PROTECTING PUBLIC LANDS. SPEECH HON. LEWIS E. PAYSON, OF ILLINOIS, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1886. WASHINGTON. 1 886 . r Protecting Public Lands* SPEECH OK HON. LEWIS E. PAYSON. - The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the bill (H. R. 9478) making appropriations for sun¬ dry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30,1887, and for other purposes, the pending paragraph being: “ Protecting public lands : For the protection of public lands from illegal and fraudulent entry or appropriation, $90,000”— Mr. PAYSON said: Mr. Chairman: I have no apology to make when I ask the attention of the House for the time allotted me while I discuss a few of the ques¬ tions presented by the proposition offered by the gentleman from Ne¬ braska [Mr. Laird]. During my term of service here I have never sought to attract the attention of the House unless I thought I had some¬ thing to submit worthy of its consideration and directly connected with a practical, pending proposition. And I would but assert the veriest truism if I said the questions involved in this discussion are of great im¬ portance to the people of this nation. No one connected with public affairs can have failed to notice the amount of public lands remaining for disposal is being in some way rapidly diminished, and it has been a matter of earnest investigation on the part of the best men connected with Congress for the last six years in both Houses, as well as those occupying executive positions, to de¬ termine precisely what the evil was, the extent of it, and the remedy for it. At the outset, Mr. Chairman, I am bound to notice there has been an attempt made to give this debate a partisan character. When the legislative appropriation bill was under discussion under a motion I be¬ lieve to strike out the last word of the pending paragraph, the gentle¬ man from Nebraska [Mr. Laird] and the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Reed] and a lew other gentlemen vigorously rushed to the front de¬ nouncing the present Commissioner of the General Land Office and his official conduct and apparently expecting the gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber to champion him and protect him from the criti¬ cisms passed upon him. It seems to be expected as a matter of course that the vigorous assaults made by gentlemen on this side upon the Land Office shall be replied to and the course of the Commissioner justified, if at all, by those of his political party. Sir, there is no question of party politics involved here. The ques- ion is one of orderly, proper administration of executive duty, and hould be discussed with that impartiality, candor, and calm consid- 4 erateness which alone in a legislative body can produce satisfactory re¬ sults. With the general course of procedure in the Interior Department as relates to the public-land system since the present administration came into power I may say without boasting I have been intimately famil¬ iar. When it took charge of affairs it found accumulated evidences of frauds upon the public lands gathered in by Republican agents appointed by Secretary Teller and Commissioner McFarland, many of which have been so recently read and referred to in the House as to render a reread¬ ing unnecessary. There was found, also, an appalling state of affairs as to the unlaw¬ ful inclosing of the public lands—millions upon millions of acres of public lands inclosed with barbed-wire fences, many of these erected by foreigners. Notices had been served upon the parties in possession; Commissioner McFarland had sent out formal circulars against them, but all was in¬ effectual. The slow methods of litigation under common-law rules had been invoked, but these were not productive of results. A statute has been euacted by the Forty-eighth Congress for the sum¬ mary, efficient cure of the evil, but too late to be enforced by the out¬ going Republican administration. The bill which became a law I had the honor to introduce, and I had been connected with some matters of land reform with other gentlemen on the Committee on the Public Lands, with which I desire to say Mr. Teller and Mr. McFarland were in hearty sympathy. This was known to Mr. Secretary Lamar, and early in his experience at the head of that Department he did me the honor to ask me to give him the benefit of my experience and observation as to these matters, and I unreservedly did so. This led to an intimacy between us, which otherwise would probably never have existed, and j ustifies me in saying what I take especial pleas¬ ure in, that from the first the Secretary of the Interior and the Commis¬ sioner of the General Land Office have been inspired by the desire to honestly, efficiently, and thoroughly administer the land laws, so that the public domain should be utilized for the benefit of actual settlers. The official reports at their hands showed an actual necessity for some earnest, vigorous action. As against the unlawful inclosures, a procla¬ mation by the President was issued, and orders given at once to the law officers to proceed criminally, if necessary, against offenders, unless the new law was obeyed. As against fraudulent entries of the public lands, various plans were considered. That the evil was enormous was conceded by everybody. The last administration had hoped that the laws allowing pre-em ption, timber-culture, and desert-land entries would be repealed. It had repeatedly urged upon Congress the necessity of such action, and a modification of the commutation feature of the homestead law. Under these acts as they stood these frauds had been perpetrated, and the last administration earnestly endeavored to secure such Congres¬ sional action as should render the further perpetration impossible. The bill, as recommended, passed the House, and with an amendment, not germane, the Senate; the House, late in the short session, would not concur in the Senate amendment, and so the bill failed. Congress, and not the last Republican administration, was to blame for 5 this. This was the situation; and after a great deal of consideration, as I know, on the part of those who had made the subject a study and were familiar with the official reports and statements, the order of April 3, 1885, which I will refer to later, was issued. At the outset I desire to say, Mr. Chairman, and in as plain lan¬ guage as I can express the proposition, once for all, because I do not wish to be misunderstood in reference to it, that, so far as the order of Commissioner Sparks of April 3, 1885, is concerned, as a member of the Committee on Public Lands I was consulted in reference to the pro¬ priety of its issuance, and under the circumstances as I have stated them, I counseled and advised that it should be issued. And I stand by that order to-day, and whatever criticism may be imposed in refer¬ ence to it I am ready and willing to bear my share of it. I am ready now and here to defend the policy as well as the legality of it, and I hope to make myself fully understood with reference to it before I am done, and whatever credit may attach to an honest effort to stay the tide of fraud and corruption then and now painfully appar¬ ent, I shall in like manner insist on having my share. The only regret I have is it was not continued in force until to-day for the reasons I shall give a little further on. [Applause. ] Mr. Chairman, the evil sought to be remedied by that order is noth¬ ing new. When the legislative bill was under debate this discussion was be¬ gun. To the observer it would appear that it was a Republican attack on Democratic methods, as such. Why, the gentleman from Maine announced here that when Mr. Sparks first went into that office, and before he had fairly got warmed in his seat, he suddenly discovered that great frauds were being com¬ mitted upon Ihe public-lands system. I wish to state to him that he is mistaken. The performance of his committee work has not famil¬ iarized him with reference to the condition of affairs connected with the public-lands system. I say to him what I know of my own per¬ sonal knowledge when I tell him that in the Forty-eighth Congress— no, earlier than that; in the Forty-seventh Congress—this matter was a subject of serious consideration on the part of Secretary Kirkwood, Secretary Teller, and Commissioner McFarland, and, as a member of the Committee on the Public Lands, I was frequently in consultation with these gentlemen at their request in reference to these very matters. I hold in my hand an interview with Commissioner McFarland, published in 1884, and which is embodied in some remarks I submitted to this House on the 7th June of this year, where, if gentlemen will take the trouble to examine, they will see that the very evils out of which this debate has arisen to-day were conditions which were then subjects of consid¬ eration by the Commissioner of the Public Land Office, and that his special agents were making these reports to the office at that very date. Perhaps I can not do better than to read an extract or two from that interview, premising it by saying simply that I know the words quoted here by the newspaper reporter were a part of Commissioner McFar¬ land’s own language. In reply to the question, “How is the system of special agents working? ” he said: “Satisfactorily. The special agents have been in the field about six months, and reports from some of them are received every day. I have examined and acted upon about eight hundred illegal and fraudulent entries reported by them. These entries covered about 128,000 acres, of which the Government would have been deprived except for the new service.” “Have any of the persons who held such entries appealed from the finding of the special agent ? ” 6 “ Yes; in eighty cases only out of the eight hundred examined under this sys¬ tem have objections been offered to the proposed cancellation of the entries. This fact is significant of the correctness of the agents’ reports and of the wholly indefensible character of the impeached entries. The reports are in all cases based upon a personal examination by the agent of each tract of land, and the entry is held for cancellation except upon positive evidence. It is further found that in few, if any, of the eighty cases have the objections come from the persons in who-e names the entries were made. They usually appear to be from per¬ sons who furnished the money for the entries or bought them afterward.” “What kinds of lands did these fraudulent entries cover?” “Pine-timber lands in Minnesota,Michigan, Wisconsin,and Missouri, made ostensibly for settlement under the pre-emption and commuted-homestead laws, but actually to obtain the valuable timber for the nominal price at which agri¬ cultural lands are sold to set’lers* The principal operators are persons largely engaged in the timber business, the ‘ settler ’ being a convenient myth. Another class consists of timber lands in California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington Territory. The reports of special agents, particularly in California and Wash¬ ington Territory, disclose a combination of large capitalists, English as well as American, to obtain title to immense tracts of timber land by hiring men, women, and children to swear to false affidavits that they make the entries as required by law for their own use and benefit, and not for speculation. The prices regu¬ larly paid for a set of false entry papers range, according to the reports, from §50 to $100. The Government gets §2.50 an acre, the land perhaps being worth ten times its cost to the speculators. Agricultural lands in Dakota have alsa re¬ ceived marked attention. “The persons concerned, directly or indirectly, embrace English peers, East- ern capitalists, adventurous spirits who emigrate to the booming Territory to grow up with the country, and enterprising land agents and attorneys. Pre¬ emption, commuted-homestead, and timber-culture entries are the favorite in¬ strumentalities of fraud in this region. No sooner is a township of land sur¬ veyed than it is plastered over with entries and filings more or less bogus, but generally more, and the actual settler who goes to stay, the farmer who is to produce the subsistence of the nation, must buy off these pretended claims at high rates before he can obtain the privilege of making an honest entry of the land. The timber-culture laws have proved especially advantageous to the fraudulent control of public lands. The principal sphere of operations under these laws is at present Minnesota, Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska. “The failure of the timber-culture law to produce the results contemplated and its success in promoting fraudulent land entries are paralleled by the des¬ ert-land act, the frauds under which are committed mainly in the Pacific States and Territories. But the frauds do not stop there. The Government price for coal lands is from §10 to §20 an acre. Fraudulent entries of coal lands are made under the pre-emption and other agricultural laws. The reports of the special agents cover heavy transactions of this sort in Colorado and other States in which coal abounds, the fraudulent entries proving to be the property of mining companies. “But by far the most extensive frauds are found in the grazing country, where the cattle-kings have fenced in the country by whole counties, and the investi¬ gations by agents show that the land within these inclosures is being covered by bogus entries made by employes of the stockmen, the former supplying the needed affidavits of settlement and the latter paying the land office fees and pocketing the title. Many entries of this class have been canceled or held for cancellation. “ The practice in such old Territories as New Mexico and Arizona is found to be that the cowboys are brought up in squads to the district land office to swear in mellifluous Spanish names to affidavits that they have resided on the land ten, twelve, or twenty years, when in fact they may have not been in the Ter¬ ritory as many months or days ; but they swear all the same, and each serves as the regulation witness for the other. The cost of 160 acres to the stock com¬ pany is by this process about §18, a trifle over 10 cents an acre. In the newer Territories, where long inhabitancy is not so easily proven, the operation is like that of Democrats repeating in New York city elections. A gang of ‘ pre- emptors ’ is fitted out, who make all the entries required by their employers by merely adopting a sufficient number of names and repeating the process of .S'wearing as principals and witnesses alternately.” Knowing this condition of affairs, the Secretaries of the Interior under the last and this administration, as well as the Commissioners of the General Land Office for several years have recommended the repeal of these laws. Mr. MacFarland, in his last annual report, speaking of this law, says: In my last annual report I renewed the recommendation frequently made by 7 my predecessors that the pre-emption law be repealed. Continued experience •demonstrates the advisability and necessity of such repeal. The objection that much good has heretofore resulted from the pre-emption system, and that it should not be discontinued because abused, appears to us without good founda¬ tion under the changed conditions created by the homestead laws. Our committee said to the last Congress, and I emphasize it now and here: Whole townships of the public domain have been acquired under this law by capitalists who do not reside within hundreds of miles of the land, and never did. They have secured them through paid agents in their employ, who receive so much for their services when they make the proof necessary to entitle them to a patent from the Government, and assign their claims to their employers. This is done, of course, through perjury and subornation of perjury, for each one of these agents or claimants is required to make settlement on the pre¬ emption claim under the law, and he must make oath before the register or re- eeiver of the land district in which the lands are situate, on which he claims to have settled for the purpose of pre-empting, and that he has never had the ben¬ efit of any right of pre-emption ; that he has not settled upon and improved such land to sell the same on speculation, but in good faith to appropriate it to his own exclusive use, and that he has not directly or indirectly made any agreement or contract in any way or manner with any person whatsoever by which the title which he might acquire from the Government of the United States should inure, in whole or in part, to the benefit of any person except him¬ self. And yet it is well known that this oath is daily taken by parties who make it under contracts such as we have indicated above. They file with the register of the proper land district their declaration, make their proof, affidavit, and payment required by the law, and receive their title and transfer the same to the parties with whom they made the contract before they attempted to make the pre-emption. Here let me remark that the appropriation now before us is not asked for the continuation of an old service, which has been in existence for years. It was inaugurated on an appropriation bill in the Forty-seventh Congress by Republicans, and has been in operation only about four years. Mr. LAIRD. Let me ask the gentleman a question. Mr. PAYSON. Certainly. Mr. LAIRD. I hold in my hand an annual report of Mr. McFar¬ land, concerning which the gentleman speaks, and I find on page 146: Entire number of entries investigated.