Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1910-06-02
LAND GRABBER TRICKS
Frauds by Which the Government
Is SwindIed Out of Thou
sands of Acres.
OBSTACLES TO SETTLEMENT.
Cattlemen Put Up Fences That
Practically Inclose Large
Tracts of Public Domain.

There are thousands of easy-money
men in the west to-day who are op-
Grating skin games as hackneyed in
that section as is juggling the shells
and pea in Indiana, William Anterior
Du Puy says in the Indianapolis Star.
The object of their operations is to
get from Uncle Sam land to which
they are not entitled. The same old
games have been worked for genera
tions.
Government lands are not highly
priced in the sections where they are
plentiful The government is such an
indefinite proprietor that no man has
felt called upon to see that fraud is
not perpetrated. To obtain illegal
title to land has been classed with
such jocular lapses of conscience as
that which cheats ones neighbor in a
horse trade or surreptitiously purloins
watermelons. The government, through
its agents, is thoroughly familiar with
these methods, and it is to prevent
them that much legislation is now
pending.
There is yet an empire to be saved
from unfair appropriation The gov
eminent to-day owns land, exclusive Of
Alaska, greater in extent than all that
region east of the Alleghenies upon
which dwell 30,0OO,O0O people. There
is enough of it to make twelve states
like New York, two like Texas or fifty
like Massachusetts. There are 80,000,-
600 of acres of it designated as coal
land and 30000,0O0 acres. that may
be irrigated. There is enough water
power on it to turn the spindles of the
nation, present and future. 1t oc-
cupies the position with relation to the
public that was held by the lands OF
Kansas a generation ago. The in
genious methods of its wrongful ap.
preparation are many and interesting
Great stockmen have much influence
in state and county government in
the west. The states have the author.
ity to lease public land granted them
by the national government for such
purposes as the maintenance of schools
and institutions. Through the infiu
ence of certain wealthy men of the
ranches long strips of land are leased
or sold. These strips are in such
forms as to compare with the frame
AI,o+ Il
go to make up the picture itself Ii
still government land. The stockmen
have a perfect right, obviously, to put
fences on the land they have bought
or leased. But in so doing they in
close in their pastures vast amount;
of government land, which, according
to law, it is unlawful to fence. This
land is practically withdrawn from
other settlement, for the homesteadel
locating there would be cut off from
the world by the fences and harasseC
beyond endurance by the cattlemar
and his cowboys.
Another method of avoiding the let
ter of the lazy il fencing government
land is to inclose it almost but not
quite The fence around field may
lack but a foot of inclosing it and Z
stout post may stand on either side o.
this gap. No horse Or COW could
crowd through it. Yet the land is
not inclosed by the fence.
The live stock companies also make
many filings on land through theiI
herders and cowboys, who take VI
homesteads of 100 acres each. The
homesteader is supposed to reside
upon the land to make proof for the
purpose of obtaining title. Where the
cowpunchers are on big ranch and
moving back and forth, they can, by
building a small shack on 100 acres
make such pretense as to residence
as to render it difficult to cancel the
pending entry. In this way the com
panies are able to get title to large
tracts. or at least control them for
many years.
There are several transcontinental
railroad lines to which Congress has
given the alternate or odd sections
of land for from twenty to forty
miles OH each side of their tracks
This was given as an inGucement to
the railroads to build into the desolate
country in early times, but the result
of it has been the loss of title to the
government of land that is worth
many times the cost of building the
railroad. The odd and even sections
are so laid out that the railroad com
panie5' grants are as the black spaces
on a checker board, the intervening
red spaces being government land
Cattle companies purchase the odd sec
lions from the railroads and run their
fences to incIose vast areas the fences
crossing from one odd section to an.
other at the points where these bare
Iv touch. as do the diagonal squares
on the checker board. In this way the
fences, strictly speaking, are on the
land purchased from the railroads, but
an equal amount of government land
is likewise incIosed in the pastures
The Supreme Court has held that this
does not violate the law. Yet it is
practically impossible for the general
public to get at even sections, and the
cattlemen are getting as much bene-
fit from them as though they were &C
tuaIIy owned by them.
HOUSEHOLD HINTS.