperial Valley peo pie and sent to Senator Flint at his request for introduction last Decem- Der. The Interior Department first took fall out of it and muddled it with useless provisos; it was then amended in the Senate, ostensibly to prevent it from being so construed as to vali- date assignments declared to be H. legal or to give protection to persons charged with fraud; and finally I. w. GreasOn took whack at it and tack ed on a section designed to validate his own transactions in assignments and save the Oakley Paulin crowd from prosecution for alleged fraud, thereby making the bill do actually the very thing that the Interior De- partment professed to fear that the original bill might be distorted to ac- complish by indirection.
 The Gleason amendment aroused vigorous opposition on the part of con- testants, and battle royal ensued be- fore the House Committee, in which Gleason and Felix Havens accused each other of all sorts of crookedness and skullduggery in land deals.
 At the hearing before the House committee, MT Gleason explained that the bill was designed to protect pur. chasers in good faith of assignments of desert-land entries in Imperial Val ely California, whose title to their improved farms is now attacked up- on the ground that the original entry men, or some former holder, com mitted a fraud which was unknown to them, the present holders, at the time of the purchase"
 That described the original bill ac- curately, but MT. Gleason continued:
 "The other class of claimants that the bill Is asked to protect, in the sec ond section-and this is the class I particularly represent (the right for protection of the other Is so obvious upon the fact of it that 1t does not need very much argument)-consists of those persons who, during the years 1904, 1905, 1906 and 1907, acquired by entry or assignment tracts of land which, together with all the other land previously held by them at different times by assignment or entry would amount in the aggregate to more than 32O acres, according to a practice then permitted by the Land Department, but now held to be erroneous. will say that this bill was prepared under MT. Lawler's direction by Mir. Cle- ments and was given to me as their idea of the way to cover these cases, and 1t meets, with their approval"
 A. M Churchill, attorney for the opponents of the Gleason amendment, told the committee that the bill as it was originally sent from Imperial Valley contained no clause to which there could be the slightest objection and that 1t certainly should have been passed two months ago to relieve in nocent victims of fraudulent entry men, but he argued that the decision in the Skinner Davis case made 1t unnecessary.
 (That case has been appealed, and the decision is not yet conclusive Ed. Press.)
 This colloquy ensued:
 MT Churchill. This bill, as 1t was sent up from Imperial Valley, as l remarked, was not in form to which we could object The bin in it's present form
 Mir, Craig. Was the bin as sent