<. 3,563 Entries canceled. 680 Entries approved after investigation. 953 Now- Mr. PAYSON. Nobody disputes that. The figures to which you allude run back for years and years. I take no issue with the gentle¬ man on that subject. The office is now over three years behind. A large proportion, if not the largest proportion, of these entries to which he refers were made under prior administrations and before the special agents were set to work to investigate the frauds. Mr. LAIRD. Let me complete the statement. Mr. PAYSON. I am not going to be diverted from the general line of remarks which I had designed to make here by any question of veracity as to the personal experience or general observation of any gentleman who may represent land districts and who may have formed his own opinions in reference to these matters. I am willing to con¬ cede for the sake of the argument that in the district which the gentle¬ man behind me [Mr. Laird] represents the people who have gone upon these lands are all, absolutely all, honest—though I do not believe it, knowing wffiat the records show. [Laughter.] In the district of the gentleman from Kansas, wffio, I understand, is to follow me I will make the same admission. But I want to ask him to give me a reason why it is that in those districts nearly every land agent wffio has business there advertises as a prominent feature of his business “Relinquish- 8 merits for sale.” I have before me a number of these advertisements, which I hope the gentleman will not overlook when he comes to answer this argument. I want him to tell me what he thinks of that kind of practice and if it was any evidence of a fraudulent transaction in the public lands as a part of the business of those who engaged in sending these advertisements out. I will insert some of these, omitting the names of the parties, for I do not care to give them the benefit of the advertisement: Real estate and Government land agents. All business before the United States Land Office correctly and promptly at¬ tended to. Relinquishments for sale. Town lots and city property for sale or rent. Special attention given to collections. Richfield, Morton County, Kansas. Contesting claims a specialty. Land attorneys. Locate settlers on Government land. Relinquishments always on hand. Con¬ tests a specialty. Correspondence solicited. Come all, and come quick. We have deeded land and relinquishments so cheap it will make you smile. There are also a few pieces of Government land left, but will soon be gone. Come and see us. Real estate, loan, insurance, and financial agents, Jetmore, Kans. Office on Main street. Real estate agents, Gandy, Sherman County, Kansas. School lands, deeded lands, homesteads, and timber entry. Relinquishments bought and sold. Refer to any of the banks in the Oberlin land district. Correspondence solic¬ ited. The records at the Land Office show the methods by which these “re¬ linquishments ” are made available, and their fraudulent, speculative character. Mr. Chairman, the method is this: the speculative entryman makes a “filing ” on a tract: the books at the local office, of course, note the fact, and the land is technically 1 ‘ taken. ’ ’ The law provides that when a ‘ ‘ filing ” on a homestead or pre-emp¬ tion is ‘ ‘ relinquished ’ ’ at the local land office, the land shall thereupon be restored and become a part of the public domain. The ‘ ‘ relinquish¬ ment ” is executed, put into the hands of these agents (those named being all in the district of the gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Peters) for sale, and the settler, if he gets the lands, must buy the speculative re¬ linquishment, or enter a contest to defeat it; it is cheaper to buy, and he does so; takes the relinquishment to the local office, files it, thus releases the land, and then makes his an original entry. That is the method, and it is susceptible of easy proof at the General Land Office, that this practice, illegal and unlawful as it is, has as¬ sumed immense proportions. Under the law, every entry for homestead or pre-emption must be bona fide for settlement by the entryman. These almost exclusively are for speculation, and to fleece the settler who really wants the land for a home. I know it will be said that there are cases where bona fide settlers, because of illness, misfortune, &c., become discontented and desire to or are compelled to sell their settlement rights. True enough; but there are exceptional cases, and no one will pretend to assert that they are of sufficient volume to cause the conspicuous advertisements I pre¬ sent. But to return. I do not know how it may be in the district directly 9 represented by the gentleman who has spoken, for I kuow nothing ex¬ cept from the records; but this I do know, that the Commissioner of the General Land Office could not act efficiently or at all except upon reports made to him by the duly accredited agents of the Department. I do not see how he could otherwise act intelligently upon the questions. It is alleged—in fact it has never been denied—it is confessedly admitted that frauds in the public-land system exist everywhere. There is a dispute as to the degree in which these frauds are being carried on, but none as to the fact that they exist. The enthusiastic gentleman from Ne¬ braska admits something of the kind. The gentleman from Minnesota, who has gone back into the matter of ancient history, admits that frauds are numerous under the public-land system; and I have no doubt it will be conceded by the gentleman from Kansas. How then is the Commissioner of the General Land Office to determine except by reports which go to him from duly accredited agents of the Department what he ought to do? These are part of the instructions given them so far as relates to this matter. Circular of instructions to special agents. Department of the Interior, General Land Office, Washington, D. C., June 23,1885. Sir : Having been appointed a special agent of this office for the protection of the public lands from fraudulent or illegal entry or appropriation, you are instructed that your general duties will be as follows: 1. You will carefully, accurately, and thoroughly investigate every case of alleged fraudulent or illegal entry or appropriation of public lands referred to you by this office, or in any manner brought to your attention in the discharge of your official duties. 2. You will, in all cases, personally examine the land involved, taking pains in every instance to accurately and positively identify the tract, and to see and take the statements of claimants, if they can be found. 3. In the examination of alleged fraudulent homestead and pre-emption claims you will carefully note the character and condition of the land (when that is essential to your inquiry), and in all cases fully examine and note the nature, character, extent, condition, and value of all improvements, if any, thereon, and all the facts pertaining to settlement on, and inhabitancy of, the tract, or the want thereof. 4. You will make and preserve full and accurate notes in all 'cases investi¬ gated by you upon every point involved in th^ case, to enable you— First. To report thereon, conclusively, to this office. Second. To give your evidence, when necessary, before the register and re¬ ceiver, or in proceedings in the courts. Third. To give information or enter complaints in criminal actions. 5. You will also take the affidavits, when practicable, of parties giving you in¬ formation, and of the witnesses whose evidence may be necessary in the case. When parties are unwillingto make affidavits, you will take their names and ad¬ dresses and a note of the matters to which they will testify. But the affidavits of witnesses should be obtained in all cases, if possible. 6. When making investigations in an unsettled district, and in other cases when absolutely necessary, you will be authorized to employ a guide, surveyor, or other assistant, or, in extreme cases, assistants to aid you in finding and identi¬ fying the land, and in the procurement of testimony, or the service of notices. You will not, however, employ a surveyor without special authority from this office, unless in cases of emergency, when you will at once fully report the ne¬ cessity for the service and the nature of the emergency. 7. The affidavits of your assistants to the facts found upon the investigation of any cases will be taken by you fully and in detail, and will be transmitted to this office with your report. 8. Where the land is uninhabited and unimproved, and in other well-estab¬ lished cases, your own report, and the affidavits of your assistants, when such are employed, may be sufficient for the purposes of cancellation or other action. But you will Ipe careful to see that all requisite evidence is obtained and pre¬ served, and that yourself and your assistants are fully prepared to give testi¬ mony in the case when required to do so. 9. in all cases when there are other witnesses whose testimony can be ob¬ tained you should secure their affidavits, as mentioned in paragraph 5. 10. As an officer of this Department, detailed to investigate frauds, you are 10 authorized by section 183, United States Revised Statutes, to administer oaths and take affidavits in any matter pertaining to your official inquiries. 11. You will bear in mind— First. That where homestead affidavits are made before a clerk of a court and the party, or some member of his family, is not actually residing on the land at the time, and a bona fide improvement has not been made thereon, such entries are prima facie fraudulent. Second. That where the affidavit is made before the local land officers, and residence is not established on the land within six months after date of entry, the entry is subject to forfeiture. Failure to establish residence as required also raises a presumption of fraud in the entry. Third. That a pre-emption claim can be lawfully initiated only by actual set¬ tlement on the land, and that the tiling of declaratory statement in the absence of a preceding bona fide settlement is illegal. Fourth. That the tiling of a soldier’s declaratory statement, when the soldier has no intention to enter the land and actually reside upon it, is fraudulent, and that the procurement of powers of attorney to make such filings with an agree¬ ment or promise to sell the land filed upon is a fraud both upon the soldier and the Government. Filings by powers of attorney should be thoroughly inquired into. Fifth. That commuted homestead entries made without actual residence upon and improvement and cultivation of the land for the prescribed period are fraudulent Sixth. That pre-emption and commuted homestead entries made in the inter¬ est of speculation or monopoly are an extensive and dangerous class of frauds and neea to be closely watched and rigorously investigated. Seventh. That homestead and pre-emption entries made on timber lands for the purpose of obtaining the timber, and not for the purpose of actual inhab¬ itancy and cultivation, are fraudulent. You should discover the use made of the timber in such cases, and the amount cut or removed, and trace the connection between the parties obtaining it and the parties to the fraudulent entries. Eighth. That homestead and pre-emption entries made on known mineral lands are illegal and fraudulent. Fraudulent agricultural entries on coal and iron lands will be particularly investigated. Ninth. That placer or other mineral entries made on non-mineral lands for the purpose of purchasing agricultural, timber, or other lands that are not sub¬ ject to private entry, or for the purpose of controlling the water, or for other speculative objects, are fraudulent. Tenth. That entries of timber lands in California, Nevada, Oi-egon, and Wash¬ ington Territory, under the act of June 3, 1878 (30 Stat., 89), are fraudulent if made on land valuable for agriculture, or if made for the benefit of others than the entrymen, or otherwise in violation of the restrictions of the act. Eleventh. That desert-land entries are fraudulent if made on lands not desert in character, or if made for speculative purposes, or in the interest of others than the entryman.or otherwise in violation of the restrictions of the act. Twelfth. That timber-culture entries can be made only for the cultivation of trees, and not for speculation or relinquishment, and not for the benefit of any other person than the party making the entry. You will particularly investi¬ gate alleged fraudulent timber-culture entries, and will direct special inquiry as to whether such entries have been made by the procurement of land agents •or others. Thirteenth. That speculative and collusive entries, aixd entries made by em¬ ployes, or in the intexest, or by the procurement of others than the entryman t under any of the settlement or improvement laws of Congi’ess, are fraudulent They are sworn to perform their duty; they go into the field under these instructions. They show nothing whatever with reference to the performance of his duty that should not be exacted from an agent intrusted with the performance of such duties as he is called upon to discharge; nothing that is secret about it; nothing that is nefarious or underhanded, but everything that is open. These agents report, and have made the reports which were read here in the hearing of the House when the legislative bill was