The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-01-08

a NGW
NOVEl
&te- sa.l.i,
Copyright. 1926, by Upton sinclair.)

A telegram came from Verne; the
leases had been signed. Bunny ar
ranged to get a week off from his
studies-such favors could be had
by grave old senior, especially
when there was hope that his father
might endow chair of research In
petroleum chemistry. They took a
long drive to Sunnyside, a remote
part of the state, grazing country,
with very few settlers, and poor
roads. They stayed in crude eoun-
try hotel, and inspected the new
field, riding horseback part of the
time. Dads biologists were there,
and the engineers and surveyors:
they decided upon the drilling sites,
and the roads, and the pipelines,
and the tank farm-yes, even
town, and how the streets were to
run, and where the moving picture
theaters and the general store were
to be! The necessary wires had
been pulled, and the county was to
start work on paved road next
week. 1t was all hunkydory!
Bunny ought to have been inter
ested in all this; he ought to have
been proud of the killing" like any
loyal son. Instead of that, here he
was, as usual, smelling round the
clubhouse" to use the ex-mule
drivers crude phrase. The fates
which willed that Bunny should
be always on the wrong side of his
fathers work followed him here to
this country hotel, and brought him
into contact with an old ranchman,
feeble-faced, pathetic old fellow
with skin turned to leather by sixty
years Of baking heat and winds.
Anxious watery blue eyes he had,
and a big case of papers under his
arm, which he wouldn't leave in his
room for fear they would be stolen.
He wanted Dad to consider lease,
and of course Dad had no time tc =
fool with little leases, and told him
so, and that settled it. But the old
man found out somehow that Bunny
lacked the customary hard-shell Of
the big oil-crabs, and succeeded in
Turing the young man to his room
and showing his documents. It was
a certified file from the department
of the interior, all fixed up with i'm
pressive red seals and blue ribbons
but all the same it wasn't COM
plete, the old man declared; some-
body had stolen the essential docu-
ments from the government files,
which showed how "Mid-Central
Pete" had done him out of his home
stead. tits Teller named Vernon
Roscoe, one Of the big crooks in this
game"
The old man, Carberry, had set
out to homestead a claim to some
land nearby; and oil had been dis
covered, and Mid-Continent Pete
had just come in and showed him
out, paying him not cent for his
twenty-five hundred dollars of inn
provements. They could do this
the old man had a copy of the law
to show how it read, excluding min
eral lands from homestead rights;
there were thousands in this part
of the state who had been caught ia
the trap. But Carberry had actually
got patent on his land, and so had
a valid claim; but somebody had
managed to doctor the government
records, and now for several years
he had been struggling for redress.
With pathetic trustfulness he had
written to his congressman, to get
a lawyer in Washington to repre-
sent him, and the congressman had
recommended a lawyer, and Car
berry had sent him money several
times with no resultant then. 20
ing to Washington, had discovered
that the alleged lawyer was simply
a clerk in the congressman's office.
plundering land claimants and pre-
sumably dividing the graft with his
employer! SIS
A pitiful, pitiful story-and the
worst part of it was you could see
1t wasn't single case, but sys-
tenn. One more way by which the
rich and powerful were plundering
the poor and weak! Carberry had
with him a government document
he had managed to get in Washing
ton, the report of congressional
investigation of California land
cases. Bunny spent an evening
glancing through tia thousand
pages of wholesale fraud and steal
ing in CLOSE print! For example, the
seizure of oil rights by the rail
roads! The government land grants
had turned over to the railroads
every other section of land along
their right of way, but had specif-
cally exempted all miner lands."
Wherever minerals might be dis.
covered, the roads we're bound to
surrender these sections and take
other sections. Under the law, the
word minerals included petro-
leum; but were the railroads paying
any attention to that law? The