The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1916-09-04
COUNTY MONEY
SADLY WASTED
TAXPAYERS FOOTED BILL FOR
NEASE TIMBER CRUISE IN
LATAH COUNTY
Has Never Been Used-ClearwateI
County Experience Indicates
Value of Cruise

tab county commissioners spent over
six thousand dollars of the taxpayers
money was made by the same firm that
made the cruise for the commission
ers of Clearwater county, for which
the federal court held that the cOun-
ty need not pay. In the trial, in
which the Dexter-Horton bank of Sc
attic sought to compel the payment of
Clearwater county warrants issued to
Nease, it developed that the cruise
was not dependable.
"Original cruise books show some
of the land was cruised in camp, l. e.,
that the cruisers guessed, and in at
least one instance marked as burned"
a tier of forties covered with white
pine. The work was rank, raw, rotten,
and ridiculous" says the Clearwater
Republican. 'To call it joke is to
put it mildly
There is, for instance, according to
this $64,000 Nease guess, one Of the
seven wonders of the world within
our county, for Nease discovered
creek running uphill; creek whose
altitude is 1000 feet higher at its
mouth than where it starts, and it
isn't long creek either.
1.-The Nease cruisers found red fir or
tamarac or cedar where these varieties
do not exist; the plats show burns
where timber stands, and timber
where burns exist For this guess
a county board, for what reason only
Heaven and the Blake gang know,
saddled a debt on the backs of the
people, and a bankrupt treasury and
the immediate election of "a republic
an county board is all that saved the
people from paying this unjust and
unwarranted Indebtedness.
Now mark this!
"Had the republican party been un-
successful at the last election the
Nease debt would never have been
questioned; had the Blake gang won
this illegitimate, illegal and outras-
eous imposition on the taxpayers OF
Clearwater county would have been
consumnated, and the people never
have been the wiser, for the Nease
cruise would have been officially ac-
cepted, officially defended, and. offic-
tally ]auded, while those who had the
courage to oppose this mOnStrous
wrong would have been branded as
timber TOOLS" abused as enemies Of
the people, and bounded by a servile,
unprincipled gang organ edited by a |
spineless lackey of Slippery Jim
Blake
"Let the people, after the lapse OF
sufficient time to enable cool, un
biased investigation, and after some |
of the truth has been revealed, review
this case and analyze the motives
that
II. Prompted county board to
close the doors to competition.
~2. Prompted this county hoard to
pay twelve and one-half cents per
acre for inefficient work in the face
Of offers from local men of unques-
toned integrity who offered to do hon.
est cruising at six and seven cents an
acre.
"The United States court holds that
the price was greatly in excess of a
compensation for that
which was actually done The con-
tract called for a complete cruise,
says the court, while the evidence
shows the Nease cruise was inaccur- {
ate, unreliable and poor
"The contract calls for the cruising t
)f the patented lands of the county. {
Upon the plats returned by Nease it
IS shown that his claims covered, and |
were issued for, a little 6
more than 1000 acres of untimbered e
and, that is, lands embracing legal h
subdivisions of forty acres or more c
Wholly devoid of timber. 1t is also s
hown that the allowed claims cover q
ID 26,706 acres of government lands,
zone of which were taxable prior to C
Tanuary 1, 1915, and to most of which =
10 private claim Of any kind had +
een initiated. 1t is also shown that n
ncluded within the total amount for il
rhicn charge was made there were a
pproximately 4400 acres of land be- s.
onging to the state of Idaho, which +
yere entirely free from any private tt
lain and were non-taxable.
1.-THE court also sustains one Of the ci
efenses to the effect that an assess