up for dis¬ cussion showing the degree of the frauds and the manner in which they have been committed. They show the hiring of men by the pionth to make entries for their employers in fraud of the law; how they go on and build up little shanties, 7 by 9, in order to comply with the provision of the law with regard to residence. In some cases they were only 4 by 6 feet. It is shown that they have slept on the land only six nights in six months. Affidavits which I have shown with reference to the 11 Tallant case, which has been heralded as a specimen of the harsh treat¬ ment which settlers receive, that one house he had was only 7 by 9, put up by a man in his employment; and he got 320 acres of the pub¬ lic land for his employer who was holding a county office at the county seat. I may as well notice this Tallant case here. I read in the Record the following, used in the Senate, as similar letters have been used hert. I have a letter in my hand, which I received this morning from the clerk of the district court in Dakota, a gentleman I do not know, but I will read his let¬ ter as a sample of the cases of which I personally know—cases in my State, as affecting the actions of special agents and the general action of the Department on the question of entries which have already been made. He writes me from Lakota, Dak. The printed heading, with the date is as follows : “[W. S. Tallant, clerk of the district court, Nelson County.] “Dakota,Dak., June 18, 1886.” After a little introductory paragraph, which it is not necessary to read, the writer says: “ The special agents of the Land Office have been causing almost every settler here trouble and expense, which they can not afford, and not doing the Govern¬ ment any good. Now, I speak from personal knowledge when I say that I do not think that any part of the public domain has ever been proved up with bet¬ ter intent and a better compliance with the laws. Yet we are told that ninety- nine out of every hundred proofs made will be canceled. “ I can cite you my own case for one. I made a homestead entry on June 26, 1884, and moved on the land June 27,1884, and made proof in October, 1885 ”— Procured evidently in that case under what is called the commutation clause of the homestead law, which provides that a person who has made an entry under the homestead law may change his entry to a pre-emption entry at any time after six months, and instead of getting the land for nothing, as he other¬ wise would at the expiration of five years, by paying a dollar and a quarter an acre for it, getting a final-entry certificate at the time he makes his payment and his proofs— “ having when I proved up 40 acres broken and cropped, and a good house there¬ on. Since that date I have built a barn that will cost me about $500, and have had the whole claim broken up and gotten ready for crop next year. I also have another claim which joins my homestead on the west, giving me 320 acres, all of which is now broken up and ready for crop, out of which 1 have in crop on the land this year about 170 acres, and have buildings on the land that altoget her cost me nearly $2,000. Every cent that I have made for the last three years has gone on the place, and I have refused at least half a dozen offers to sell at good figures. “ Now at this late day comesa special agent and says that he has reported my homestead for cancellation for the reason that I am not now living on the land. “ But I am keeping men there to work the place for me, and it-is the only land that I own in the world, and I have had to undergo great hardships to get these claims, and have acted in every way in good faith and intent. “Yours, &c.. “\V. S. TALLANT.” As I said, this letter was used in the Senate the other day in perfect good faith, I am sure, as an illustration of the evils of the special-agent service. I thought I would look up Mr. Tallant’s case, and this is a sample of the proofs as to him—only a sample: Territory of Dakota, County of Grand Forks, ss: I, Joseph Hofer, being duly sworn, depose and say: That 1 made D.S. entry No. 7995, dated March 25,1884, for the NW.i Sec. 13, Tp. 151, R. 62, Grand Forks series, and commuted the same to C. E. No. 10309, July 18, 1884; that I reside on and work for the Elk Valley Farming Company, H miles south of Lari- more, and that my post-office address is Larimore, Grand Forks County, Da¬ kota Territory. That I am well acquainted with Walter S. Tallant, of Lakota, Nelson County, Dakota Territory ; that on or about the 20th of October, 1882, said Tallant asked me if 1 would file on a claim and prove it up for him ; if I would he would give me two hundred ($200) dollars. That I replied that I could not do it now, as I had not proved up on my homestead. 12 That I worked for said Tallant from May 24, 1882, to March 17, 1884, continu¬ ously at $20 per month; that in last-named month I made settlement with said Tallant for all the work I had done for him ; that he paid me in cash in full of all demands. That about the 2d of November, 1882, said Tallant instructed me to go to Tp. 151, R. 62, with him to assist in building several shanties, which I did. That during a conversation in March, 1884, Walter S. Tallant said to me: “ Say, Joe, in this land matter we did not make any arrangement ^ you can do as you want with the land.” That said Tallant told me to board with my brother, John Hofer; that he furnished my said brother with provisions for both of us. That I mortgaged my said tract for $250. to whom I do not know, but think it ■was to Walters. Tallant; that out of said amount I received nothing. That said Tallant is a notary public, and he transacted all the business in connection Avith my filing on and proving up my said tract, paying fees and for said land. That I gave a second mortgage for $650, to whom I do not know; that I did not know what this second mortgage was for, and do not understand it now, as I did not owe said Tallant anything. That I received three hundred ($300) dollars from said Tallant on condition that I would deed my said tract to him (Tallant) at the expiration of one year from making my said final proof. That I first established my residence on said tract April 10, 1883, and resided continuously thereon until September 15, 1883; from last date to March 18,1884, I slept in my brother John’s house on the NE. 4 Sec. 14, 151—62 : that I boarded with my said brother all the time that I resided on my said tract; that since March 18, 1884, I have visited my said tract only four times, to wit: April 17, May 8, June 17, 18, and 19, and July 3 and 4, 1884 ; a total of seven days. That in April, 1883, Walter S. Tallant said to me that if my brother (John Hofer) would file on a claim for him (Tallant) he Avould give him (my said brother) $300; that I soon afterward told my brother what said Tallant had of¬ fered ; that my brother said if it was all right he would do so; that he did so file on the E. 2 NE. 4 , NW. 4 of NE. 4 , and NE. 4 of SE. 4 , Sec. 14, Tp. 151 N., R. 62 W. JOSEPH HOFER. Subscribed and sworn to before me this 31st day of January, A. D. 1885. TRAVIS RHODES, Special Agent, General Land Office. Witness : John Hofer. Territory of Dakota, County of Grand Forks, ss : I, John Hofer, being duly sworn, depose and say: That I reside on the NW. 4 Sec. 13, Tp. 150, R. 56, and that my post-office address is Larimore, Dak.; that I made D. S. No. 7993, dated March 25.1884, for the E. 2 NE. 4 , NW. 4 of NE. 4 , and NE. 4 of SE. 4 , See. 14, Tp. 151, R. 62, and commuted the same to C. E. No. 10442, August 7, 1884. That I am well acquainted with Walter S. Tallant, of Lakota, Nelson County, Dakota Territory; that I understood, through my brother, Joseph Hofer, as I could not at that time understand English, that I was to file on my said tract, prove it up, and after making said proof that I was to deed the same to Walter S. Tallant. That said Tallant paid all expenses in connection with my filing on and prov¬ ing up said tract; he also paid for and kept me supplied with provisions until I made my filing on said tract on the 25th of March, 1884; that I boarded my brother, Joseph Hofer, from the 16th of May, 1883, until March 18,1884. That I mortgaged my said tract to some one unknown to me for an amount unknown to me; that Walter S. Tallant, as a notary public, transacted all busi¬ ness in connection with my filing on and proving up my said tract; that after mortgaging said tract I received $300 from said Tallant. That I first established my residence on said tract May 16, 1883; that I am married,and my family consists of wife and two children; that I resided on said tract from May 16,1883, to March 18,1884, continuously; that I have not re¬ sided on said tract since last-named date. That my improvements consist of house, 7 by 14,7 feet high, built of common lumber, shed roof, tar papered; value, $25; 40 acres breaking and backsetting at $5 per acre, $200; total value of improvements, $225. That Walter S. Tallant paid for all of said improvements. That a crop of oats was raised on said tract (40 acres) by said Tallant, who harvested and appropriated to his own use the proceeds thereof. JOHN HOFER. Subscribed and sworn to before me this 31st day of January, A. D. 1885, TRAVIS RHODES, Special Agent, General Land Office. Witness: Joseph Hofer. 13 Territory of Dakota, County of Ramsey, ss : I, George W. Pierce, being duly sworn, depose and say: That I am the iden* tical George W. Pierce who made D S. entry No. 7992, dated March 25, 1884, for the SE. 4 Sec. 24, Tp. 151, R. 62, and commuted the same to C. E. No. 11239 January 3,1885; that I reside on said tract, and that my post-office address is Jerusalem, Dak. That I am well acquainted with Walter S. Tallant, of Lakota, Nelson County, Dakota Territory; that some time in March, 1883, I was in Walter S. Tal- lant’s office, in Larimore, Dak., when he wanted to know of me how much I would charge him to break and backset one hundred acres of land in Tp. 151, R. 62; that I told him I would charge $500; that he then wished to hire me to come out here (151-62) and hold a claim for him (Tallant); he said he would give me $300 to hold one for him for six months; that I informed him that I would not do it, as I wanted my said claim for myself; that on my next trip home to said tract I lost one of my horses by death; that I returned to Lari- more.and informed Tallant of said loss, when he said that if I would hold said tract for him he would procure me another horse, and also agreed to pay all expenses in connection with holding and proving up my said tract, including provisions; that said Tallant did not carry out his part of said agreement, in that he did not furnish me anything whatever; but, on the contrary, said Tal¬ lant is still in my debt; that I paid all expenses in connection with my said tract. That in July, 1883, I learned that I would be likely to get myself into trouble if I carried out said agreement, and from that time have ever since repudiated, and still repudiate, my contract or agreement to that effect. - That after proving up I mortgaged said tract to the Merchants’ Bank, of Grand Forks, Dak., for 8250. That I paid cash for my said land. That in the aggregate my improvements are worth $174. That as yet I have raised no crop on said tract. That I am married, my family consisting of my wife and self. GEORGE W. PIERCE. Subscribed and sworn to before me this 26th day of January, A. D. 1885. TRAVIS RHODES, Special Agent General Land Office. Mr. Chairman, I have here, also, Mr. Tallant’s own affidavit, a lengthy paper, too long to print, as I think, but which I shall be glad to hand any one desiring to see it, in which he makes a showing, over his own signature, of his speculative entries—his employes making claims, he furnishing shanties 7 by 9 feet as residences—“ taking parties out to locate” on their promise to sell to him, or mortgage, when they got title, &c., one of the parties being a Scandinavian girl, from the name, a domestic servant then and siuce, continuously, for whom he found a claim. This is the party whose case, on this record, is held up as a specimen of the hardship of the order of April 3, 1885, simply because the Com¬ missioner desired to examine the matter ! Now, with these things before him, what is the duty of the Commis¬ sioner of the Land Office? But before I come to that I have one remark to make. It is said, Mr. Chairman, that when the Commissioner of the General Land Office made his report here he had selected from the offi¬ cial reports which came to him those which were sent to him by his own satellites—I think the elegant and euphonious term of “sap- suckers” was used by the gentleman from Nebraska in reference to agents of the Government “who were sent out by Mr. Sparks to ride in palace cars and drink whisky at the public expense.” These men, he said, had sent in their reports, and the most outrageous and exaggerated ones had been selected by Mr. Sparks to be embodied in his official re¬ port. Now, let me be understood here in what I say. Every report which is embodied or cited in the report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office to this House as illustrative of the evils against the public land system was made by a Republican appointed by Senator Teller when he was Secretary of the Interior—every one of them ! Not one 14 of them had known Mr. Sparks officially when he reported. I repeat there is no partisan party question with reference to it. Sir, I hope, earnestly, the time may never come in my political experience—and I profess to be as good a .Republican as any one sitting within the sound of my voice—I hope the time may never come in my experience in public life, and it never will, when I will fail to render justice to one of the opposite party when he is striving to do what he believes to be his duty as I believe General Sparks is trying to-day to do. I am in favor of doing justice to any man who is in his position. What is he? The gentleman from Minnesota says he is an honest man. Who ever denied it? Who has ever questioned the personal integrity of William A. J. Sparks? It is said he is an enthusiast. I agree to that; but his enthusiasm with reference to this question is in favor of the poor man of American citizenship who desires to receive from his country a home at the hands of the Government free of cost to himself and his family, as against speculators and land-grabbers. [Applause. ] When the gentleman from Minnesota asks me to go back to the realms of ancient history and examine what took place in the times of the Tudors, I say for myself as a member of the House of Representa¬ tives, and in view of what I know relative to the public land system, I prefer to deal with present experience rather than ancient history. What has General Sparks done? What is this order of his about which so much declamation is made here and which it is alleged is going to ruin the nation if it is carried into execution ? How many gentlemen within the sound of my voice have read it ? How many of the men who have discussed this order and criticised General Sparks can state what it is? Notone. I assert that these gentlemen can not repeat that order which they denounce. Now, I hold it in my hand. It is too long to read, but the substance of it is, and is only, that, in certain specified portions of this country, there shall be, for the present, a suspension of final action with reference to land patents. Whom,does it harm ? No vested light is taken from anybody. The gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Nelson] used what I think is a very happy expression with reference to it. He said, gentlemen will re¬ member, that Commissioner Sparks had placed this section of country in a kind of quarantine. I thank the gentleman for the word. It is a quarantine. When the small-pox appears in a neighborhood it is quarantined. Why? In order to protect healthy people outside and those who are free from disease within; and that is precisely what was done by Commissioner Sparks—that, and nothing else. It came to the knowledge of the executive officers of the Government that these frauds were being carried on in localities, and carried on to an extent which no man in this House would believe if told to him as a narrative; and he placed these localities in quarantine—that is it exactly—until the moral leprosy could be ascertained. Who would believe, unless his attention was officially'called to it, that corporations, syndicates, some of them foreign, without a dollar of domestic capital invested, had at one time 30,000,000 acres of the public lands fenced with barb-wire fences shutting out American citizens who were seeking homesteads, and that the arm of the nation was substanti¬ ally paralyzed so far as any remedy was concerned ? Who would believe it? And yet that is the fact. 1 hold in my hand a report from the Committee on Public Lands, which was the basis of the law which I had the honor to introduce, and which was passed and became a law, prohibiting these unlawful inclosures and providing a summaty method for their destruction. i 15 The facts are worth reproducing, that the magnitude of the evils these- officials were called on to deal with may be appreciated, and we will not wonder that stones were cast at the offenders instead of grass. This was from Secretary Teller: The following localities, in addition to the counties above mentioned in the State of Nebraska, are referred to, namely : Kingman. Pratt, Barbour, Butler, Harper, Comanche, and Lane Counties, Kan¬ sas: Billings County, Dakota; Cassia and Oneida Counties, Idaho; Carbon, Laramie, and Sweetwater Counties, Wyoming; Humboldt, Mendocino, and Plumas Counties, California: Madison, Meagher, Gallatin, and Yellowstone Counties. Montana; Sevier County, Utah; Colfax and Mora Counties, New Mexico; and Bent, Las Animas, Pueblo, Fremont, Park, El Paso, Weld, and La Plata Counties, Colorado. Among the cases specially reported, additional to the Brighton Ranch, in Ne¬ braska. are those of the Arkansas Valley Cattle Company, in Colorado, whose inclosures embrace upward of 1,000,000 acres; the Prairie Cattle Company (Scotch), in Colorado, upward of 1,000,000 acres ; H. H. Metcalf. River Bend, Col¬ orado, 200,000 acres: John W. Prowers, Colorado, 200,000 acres; McDaniel Si. Davis, Colorado. 75,000 acres; Routcheler Sc Lamb, Colorado, 40,000 acres; J. W. Frank, Colorado, 40,000 acres; Garnett Si Langford, Colorado. 30.000 acres ; E. C. Tane, Colorado, 50,000 acres; Lievesv Brothers, Colorado, 150,000 acres ; Vroo- man Si McFife, Colorado, 50,000 acres : Beatty Brothers, Colorado, 40,000 acres ; Chick. Brown Si Co., Colorado, 30,000 acres: Reynolds Cattle Company, Colo¬ rado, 50,000 acres; several other cases in Colorado embracing from 10,000 acres to 30,000 acres; Coe & Carter. Nebraska, 50 miles of fence; J. W. Wilson, Ne¬ braska, 40 miles of fence; J. W. Bosler. 20 miles; William Humphrey, Nevada, 30 miles; Nelson Si Son. Nevada, 22 miles ; Kennebeek Ranch. Nebraska, from 20.000 to 50.000 acres. In Kansas entire counties are reported as fenced. In Wy¬ oming 125 large cattle companies are reported having fencing on the public lands. Among the companies and persons reported as having “immense ” or “ very large ” areas inclosed, but specific quantities not mentioned, are the Du¬ buque, Cimmaron, and Renello Cattle Companies, of New Mexico; the Carlisle Cattle Company (English), in Colorado; the Marquis de Morales, in Dakota; the Wyoming Cattle Company (Scotch), in Wyoming; the Rankin Live Stock Company, in Nebraska. Several companies and persons in Montana and else¬ where are mentioned as having inclosures with no data as to areas. A large number of cases in the several States and Territories west of the one hundredth meridian are reported where the inclosures range from 1,000 to 25,000 acres and upward. The cases above referred to are to be regarded merely as indicative of the sit¬ uation. Department of the Interior, Washington, March 3, 1884. Dear Sir : Referring to our conversation on the subject of foreign companies controlling inclosures of the public lands, I send you the inclosed memorandum, which I think contains the facts you wanted. The land described, with the ex¬ ception of perhaps a few thousand acres, is all Government land. Very respectfully yours, H. M. TELLER, Secretary. Hon. L. E. Payson, House of Representatives. The Arkansas Cattle Company have fenced in the following-described publio land in the States of Colorado and Kansas, namely : Beginning on the north bank of the Arkansas River, on the line between Secs. 19 and 20, in T. 23S., R. 41 W., and running a northerly direction to Sec. 20, inT. 15S., R. 41W.; thence a northwesterly direction to Sec. 20, in T. 15S.,R. 44 W.; thence a southwesterly direction to southeast corner of Sec. 36,in T. 15- S. , R. 48 W.; thence a southerly direction to the northeast corner of T. 19 S.,R. 48 W., and thence a southeasterly direction to the bank of the river in Sec. 26, T. 22 S., R. 46 W. of the sixth principal meridian. Also all that other tractor parcel of land being on the south side of the Arkansas Ri%'er, in Bent County, Colorado, and bounded as follows, namely: Beginning on the south bank of the Arkansas River on the east line of T. 23 S., R. 42 W., and running south on said township line to the south line of said township ; thence west along the south line of said township to the middle of Sec. 33 in said township, and thence north to the Arkansas River on the north line of Sec. 21, in said township. There appears to be about forty townships, or 921,600 acres embraced in the inclosure. On March 24, 1884, Secretary Teller sent to the House a supplemental report relative to unlawful fencing of public lands in the State of Ne- 16 braska. The report is a special one, made by United States Deputy Surveyor G. W. Fairchild. Mr. Fairchild says: The whole country embraced in my contract (Northwestern Nebraska) is oc* cupied and run by capitalists engaged in cattle-raising, who have hundreds of miles of wire fence constructed to inclose all desirable land, including water courses, to form barriers for their cattle and to prevent settlers from occupying the land. They also represent that they have desert and timber claims upon the lands they have inclosed. Upon their fences they have posted at intervals notices as follows: “ The-who opens this fence had better look out for his scalp.” The fences are built often so as to inclose several sections in one stock ranch, and the ranches are joined together from the mountains clear round to the mountains again. Persons going there intending to settle are also informed that if they settle on the land the ranchmen will freeze them out; that they will not employ a man who settles on or claims land, and that he can not get em¬ ployment from any cattle-men in the whole country. Sir, some of the gentlemen who are now opposing the action of the Interior Department are the same gentlemen who upon this floor did everything they could to prevent the consideration of that bill. Mr. PERKINS. Did the syndicates of which the gentleman speaks ■claim the land which they had fenced under any existing law? Mr. PAYSON. They did not. They simply went on and fenced it. Mr. PERKINS. Then of course their action was unlawful. Mr. PETERS. And their fences were thrown down and the lands were opened to settlement. Mr. PAYSON. Yes; hut not until after that bill became a law, and they were threatened with indictment by the district attorney of the western district of Kansas. Mr. LAIRD. I wish the gentleman would name one man on this floor who defended that land-grab. Mr. PAYSON. I do not say that gentlemen defended, but they threw obstructions in the way of the consideration of the bill which was de¬ signed to put au end to it. I could name some gentlemen, whose voices will be heard here to-day, who objected time after time when unani¬ mous consent was asked to take up that bill. Mr. PERKINS. The bill to remove trespassers on the public lands? Mr. PAYSON. Yes, sir. Mr. PERKINS. I would be glad to have the gentleman name one ■of them. I know that the gentleman from Nebraska and the gentle¬ men of my delegation did all they could to favor the jiassage of that bill. Mr. PAYSON. The members of the gentleman’s delegation did not flo so. Mr. BUTTER WORTH. Do I understand the gentleman from Illi¬ nois [Mr. Paysox] to say that there was no practical way of stopping these frauds of which he speaks without issuing the order which the Commissioner did issue? Mr. PAYSON. No, sir; I did not say that. Mr. RYAN. Will the gentleman from Illinois name any member who opposed the consideration of the bill of which he has been speak¬ ing? Mr. PAYSON. Well, the gentleman who will follow me to day is one [Mr. Peters]. Mr. PERKINS. He can speak for himself. Mr. RYAN. I only want to say that I was heartily in favor of that bill. Mr. PERKINS. So was every member of our delegation. Mr. PAYSON. Not by action. Now, Mr. Chairman, 1 have stated the condition of things when Com- 17 missioner Sparks came into office. Proclamations had been issued on the subject, but nothing was done. For four years there were reports from the Committee on Public Lands of this House showing that these frauds were being committed, and that whole townships of agricultural lands were being taken up by public speculators. What was to be done ? I was consulted with, with other members of the Committee on Public Lands, and it was thought best then to serve notice on the whole thiev¬ ing crowd that a halt would be called, to say to them “You can go on in this way, making your entries by your hired men, building your houses 7 by 9, and moving them on wheels from one tract of land to . another, you can go on with these performances to your heart’s content, but those lands will never be patented in this Land Office. [Ap¬ plause. ] As I have said, I was consulted as to the propriety of issuing the or¬ der which was issued by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and I gave it my hearty concurrence, and all I regret is that, owing to the pressure brought to bear by men who were steeped to the lips in these transactions, the Secretary of the Interior was induced to rescind that order instead of keeping it in force and insisting upon its execu¬ tion. Mr. LAIRD. Will the gentleman yield for a question? Mr. PAYSON. No, sir; I donotcaretoyieldforaquestion. When I am through I will be glad to answer any question that may be asked me. Mr. EZRA B. TAYLOR. I would like to ask the gentleman a ques¬ tion. Mr. PAYSON. I am not willing to have my time consumed with questions which may only anticipate what I am going to say. When I am through I shall be pleased to answer any question that may be asked. Mr. EZRA B. TAYLOR. Mine is a very simple question. It is this: Even if these great abuses did exist by what right does an exec¬ utive officer of the Government suspend the laws of the land ? Mr. PAYSON. I will be glad to answer that before I get through. I am coming to that point. Now, Mr. Chairman, it was stated when the legislative bill was under discussion that all this array of facts and figures had no other basis than the reports of these special agents that no action had been taken ip the Interior Department going to show that these charges were well founded, and one gentleman went so far as to say that if the facts were known the official conclusions of the officers of the Interior Department would show that there was no basis for the charges. I hold in my hand a letter written to me in response to inquiry which I addressed to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at that time, and I shall ask to have it inserted in the Record here. Department of the Interior, General, Land Office, Washington, D. C., June 19, 1886. Dear Sir : In reply to your letter of the 16th instant I have to state that the records of this office will contradict any assertion that may be made to the ef¬ fect that alleged frauds on the public domain rest wholly upon the unsupported reports of special agents, and show that such a statement is wholly without foundation. Special agents are required (see paragraphs 5,7, and 9 of 9 ircular of June 23, 1885, copy inclosed), to obtain and transmit with their reports the affidavits of parties cognizant of the facts, and this is habitually done. It frequently hap¬ pens that parties cognizant of facts are afraid to volunteer testimony, and in some classes of cases there are no inhabitants on or near the land. But even with these drawbacks other testimony than that derived from the personal ex- PAY-2 18 amination of agents is sent up with their reports in fully three-fourths of the whole number of eases examined and reported. Special agents are also in¬ structed to take pains in every instance to see and obtain the statements of claim¬ ants if they can be found. (See paragraph 2 of inclosed circular.) In many cases the agent furnishes the affidavits of the claimants themselves, in which they swear to their own and their associates’ illegal and fraudulent acts. One agent alone within the last four or five months has transmitted to this office the affidavits of entrymen in eighty-three cases, in which they admit that they never saw the lands, and that they were hired by the agents of the speculators to make the entries. In other cases the affidavits of the agents of the speculators are submitted with the reports, and there is hardly a case reported without giving the names of witnesses and a brief statement of what they will swear to in regard to the alleged fraud. The evidence furnished by the agents or filed by individuals informing this office of frauds is generally of the best character and is often substantiated or in a measure supported by the records. The claimants, however, are not deprived of the lands by this evidence with¬ out the privilege of a trial. On the report of an agent showing the fraud, the entry is held for cancellation, the party in interest being allowed sixty days after due notice within which to apply for a hearing. In the notice he is fully informed of the substance of the special agent’s report and of the allegations against the entry and given full opportunity to controvert the charges and show the validity of the entry. The records of this office show that many of these claimants, after being ad¬ vised of the facts alleged against them, decline to make a defense. Since August 1,1885, five hundred and thirteen entries have been canceled upon reports of special agents showing fraud, after claimants were duly notified that they would be given the privilege of defending their entries and had de¬ clined to do so. These are of the most flagrant and indefensible character of cases, and the de¬ fault was made simply because the parties did not, in the face of the facts discov¬ ered, care to run the risk of being prosecuted for the perjury they would have to commit in order to sustain the entries. The peril of such a course was too great and the prospect of success too doubtful to be undertaken even by the boldest and most desperate violators of the law. The number of cases reported by special agents from April 1, 1885, to March 31,1886. is 2,606. Cases examined in the General Land Office from April 1, 1885, to March 31, 1886, 2,591. Indorsed no fraud or held for further examination, 368. Action taken : Conclusively (a) or prima facia ( b ) fraudulent. Canceled (a). 1,044 Held for cancellation or hearings ordered (6), &c. 1,179 Total. 2,223 It will be seen that out of the 2,591 cases reported and examined 2,223 have been shown to be fraudulent. Of the 368 suspended cases a large proportion have also been shown to be of such character as to require further investiga,- tion. The foregoing does not include many hundreds of cases where entries have been canceled for fraud developed in contest proceedings between private in¬ dividuals. Hearings have been ordered in a considerable number of cases reported by the agents as fraudulent and the result of five hundred and fifteen of the hear¬ ings have been received since July 1, 1885. Two hundred and seventy-four of these cases have been examined and passed upon, and the testimony taken in two hundred and sixty out of the two hun¬ dred and seventy-four confirms the correctness of the reports of the agents, and the entries were held for cancellation on the evidence adduced at the hearings. A cursory examination of the remaining two hundred and forty-one cases shows that the percentage of cases in which the testimony taken at the trials sustains the agents’ reports is fully as great as in the cases acted upon. It will thus be seen that the special agents’ reports are generally sustained at a formal hearing in cases in which hearings have been had and acted upon during the period specified, and that these are the only cases in which the parties desired or were willing to attempt a defense of the entries. In other cases they admit by their action that the reports were true ; so that I can safely say that the reports alleging fraud in nineteen cases out of twenty are correct beyond question, and it is not to be assumed that the reports in the remaining twentieth are incorrect, but simply that the agents failed, through 19 inability to secure attendance of witnesses or otherwise, to make out the case o the Government. The parties who actually defend entries reported as fraudulent are quite uni¬ formly purported assignees—frequently persons who procured the entries to be made—and every expedient known to violators of law is resorted to in order to defeat the Government at these hearings. Witnesses are often tampered with or intimidated. In the Estes Park cases in Colorado, where a large quantity of public land was fraudulently entered by the procurement of agents of the Earl of Dunraven,not a witness could be produced at day of hearing, although the testimony previously obtained by affidavits of numerous citizens was over¬ whelming in character. In Nebraska witnesses have been warned by “ regula¬ tors,” and in California not long since an important witness for the Govern¬ ment was murdered by employes of parties being proceeded against. Every impediment is thrown in the way of the Government in attempting to discover and suppress frauds upon public lands, and obviously perjured testi¬ mony in favor of claims has constantly to be met with. Parties possessing great wealth and influence are engaged in these frauds, and all the inducements by which special agents are surrounded adverse to, rather than in favor of, a vig¬ orous dischai’ge of their duties. Only men of high character and strong integrity can be employed in such service with any safety to the Government. The liability to which agents are subject is that of unduly favoring claimants, not that of im¬ properly reporting against them. An agent may have much to lose by being faithful to the interests of the Government, since, if so faithful, he is liable to be attacked from very high and influential quarters. If he chooses to be dishonest he may have everything to gain by being unfaithful to the Government in the discharge of his duties, since violators of law are pretty apt to be willing to pay more for immunity than the Government pays for fidelity. Special agents have no motive for reporting against meritorious cases, and there is absolutely no truth whatever in the contrary statements sometimes made. Neither are entries held for cancellation on special agents’ reports upon merely trifling grounds or for some technical failure of compliance with law. The cases in which such action is taken are those of flagrant fraud and violation of law, and the evidence is required to be of the most convincing character before action against the entries is proceeded with. Your attention is called to my report to the Senate of May 6,1886 (Executive Document No. 134), copy herewith, and also to pages 64 et seq., of my annual re¬ port. In further compliance with your request I inclose a copy of memoranda handed Mr. Cobb relative to circular of June 2,1886, temporarily suspending pre¬ emption, timber-culture, and desert-land entries. My report upon the Senate resolution on this subject has just been submitted to the honorable Secretary of the Interior for transmittal to the Senate. It is suggested that this report will be preferable to the memoranda hastily furnished Mr. Cobb. Very respectfully, WM. A. J. SPARKS, Commissioner. Hon. L. E. Payson, House of Representatives. The clamor is raised, too, that a new set of rulings is being made under this order at the Interior Department. This is best refuted and set at rest by the following letter, appearing on the files of the Land Office, explaining itself: Department of the Interior, General Land Office, Washington, D. C., February 26, 1886. Sir : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of recent date inclosing a letter addressed to you by William Coleman, of McCook, Nebr., as¬ serting that “ the action of the Hon. Mr. Sparks in his stopping the issue of pat¬ ents has caused a wonderful amount of suffering this winter.” You also allude to similar letters received by you from others and desire me to favor you with information for intelligent replies to these letters. I have the honor to state that the ease referred to by your correspondent is not affected by any order of suspension, and that this is the fact in respect to similar complaints of which I have heard. In the case mentioned the entry was made in 1885. The work of this office has for many years been at best between one and two years in arrears, and frequently longer. Entries are now being examined in regular course that were made in 1884. The order of suspension complained of affects, therefore, only entries made before that date which would not and could not be patented if there had been no suspension. Another “ hardship ” alleged by your correspondent is that my rulings prevent settlers from selling or mortgaging their homestead and pre-emption claims. I beg to say that no rulings of mine prevent them from doing so. Nor have I 20 changed any rulings upon that subject, but am simply following the laws and the decisions of the Supreme Court in the matter. It is not held by me, as al¬ leged, that no deed or mortgage can be given until after patent. Undoubtedly a man can sell or mortgage anything he has, and can give to another just as good a title as he has himself—and no better. This is the ruling of the Supreme Court, and it is my ruling. In Myers vs. Croft (13 Wall., 291) the court said that “the object of Congress was attained when the pre-emptor went with clean hands to the land office and proved up his right and paid the Government for his land,” and that the pre- emptor was “ free to sell his land after the entry, if at that time he was in good faith the owner of the land, and had done nothing inconsistent with the pro¬ visions of the law on the subject.” In this, as in all Federal and State decisions upon the subject, the primary proposition is that the entry shall bea good-faith entry, and the laws shall have been fully complied with. In such cases the transfer is good ; not otherwise. Strenuous efforts have repeatedly been made to assert the doctrine that al¬ though a claim might be worthless while in the hands of the entrymen, on ac¬ count of his failure to comply with the law, or for other reasons, it may be strengthened and made a matter of absolute right by virtue of a transfer to a third party. Such doctrine is without foundation in legal principle, and has never been admitted by the courts or by this Department. “The purchaser takes no better claim for title than the entryman has to confer; and whatever right is thus acquired is subject to the subsequent action of the Land Depart¬ ment.” (R. M. Chrisinger, 4 L. D., 247.) In Root vs. Shields (1 Wool., SG4) the court said : “ I think it pretty clear that some at least of these defendants purchased and paid their money without any knowledge in fact of any defect in the title. Yet they are not bona fide purchasers, for a valuable consideration, without notice, in the sense in which the terms are employed in courts of equity.” It is the universal rule of law that purchasers of an equity take no better title than their grantor had to give. Persons purchasing before patent take only an equity, and this is settled law of which everybody had notice. If an entry- man’s claim is not good his transfer does not make it any better. This is the ruling of the courts followed by me. If in advising the public through these rulings and decisions that entries must be valid in order to be confirmed, and if ftmnd invalid they can not be confirmed, and that I mean, asan administrator ofthe law, to find out whether they are valid or not, reminding purchasers and mortgagees that they must look to the founda¬ tion of their titles as in all other cases of land transactions between man and man, then a service and not an injury will be done to people who desire to be reasonably prudent and careful in their investments. It is not believed that every honest settler who has taken up land for a home is suffering for an opportunity to mortgage it. If a man has taken up land on purpose to sell or mortgage it, he has made a fraudulent entry and has no right to impose his pretended title upon his fellow-citizens nor to prevent other men from getting the land from the Government without paying him a bonus for the privilege. It is inconceivable that whole communities of farmers are anxious to mort¬ gage their actual farms. Ordinarily where people live upon land as homes they want to keep them from the grasp of money-brokers and usurers as long as they can. A particular case which your correspondent presents is the case of a man who, after an apparently doubtful “ settlement ” for six months and the most meager “improvements,” wants to sell or mortgage his “asserted ” home on the public lands in Nebraska for the most he can get and return to his actual home in some Eastern State. This is a very common case. I do not believe that the popula¬ tion of a State is increased by a settlement that is abandoned as soon as its tem¬ porary purpose is accomplished, nor that the wealth of the State is augmented by an influx of money that is immediately carried out of the State in this man¬ ner. Another case is where a man made an entry, sold the land for $800, and the purchaser finds his title not good. The real hardship in this case is that an hon¬ est settler who wants to get a home upon the public lands is compelled to re¬ main homeless or buy off a fictitious claim. This kind of hardship I am en¬ deavoring to prevent. The complaint of your correspondent is that of aloan agent. His letter shows such to be his business. There are very few complaints from entrymen on ac¬ count of suspension of patents. In fact there are no complaints to this office by bona fide entrymen because of delay in the issue of patents. It is the experience of this office that bona fide entrymen are in no haste for their patents (thousands remaining in this and the local offices uncalled for). But the clamor for them comes from the procurers of fraudulent entries who want patents issued before falsity of the claims can be ascertained by the Government. Regular horne- tead entries are not suspended, but are being examined for patent as rapidly 21 as possible. As a matter of fact I am now causing- the issue of a greater num¬ ber of patents per month than have ever before been issued from this office, and in so doing am causing to be issued to lawful claimants as fast as they can be ascertained. The suspensions that have been made are chiefly pre-emption and commuted homestead cases, of which very few are now found upon investigation to be genuine. My predecessor for three years laid before Congress in his annual and special reports the alarming prevalency of fraudulent entries of these classes. On assuming charge of this office I found reports from officers appointed under the late administration asserting as the general result of their examinations, ex¬ perience, and information that a very small per cent, of such entries were valid, and that the public domain was being largely taken under cover of pretended settlement claims made for speculation, or in the interest of corporations and combinations of capitalists, foreign and domestic, who were acquiring title to public lands in vast bodies by fraud, bribery, and perjury. Under these circum¬ stances I caused final action looking to the issue of patents on entries conditional upon settlement, improvement, and cultivation to be suspended in districts of country in which the evidence before this office is that such entries are so largely fraudulent. In so doing I have exercised an authority which has always been exercised by the Land Department, and which was recognized as lawful and proper by Presi¬ dent Jackson and by Attorney-General Butler as far back as 1836. (Laws, Opin¬ ions, and Instructions, 92; 3 Opinions Attorney-General, 93.) These early instructions and opinions were given under laws existing prior to the act of July 4, 1836 (5 Statutes, 107), which act imposed upon the Commis¬ sioner of the General Land Office increased powers and duties of supervision and control over the sale and disposal of public lands. My immediate predecessor suspended for two or three years certifying for the issue of patents on all lands in New Mexico, the greater portion of Colorado, and in certain classes of entries in various other States and Territories. Such suspensions have always been found a necessary act of administration to pre¬ vent illegal appropriations of the public domain, and it has never been found that hardship has resulted to bona fide claimants from such suspension. There have been hardships imposed upon settlers under rulings and decisions of this office and Department in years past, especially in connection with Con¬ gressional grants for railroads and other causes. When this has occurred set¬ tlers have not been slow to make their complaints direct to the office. Any in¬ justice or fancied injustice is at once followed by complaints. But actual settlers on public lands have not complained to this office of my action in suspending the issue of patents, or otherwise in respect to my rulings and decisions. On the contrary, I have received many letters expressing the gratification of bona fide settlers because of my eff orts to protect the public lands against fraud¬ ulent entries, which are justly regarded by them to be inimical to their inter¬ ests no less than frauds upon the Government. It is the universal testimony of gentlemen of disinterested observation who have visited me that the body of the people in the land States and Territories approve my course. It is equally the universal testimony that money-brokers, professional land locaters and speculators, attorneys and managers of cattle corporations and timber syndicates, and the Avhole array of persons engaged in the promotion and procurement of illegal and fraudulent entries, or realizing the benefits thereof, are just as bitterly opposed to this course as bona fide settlers are heartily in favor of it. The multitudes of complaints have been poured in upon Sena- ators and Representatives in Congress, purporting to be from settlers or from persons assuming to represent settlers, or pretending to speak in their behalf, I have reason to believe, and also have reason to know the motives by which such communications as a class have been inspired and the objects sought to be attained. It was formerly a practice in this office to make cases “ special” for patent; that is to say, to advance them out of their order at the instance of attorneys backed frequently by political or official influence. Even suspended cases were thus taken up.and patents procured in large numbers of cases. ‘ ‘ Suspensions of patents” were not objected to as long as a way existed for getting cases through notwithstanding the suspension. On the contrary, the parties who now com¬ plain of “ suspensions ” were benefited by the former practice, for the ordinary attorney’s fee of $25 for getting a patent upon an unsuspended case was imme¬ diately increased by a demand for $100 more as soon as a case was found in the suspended-list. Now, no honest settler can afford, nor does he need, to pay $100 or $25 or any other sum to hasten the issue of his patent. It is not surprising, therefore, that these expedited cases turnout to be fraudulent after patents have issued and it is too late to remedy the wrong by administrative action. I found it necessary, as a matter of justice to all claimants not less than as a measure in the public interest, to refuse to make any ease “ special.” That has been the fundamental grievance against my administration, of attorneys who thus found a profitable vocation cut off. 22 Again, my early rulings and decisions clearly indicated a purpose to hold land grant railroad corporations to the line of the law, instead of permitting their agents and attorneys to continue control of the practice and policy of this office. In like manner it was seen that magnified claims under alleged Spanish and Mexican grants were likely to meet with scrutiny they had never before re¬ ceived, and finally that all claims for public laud would be judged by the laws, and compliance with law insisted upon, and that robbery of public lands should be prevented so far as I had power to that end. As soon as this w T as made clear an organized movement was started in this city with a view of attempting to break down any reform in the administration of the Land Department and to restore the era of successful frauds, favoritism, and fees. Circulars were issued and sent broadcast to local attorneys and land and money brokers, laying out a plan of campaign and advising them to cause letters to be written to Senators and Representatives in Congress protesting against my action in suspending final action pending the issue of patents, and representing the hardships to settlers resulting from such action. That the letters with which Senators have been deluged are products of this inspiration there is no manner of doubt. Individual money-lenders w r ho, in their eagerness to exact a rate of interest that no cultivator of the soil can pay and keep his land, having loaned money without looking to their security, or loan agents who to get their percentages on the investments of their principals have taken risks beyond the bounds of prudence or reason, may of their own motion have added to the volume of systematic complaints, but the general plan of operations, in which all having a similarily of interest could join, was marked out as above stated. In attempting to stand by the landmarks of the law r I was quite as well aware at the outset as now of the interested hostility that such course would evoke. I have not expected that the unlawful clutch of speculation could be loosened from the public lands without a struggle: nor that an agressive domination, disas¬ trous to present and prohibitive of future actual inhabitancy over half a conti¬ nent, could be checked or controlled without encountering a determined resist¬ ance. What is complained of, Mr. Senator, to yourself and others is in reality, in my opinion, that, as an officer charged with the administration of the law r , I have re¬ garded it my duty to certify for patents to issue to those entrymen only who have made bona fide entries and have complied with the conditions prescribed by law as conditions-precedent to entitle them to have patents, and that, to the extent of my official responsibility and the means which Congress provides, I am endeavoring to prevent the consummation of frauds upon the public domain. The letter of your correspondent is herewith returned. Very respectfully, WM. A. J. SPARKS, Commissioner. Hon. Charles F. Manderson, United States Senate. Before the gentleman from Kansas proceeds I wish only to say in reply to my friend from Ohio [Mr. Ezra B. Taylor] that from 1834 down to the present day the power of the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior to investigate frauds and refuse patents after final certificate has never been questioned in the Interior Department. I have the authorities here at hand. I deny the doctrine asserted here that the final certificate is title. I deny that the Commissioner is only a mere clerk to ratify the finding of the register, and I assert that until the patent issues the power re¬ sides in the Department to inquire into alleged fraud and when it is proven to deny the patent, and I cite some of the many cases on the question, all, except one by Judge Deady of one of the courts in Oregon, to the same purport. The practice has been uniform in the Interior Department, as I have said. Mr. Attorney-General Butler in 1834 gave an opinion (3 Op. A. G., 93), the substance of which is that the local land officers act in a quasi¬ judicial capacity in determining the questions of fact on which the final certificate issues, but the issuing of patents, however, depends on the Commissioner, who may suspend them where the decisions of the local officers were obtained by fraud or founded on material errors of fact or law. 23 This has been followed without exception to this date, notable cases being the Charlemagne town case, decided on review by Mr. Secretary Teller February 20, 1884 (Decisions, volume 2, page 780); the Cogswell case (volume 3, Decisions), July 21, 1884, by Secretary Teller, and the Chrisinger case, by Mr. Secretary Lamar, January 25, 1886. And in the courts the authorities are numerous that not only has the Department the power to investigate after final certificate, but the pur¬ chaser from the entry man takes no better title than theentryman has. I call attention to a collection of cases on the question in a letter of the Commissioner in the Record of June 22 instant.. The questions are: First, that the action of the register and receiver is conclusive except in case of fraud; second, that the assignment of an entry before patent estops an inquiry into the validity of the claim even in case of fraud; and third, that an entry of public lands can be set aside for cause only by the judicial courts. These propositions have been advanced in scores of cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and the supreme courts of the sev¬ eral States, and have as repeatedly been denied. The propositions that the transfer of a claim adds anything to its efficiency against the United States, or that a certificate of purchase is in the nature of an investiture of title, or that the purchaser of an entry before patent is in any legal sense an innocent purchaser, are refuted by decisions hereinbefore cited. Many others might be referred to. In Irvine vs. Marshall (20 How 7 ., 555) it was held that although a certificate maybe the subject of bargain and sale, yet the United States can take care that conveyances shall be to him who is in good faith its vendee, and the court said: The reception of the certificate of purchase as evidence of title may be regular and convenient as a rule of business, but it has not been anywhere established as conclusive evidence, much less has it been adjudged to forbid or exclude proofs of the real and just rights of claimants. A mere declaration in writing by a vender that the vendee has paid the purchase-price of land, and that he intends to give him a deed, is not a document purporting to convey title. (Osterman vs. Baldwin, 6 Wall., 116.) Legal title does not pass by contract of purchase without deed, and one who holds or claims by contract only is not protected as a bona fide purchaser for value. (Boone vs. Chiles, 10 Pet., 177.) It will not do for a purchaser to close his eyes to facts which are open to his investigation for the exercise of that diligence which the law im¬ poses. Such purchasers are not protected. (Boush vs. Wall., 15 Pet., 111 .) Purchasers by quitclaim deed even are not regarded as bona fide pur¬ chasers without notice. (Oliver vs. Piatt, 3 How., 333; May vs. Le Claire, 11 Wall., 217; Dickerson vs. Colegrove, 100 U. S., 578.) Party without title can not acquire it by payment of taxes on land. (Homestead Co. vs. Valley R. R., 17 Wall., 153.) A purchaser of land must look to every part of the title which is es¬ sential to its validity. (Brush vs. W 7 are, 15 Pet., 112.) States have no power to declare certificates of purchase of equal dig¬ nity with a patent. (Bagnell vs. Broderick, 13 Pet., 436.) If, before patent issues, the Land Department finds the entry erro¬ neous, it may treat the assignment as void, and, notwithstanding it, set the entry aside. (Franklin vs. Kelley, 2 Nebr.. 78.) The act of 1841 provides that the entry shall be made with the register of the Land Office. The acts organizing the Land Department of the Government pro- 24 vide that the action of the register shall be subject to revision and supervision by the Commissioner of the General Land Office; and entry with the register is dependent upon the approval of his superior, so far as the course and order of the business go; and, without the affirmative action of the Commissioner, the patents issue. It would be a great evil if a party claiming a pre-emption right could, as soon as his entry was made, convey the land to a third party, and thereby prevent the Commissioner from re-examining and disapproving the entry if it was erroneously allowed. Such course would expose the Gov¬ ernment to serious loss, and pervert a statute conceived in a wise policy and a generous spirit into a means of perpetrating the greatest frauds. This is the mischief aimed at. The object was to protect the Government, and in this view the language—that the right secured by the act should not be assigned—is apt. As between the claimant and the Government, his interest is a right merely until the patent issues. It is subject to reinvestigation and, on inquiry, to be disregarded by the Department. Until the patent issues, it is treated by the Government not as a title but as a right or a claim of right. I admit that if an entry under the act is made with the register, and the Com¬ missioner finds that it was illegally allowed, as, for instance, if the entry is upon lands not subject to pre-emption, and he sets it aside, aconveyance intermediate the entry and the official act of vacating it would be void. Such a conveyance would be within the mischief. But if a valid entry be made, and a patent issued upon it, a conveyance intermediate those two acts would not be within the mischief. The issue of the patent is a confirmation of the entry; it relates back to it, and takes effect from it. (Astrom vs. Hammond. 3 McLean, 407.) The courts have often ruled that where the right to a patent has once become vested in a purchaser of public lands it is equivalent, so far as the Government is concerned, to a patent issued. (Stark vs. Starrs, 6 Wall., 402; Simmons vs. Wagner, 101 U. S., 260.) But none of these decisions hold that the certificate aud receipt of the register and receiver is conclusive evidence that a right has vested, nor that a patent is not necessary for the conveyance of the legal title. In Myers vs. Croft (13 Wall., 291), the court says that the pre-emptor could sell after entry if he came up and made his proof and payment “with clean hands.” But he must be in good faith the owner of the land and have “done nothing inconsistent with the provisions of the law on the subject.'” The validity of a conveyance depends upon the validity of the entry, and that is always a proper subject of inquiry by the Land Department at any time before patent issues, and by the courtsin a proper proceed¬ ing afterward. In the case of Harkness vs. Underhill (1 Black., 316), counsel for plaintiff urged that— The register and receiver having sold the land to Waters in conformity with the instructions of the Commissioner of the General Land Office had no further power or jurisdiction over it. Neither had the Commissioner of the General Land Office power to set aside the sale even for fraud. This could only be done by judicial authority. Counsel for defendant in reply cited the language of the supreme court of Missouri (in Green vs. Hill, 9 Mo., 322): It is the duty of the Commissioner of the General Land Office to revise the proceedings of the register and receiver and vacate entries which may have been illegally made, and thereby arrest the completion of a title originating in fraud, mistake, or violation of law. And to the same effect: Perry vs. O’Han¬ lon, 11 Mo.,585; Huntsucker vs. Clark, 12 Mo.,333; Nelson rs. Simms, 23 Miss., 383; Glen rs. Thistle, 23 Minn., 42; Mitchell vs. Cobb, 13 Ala., 137; Dickinson vs. Brown, 9 Smeade & Marshall, 130; Gray rs. McCance, 4 Ill. The court (Mr. Justice Catrou) said: “The question is again raised whether this entry having been allowed by the register and receiver could be set aside by the Commissioner. This question has several times been raised and decided in this court uphold¬ ing the Commissioner’s powers. (Garland vs. Winn, 20 How., 8; Lytle rs. The State of Arkansas, 22 How.) In Barnard vs. Ashley (18 How., 43), the court said that the power of supervision by the Commissioner of the General Land Office ‘ ‘ is ex- 25 ercised by virtue of the act of July 4, 1836, which provides ‘thatfrom and after the passage of this act the executive duties now prescribed, or which may hereafter be prescribed by law appertaining to the sur¬ vey and sale of the public lands of the United States, or in any wise respecting such public lands, and also such as relate to private claims of land and the issuing of patents for all grants of land under the au¬ thority of the Government of the United States, shall be subject to the supervision and control of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, under the direction of the President of the United States.’ ” The necessity of “supervision and control,” vested in the Commissioner act¬ ing under the direction of the President, is too manifest to require comment, further than to say that the facts found in this record show that nothing is more easily done than apparently to establish, by ex parte affidavits, cultivation and possession of particular quarter-sections of lands, when the fact is untrue. That the act of 1836 modifies the powers of registers and receivers to the extent of the Commissioner’s action in the instance before us, we hold to be true. But if the construction of the act of 1836 to this effect were doubtful, the practice under it for nearly twenty years could not be disturbed without manifest im¬ propriety. The case relied on, of Wilcox vs. Jackson (13 Pet., 511) was an ejectment suit, commenced in February, 1836; and as to the acts of the register and receiver, in allowing the entry in that case, the Commissioner had no power of supervision, such as was given him by act of July 4, 1836, after the case was in court. In the next case (9 How., 333) all the controverted facts on which both sides relied had transpired and were concluded before the act of July 4,1836, was passed; and therefore its construction,as regards the Commissioner’s powers under the act of 1836, was not involved. Whereas, in the case under considera¬ tion, the additional proceedings were had befoi*e the register and receiver in 1837, and were subject to the new powers conferred on the Commissioner. In Vaquire vs. Tyler (1 Black. 195) the court recognized and affirmed the “plenary powers conferred upon the Commissioner by the act of July 4,1836,” and said that the power of the Secretary of the Interior under the act of March 3,1849, to revise on appeal is “ necessarily coextensive with the powers toad- judge by the Commissioner.” In Shepley vs. Cowan, (91 U. S., 340), the court say: The officers of the Land Department are specially designated by law to re¬ ceive, consider, and pass upon proofs presented with respect to settlement upon the public lands with a view to secure the rights of pre-emption. If they err in the construction of the law applicable to any case, or if fraud is practiced upon them, or they themselves are chargeable with fraudulent practices, their rulings may be reviewed and annulled by the courts when a controversy arises between private parties founded upon their decisions. • In Marquiz vs. Frisbie (101 United States, 475) the court say: We have repeatedly held that the courts will not interfere with the officers o^ the Government while in the discharge of their duties in disposing of the public lands, either by injunction or mandamus. (Litehfieldrs. Register and Receiver, 9 Wool. ,552; Gaines vs. Thompson,? Id., 347; The Secretary vs. McGarrahan, 9 Jd., 289.) After the United States has parted with its title and the individual has be¬ come vested with it, the equities subject to which he holds it may be enforced, but not before. (Johnson vs. Towsley. 13 Id., 72; Shefley vs. Cowan, 91 U. S., 330.) We did not deny the right of the courts to deal with the possession of the land prior to the issue of the patent or to enforce contracts between the parties con¬ cerning the land. But it is impossible thus to transfer a title which is yet in the United States. In the United States vs. Schurz (102 United States, 395) the court say: The Constitution of the United States declares that Congress shall have the power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property belonging to the United States. Under this pro¬ vision the sale of the public lands was placed by statute under the control of the Secretary of the Interior. To aid him in the performance of this duty a bureau was created, at the head of which is the Commissioner of the General Land Office with several subordinates. To them, as a special tribunal, Congress con¬ fided the executing of the laws which regulate the surveying, the selling, and the general care of these lands. 26 Congress has also enacted a system of laws by which “rights to these lands may be acquired and the title of the Government conveyed to the citizens. This court has with a strong hand upheld the doctrine that so long as the legal title of these lands remained in the United States, and the proceedings for acquiring it were as yet infieri , the courts would not interfere to control the exercise.of the power vested in their tribu¬ nal. To that doctrine we still adhere.” And again (Id., 411): The question whether any particular tract belonging to the Government was open to sale, pre-emption, or homestead right is in every instance a question of law as applied to the facts for the determination of those officers. In Quinby vs. Cowlan (104 U. S., 420) the court say: The laws of the United States prescribe with particularity the manner in which portions of public domain may be acquired by settlers. They require personal settlement upon the lands desired and their inhabitation and improve¬ ment, and a declaration of the settler’s acts and purposes to be made in the proper office of the district within a limited time after the public surveys have been extended over the lands. By them a land department has been created to supervise all the various steps required for the acquisition of the title of the Gov¬ ernment. Its officers are required to receive, consider, and pass upon the proofs furnished as to the alleged settlements upon the lands, and their improvement when pre-emption rights are claimed, and, in case of conflicting claims to the same tract, to hear the contesting parties. The proofs offered in compliance with the law are to be presented, in the first instance, to the officers of the district where the land is situated, and from their decision an appeal lies to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and from him to the Secretary of the Interior. For mere errors of judgment as to the weight of evidence on these subjects by any of the subordinate officers the only remedy is by an appeal to his superior of the Department. The courts can not exercise any direct appellate jurisdiction over the rulings of those officers or of their superior in the Department in such matters, nor can they reverse or cor¬ rect them in a collateral proceeding between private parties. In this case, the allegation that false and fraudulent representations as to the settlement of the plaintiff were made to the officers of the Land Department is negatived by the finding of the court. It would lead to endless litigation and be fruitful of evil if a supervisory power were vested in the courts over the action of the numerous officers of the Land Department on the mere questions of fact presented for their determination. It is only when those officers have miscon¬ strued the law applicable to the case as established before the Department, and thus have denied to parties rights which, upon a correct construction, would have been conceded to them, or where misrepresentations and fraud have been prac¬ ticed necessarily affecting their judgment, that the courts can in a proper pro¬ ceeding interfere and refuse to give effect to their action. On this subject we have repeatedly and with emphasis expressed our opinion, and the matter should be deemed settled. (Johnson vs. Towsley, 13 Wall., 72; Shepley vs. Cowan, 91 U. S., 330-310; Moore vs. Robbins, 96 Ibid, 530.) The doctrine applicable to the conclusive character of the solemn judgments of courts, with full jurisdiction over the parties, and the subject-matter, made after appearance, pleading, and contest by parties on both sides, can not be prop¬ erly applied to the proceedings of the land office, where no issue is taken, no adversary proceedings had, no contest made, and the land officers act only on such evidence as claimant presents, with no means of controverting its truth. (United States Minor, 114 United States, 243.) The quasi-judicial nature of the functions of land officers has reference only to cases in which individuals have, as against each other, contested the right to a patent before them. (Id.) Where a patent has been obtained through mistake or by fraud and perjury, and there are no innocent holders for value, the legal title conveyed by the pat¬ ent may be set aside in a court of equity. (Id.) The principles settled by the courts are that the action of registers and re¬ ceivers in admitting an entry of public lands is not conclusive, but is subject to review by the superior officers of the Land Department, by appeal in cases of contest between private parties, and as a matter of executive supervision in cases not of individual contest; that the latter are cases bet ween the Govern¬ ment and the entryman alone ; that assignees before patent have no standing as innocent purchasers ; that until patent issues on public-land entries the legal title to the land remains in the United States; that the Commissioner of the Gen¬ eral Land Office may reject and cancel unpatented entries for illegality and fraud; that this is necessarily an act of executive jurisdiction ; that the duties of supervising the disposal of public lands are executive duties and are not the 27 subject of judicial interference ; that the question of passing the title of the United States upon an entry of public lands under the public-land lawisessen- tially a question of executive and not of judicial determination ; that the point where the jurisdiction of the courts begin is the point at which executive juris¬ diction ceases, namely, after patent has been issued, when, in a proper proceed¬ ing, the courts may intervene to correct the errors of executive action ; and that it is only after the conveyance of legal title by patent that purchasers for value are protected by the courts. I do not intend to go into an argument as to the legality of the re¬ cent order temporarily suspending certain classes of entries pending the proposed legislation repealing the pre-emption laws. My colleague on the committee [Mr. Cobb] has announced his intention of printing in the .Record Senate Ex. Doc. 170, which shows a long line of prece¬ dents, running back for over fifty years, of suspending the right of pur¬ chase or entry of public lands for a limited time in anticipation of leg¬ islation proposed and pending. Not, as the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Nelson] assumes in his re¬ marks, for railroad purposes, after a map of definite location of the road was filed in the Department. Not at all; most of the cases re¬ ferred to were in advance of legislation, and all before any map of def¬ inite location was filed. The gentleman’s argument is based on an en¬ tire misapprehension of the facts, for the purpose of giving the corpora¬ tions to be benefited the fullest advantage of all the public lands. I read a few extracts from that document: [Circular.] Department of the Interior, General Land Office, Washington, D. C., June 2, 1886. To registers and receivers United States land offices : Gentlemen : The repeal of the pre-emption, timber-culture, and desert-land laws being now the subject of consideration by Congress, all applications to en¬ ter lands under said laws are hereby suspended from and after this date until the 1st day of August, 1886, and you are hereby directed to receive no filings or new applications or entry under said laws during said time. WM. A. J. SPARKS, Commissioner. Approved. L. Q. C. LAMAR, Secretary. I have the honor to state that a circular of which the foregoing is a copy was issued from this office with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior on the 2d instant. The authority to issue such circular was founded upon precedents, deemed to be sufficient, of more than forty years’ standing, sanctioned by judicial decisions and by Congressional recognition. The legislative authority upon which these precedents were established ap¬ pears to have been drawn from the general powers of supervision and adminis¬ tration conferred upon the executive department (act of April, 1812,2 Statutes, 716; July 4,1836,5 Statutes, 107 ; 3 March, 1849,9 Statutes, 395; Revised Statutes, sections 441,452), and upon the special recognition of the power of the Presi¬ dent to create reservations of public lands found in the pre-emption act of 1841 and similar acts. The following are among the leading decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the authority of the President to reserve public lands from entry has been affirmed, the acts of the officers of the Land Department in this respect recognized as the acts of the President, and the legal effect of such reservations upheld. In 1827, in the case of Chotard vs. Pope (12 Wheat., 586), the court said : “ An authority 4 to enter ’ a certain quantity of land does not authorize a loca¬ tion on lands previously appropriated or withdrawn from the lands offered for sale.” In McConnell vs. Trustees (12 Wheat., 582), the court recognized 41 the reason¬ ableness of reserving a public spring for public uses.” InKissell vs. Saint Louis, an entry was held invalid because the land had been “reserved from sale” by officers of the Land Department. (18 How., 19.) At the request of the Secretary of War, the Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1824 colored and marked upon a map a section of land as reserved for military purposes and directed it to be reserved from sale for those purposes. 28 In the case of Wilcox vs. Jackson (13 Pet., 513), involving this land, the Supreme Court reciting the foregoing said : “We consider this, too, as having been done by authority of law, for among other provisions in the act of 1830 all lands are exempted from pre-emption which are reserved from sale by order of the President. Now, although the immediate agent in requiring this reservation was the Secretary of War, yet we feel justified in presuming that it was done by the approbation and direction of the President. The President speaks and acts through the heads of the several Departments in relation to subjects which appertain to their respective duties. Both military posts and Indian affairs, including agencies, belong to the War Department. Hence we consider the act of the War Department in requiring this reservation to be made as being in legal contemplation the act of the Pres¬ ident; and, consequently, that the reservation thus made was, in legal effect, a reservation made by order of the President, within the terms of the act of Con¬ gress.” In the pre-emption act of 1830 it is provided that the right of pre-emption con¬ templated by the act shall not extend “to any land which is reserved from.sale by act of Congress or by order of the President.” In the pre-emption act of 1841 (section 2258, Revised Statutes) it is provided that “lands included in any reser¬ vation by any treaty, law, or proclamation of the President of the United States ” shall not be subject to entry under the act The act of 1853, extending the pre¬ emption laws to California, excepted from their operation lands “reserved by competent authority.” In Grisar vs. McDowell (6 Wall., 381), the Supreme Court, construing the fore¬ going acts, say: “The provisions in the acts of 1830 and 1841 show very clearly that by ‘ com¬ petent authority’ is meant the authority of the President and officers acting under his direction.” And the court further said in this case “ that it was of no consequence to the plaintiff whether or not the President possessed sufficient authority to make the reservation.” It was enough that the title remained in the United States. A legal entry could not be made while the lands were in the reserved condition. In 1846 Congress made a grant of lands for the improvement of the Des Moines River below the Raccoon Fork. This grant was constructively held by the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior to apply to lands above the Fork, and lands above the Fork, amounting to up¬ ward of 270,001) acres, were on June 1, 1819, withdrawn from sale and entry by this office for the benefit of the river grant. It was afterward held by the Su¬ preme Court that there was no grant above Raccoon Fork. But under the ex¬ cepting provisions of an act making a railroad grant, subsequent to the river grant, which subsequent act declared that lands reserved to the United States in any manner by competent authority, for any purpose whatever, should be reserved from the operation of the act, the courts have steadily held that lands so reserved by the Land Departmentfor river improvement purposes, although under an erroneous construction of the law, did not pass with the railroad grant, and have also held that the withdrawal was an inhibition against settlement and pre-emption rights. (Wolcott vs. Des Domes, 5 Wall., 681; Homestead Co. vs. Valley R.R., 17 Wall., 153; Wolsey va. Chapman, 101 U. S.,755; Dubuque and Sioux City R. R. Co. vs. Des Moines Valley R. R. Co., 109 U. S., 329.) And in Wolsey vs. Chapman it was specifically held that an order of reserva¬ tion sent out from the appropriate Executive Department in the regular course of business is the legal equivalent of the President’s own order to the same ef¬ fect, and it is therefore such a proclamation by the President reserving land from sale as the law contemplates. (P. 770.) The foregoing decisions recognize the abstract right of the Executive Depart¬ ment to withhold lands from entry and thus to suspend the operation of the public-land laws to the extent of such withdrawals. Necessarily specific cases are treated of in these decisions because specific cases were before the court, but the court affirmed in these cases a general principle which it applied to the particular cases decided. This was the right of the Executive to reserve lands from entry. Given the right of suspension, the only question that remains is that of tne necessity or expediency of its exercise—the question of propriety. The extent of suspensions may be considered in connection with the questions of expediency or propriety, but does not enter into a discussion of the question of abstract right. Neither does the occasion for suspensions—the reasons why they are made—touch the fundamental question of the right to make suspen¬ sions. If a suspension of public-land entries, wholly or in part, in executive discre¬ tion, is lawful for one cause deemed sufficient by the executive authority, it is equally lawful for another cause deemed equally sufficient. It is the judgment of the Executive that determines the sufficiency in either case, and in either case the question whether the occasion is sufficient or not is one affecting the respon¬ sibility of executive officers in the exercise of their powers, and not a question of the power itself. Conceding the right to withdraw, or withhold from entry, 29 one section of land, or any subdivision of a section as a matter incident to ad¬ ministrative supervision and control, the right to withhold any larger area is equally admitted. It can not be said that a suspension of entries is authorized for a limited quantity of land, but not authorized for a larger quantity ; that it may be made for one locality and not for another; for a part of one State or Ter¬ ritory and not for the whole State or Territory ; or that it may be made for a por¬ tion of the public lands and not for all of them. It is a question of principle, and not a question of the extent to which the principle will be applied. Indeed, a suspension confined to certain localities and in favor of particular interests is a far more dangerous exercise of the power of suspension than one operating gen¬ erally. In the former case a latitude of discretion is opened which may be abused for the promotion of favorite interests or the accomplishment of particular pur¬ poses not of general or public import. In the other case there is a uniformity through which all interests are affected alike, and such general suspension can be founded only upon public considerations. Among the precedents relied upon as authority for the circular named the following are cited: On March 3, 1883, Congress passed an act exempting the public lands in the State of Alabama from the operation of the mineral laws, and providing for the sale of lands previously reported as mineral, and for the disposal under agri¬ cultural laws of unsold lands of that character after an offering at public sale. The operation of this act, so far as relates to sales and entries of lands pi-evi- ously reported as mineral, has been in suspension up to the present date in an¬ ticipation, as I am advised, of ameixdatoi’y legislation. On two occasions (one under the previous and one under the present administi*ation) executive procla¬ mations have been issued carrying the act into effect, and in each instance the President has revoked the same. As early as September 28, 1828, Commissioner Graham, by direction of the President, instructed the register of the land office at Piqua, Ohio, to reserve from sale the lands along and within 5 miles of what was supposed would be the route of the canal from Dayton to Lake Erie, in aid of the construction of which a grant of land had been made to the State of Ohio by act of Congress approved May 24,1828. This reservation embraced about 500,000 acres. On April 11,1844, the Commissioner of this office (Thomas H. Blake), by di¬ rection of the Secretary of the Treasury, iixstructed tlie pi-oper disti’ict land offi¬ cers in Wisconsin to withdraw from sale or entry for any purpose whatever all the vacant lands, surveyed and unsurveyed, situated within 2 miles of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, in anticipation of a proposed grant by Congress to the State of Wisconsin to aid in the improvement of the navigation of said rivers. The Congress then in session having failed to make the proposed grant, the withdrawal was revoked by this office under iixstructions from the Secretary of the Treasury dated July 14, 1845, having been in force for more than a year. This withdrawal covered about 500,000 aci'es. During the years 1853 and 1854 a great quantity of land was withdrawn from sale or entry (except for valid pre-emption claims) by the Commissioner of this office, “by oi'der of the President,” “issued on the representations and at the solicitation of members of both Houses of Congress,” in anticipation of grants being made to aid in the construction of certain proposed railroads. The lands so withdrawn were situated in ten States and thirty-four land districts, and amounted to about 31,000,000 acres, according to Commissioner Wilson’s report for 1854, as follows: “At the instance of many members of Congress and others, about 21,000,000 of acres in several of the land States had been withdrawn from the market in an¬ ticipation of grants for raili’oad and other internal improvements. As such grants were not made, it was deemed expedient to l'estore these masses of lands to market, especially in view of the passage of the bill graduating the price of the public lands, and this has been done, except where the reservation was for a fixed period, or gx - ants have already been made.” (Land Office Report, 1854, page 6.) Congress havixxg failed to make the proposed grants, the lands were restored to market, by order of the President, during the months of October, November, and December, 1854. In anticipation of a grant to the State of Iowa to aid in the construction of four railroads in that State, Commissioner Hendricks, on May 10, 1856, issued tele¬ graphic instructions to the registers and receivers for the six land districts in said State, withdi-awing from sale or location all lands south of the line between townships 91 and 92, comprisiixg about two-thirds of the entire State. The act making the grant did not receive the signature of the President until May 15, 1856. During the year 1856, in anticipation of railroad grants to the States of Louisi¬ ana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Mississippi, the Commissioner of the General Land Office issued telegraphic instructions to the local officers of twenty land 30 districts in said States suspending from sale and location large bodies of land, as follows: State. Order of sus¬ pension. Date of grant. Louisiana. May 31,1856 May 30,1856 May 29,1856 Aug. 9,1856 June 3,1856 June 3,1856 June 3,1856 Aug. 11,1856 Michigan. W isconsin. Mississippi.. The lands thus withdrawn in anticipation of proposed grants amounted to at least 50,000,000 acres exclusive of lands previously appropriated. During the same year railroad grants were made to the States of Florida and Alabama, and in 1857 grants for several roads were made to the Territory of Minnesota. Long before any of the roads provided for in said grants had been located, and consequently before any right to any particular lands under the grants had vested in the States, the Commissioner of the General Land Office is¬ sued directions to the local officers of nineteen land districts in said States and Territories suspending the sale and location of all lands within what was sup¬ posed would be the limits of the several grants, amounting to more than 28,- 000,000 acres, exclusive of lands previously appropriated, as follows: State. Date of grant. Order of sus¬ pension. Florida. May 17,1856 May 17,1856 June 3,1856 Mar. 3,1857 f May 17,1856 | May 23,1856 -{ June 9,1856 | July 8,1856 t Sept. 6,1856 May 17,1856 June 19,1856 Mar. 7,1857 Alabama. Do. Minnesota. Representations having been made that pre-emption claims for speculative purposes were being placed upon the lands within the limits of the withdraw¬ als in the States of Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama, and Florida, the local officers in said States were, on December 16,1856, February 2, February 13, and April 29, 1857, respectively, dii’ected by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to refuse to receive any pre-emption claims, based on settlements initiated after the receipt by them of said orders, on large bodies of lands in their districts. These suspensions from pre-emption were prior to the location of the several roads in whose interest they were made, and consequently prior to the attach¬ ment of any right under the grant to any particular lands. This inhibition against the right of pre-emption affected more than 40,000,000 acres of public land. Mr. Chairman, these cases are cited as illustrative of the practice, where railroads were to be benefited, and this practice has been con¬ tinued down to a very recent date. Now, the bill repealing these laws by which these frauds were pos¬ sible is pending in this Congress and has passed both Houses, and only because the Senate has added other provisions not as yet accepted by the House has the bill failed to become a law. Under these precedents, so numerous and so uniform, and the power to so act never having been questioned, and the Supreme Court having affirmed their validity when the suspending orders were issued, I in¬ sist, sir, that the Secretary had the power to issue the circular, and that the exigency of the case warranted it. 3L \ Mr. Chairman, a single word more-and I am done. The object of all this Department action is one which should commend it to every patriotic heart. It is the attempt to save, so far as is pos¬ sible, the remainder of the public lands for the actual settler, direct from the Government instead of through the intermediary of the specu- lotor; as a gift from the nation rather than a purchase from a trader; and to this end the Secretary and Commissioner have given their best efforts and most earnest endeavor. They desire and should receive the hearty support of every honest citizen. Indeed, sir, when and where the facts are known they do re¬ ceive it. I deeply regret that gentlemen have thought it necessary to make these personal attacks upon General Sparks. His honesty, his personal integrity, has not been attacked; indeed it has been conceded in this debate. It goes without saying that he has no motive but the impulse of right¬ doing in the administration of the affairs of his office and to deserve public approval and popular commendation. His object is to protect and provide for the poor and the homeless, and the war which he has made and is making is upon the lawless and the depredator. Good men commend him and his course. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Cobb] has read an earnest letter from one of the citizens of my own State of whom the nation feel proud—Hon. E. B. Washbuine—which speaks volumes; and knowing that another of our citizens, whose in¬ dorsement would be a matter of pride to any man, had written a letter to General Sparks of similar import, I have procured it and will read so much of it as relates to this matter: Dear General : * * Bloomington, III., April 16, 1886. The great corporations and other monopolies have for many years been stretch¬ ing out their strong and unscrupulous arms over the public lands remaining for enterprising and honest settlers. Millions of acres of this domain have been seized and stolen, and I have to say this robbery could not have succeeded with¬ out the collusion and co-operation of agents employed to protect the interests of the people. Astounding frauds have been perpetrated and are now constantly coming to light, proving how vast and how reckless this organized plunder has been. Thousands of laboring men with their wives and children have been denied the chance to gain a livelihood by the power and greed of heartless and rich corporations. Immense combinations have been formed, including the ties of political and social life, for a common object—to break down all attempts at Washington to crush out a venal system which has flourished by departmental indifference or favor. Whoever stands in the way of this selfish league must expect to be confronted with relentless hostility and bitter persecution. He will be assailed with most formidable influences outside and inside the party to which he may be attached. Corruptionists are not troubled with scruples. They use politics as the tools of a vile traffic, and shift from side to side as interest may be best served by convenient change. By means of wealth and association they can procure what would seem externally to be a good showing to help the worst cause. Do not be deterred in your good work by malicious opposition or insidious injustice. Be firm and temperate, and the country will sustain whatever is right. Throttle land-grabbing corporations ; punish fraud and protect the plain peo¬ ple's Lincoln loved to call his chief support in time of peril and vexation. Very truly, * DAVID DAVIS. General W. A. J. Sparks, Washington, D. C. The harsh criticism, the severe censure, and the denunciation of the Department in the interest, directly or indirectly, of these fraudulent t 32 acquisitions of the public lands may well be borne by one who can re¬ ceive such commendations from men like Washburne and Davis, and be may with serene composure and confidence await the finding and ver¬ dict of that greater tribunal to which, as public servants, we are all amenable and in which we must acquiesce, the judgment of the Amer¬ ican people. O