Chapter II: A Necessary Contrast (2)

Commissioner Sparks described a case where it was discovered by his special agents in California that an English firm had obtained 100,000 acres of the choicest red-wood lands in that State. These lands were then estimated to be worth $100 an acre. The cost of procuring surveys and fraudulent entries did not probably exceed $3 an acre. [Footnote: House Ex. Docs., etc., 1885-86, ii: 167.]

"In the same manner," Commissioner Sparks continued, "extensive coal deposits in our Western territory are acquired in mass through expedited surveys, followed by fraudulent pre-emption and commuted homestead entries." [Footnote: Ibid.] He went on to tell that nearly the whole of the Territory (now State) of Wyoming, and large portions of Montana, had been surveyed under the deposit system, and the lands on the streams fraudulently taken up under the desert land act, to the exclusion of actual settlers. Nearly all of Colorado, the very best cattle-raising portions of New Mexico, the rich timber lands of California, the splendid forest lands of Washington Territory and the principal part of the extensive pine lands of Minnesota had been fraudulently seized in the same way. [Footnote: Ibid., 168.] In all of the Western States and Territories these fraudulent surveys had accomplished the seizure of the best and most valuable lands. "To enable the pressing tide of Western immigration to secure homes upon the public domain," Commissioner Sparks urged, "it is necessary... that hundreds of millions of acres of public lands now appropriated should be wrested from illegal control." [Footnote: Ibid.] But nothing was done to recover these stolen lands. At the very time Commissioner Sparks--one of the very few incorruptible Commissioners of Public Lands,--was writing this, the land-grabbing interests were making the greatest exertions to get him removed. During his tenure of office they caused him to be malevolently harassed and assailed. After he left office they resumed complete domination of the Land Commissioner's Bureau. [Footnote: The methods of capitalists in causing the removal of officials who obstructed or exposed their crimes and violent seizure of property were continuous and long enduring. It was a very old practice. When Astor was debauching and swindling Indian tribes, he succeeded, it seems, by exerting his power at Washington, in causing Government agents standing in his way to be dismissed from office. The following is an extract from a communication, in 1821, of the U. S. Indian agent at Green Bay, Wisconsin, to the U. S. Superintendent of Indian Trade:

"The Indians are frequently kept in a state of intoxication, giving their furs, etc., at a great sacrifice for whiskey.... The agents of Mr. Astor hold out the idea that they will, ere long be able to break down the factories [Government agencies]; and they menace the Indian agents and others who may interfere with them, with dismission from office through Mr. Astor. They say that a representation from Messrs. Crooks and Stewart (Mr. Astor's agents) led to the dismission of the Indian agent at Mackinac, and they also say that the Indian agent here is to be dismissed...."--U.S. Senate Documents, First Session, Seventeenth Congress, 1821-22, Vol. i, Doc. No. 60:52-53.]

THE GIGANTIC PRIVATE LAND CLAIM FRAUDS.

The frauds in the settlement of private land claims on alleged grants by Spain and Mexico were colossal. Vast estates in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and other States were obtained by collusion with the Government administrative officials and Congress. These were secured upon the strength of either forged documents purporting to be grants from the Spanish or Mexican authorities, or by means of fraudulent surveys.

One of the most notorious of these was the Beaubin and Miranda grant, otherwise famous thirty years ago as the Maxwell land grant. A reference to it here is indispensable. It was by reason of this transaction, as well as by other similar transactions, that one of the American multimillionaires obtained his original millions. This individual was Stephen B. Elkins, at present a powerful member of the United States Senate, and one of the ruling oligarchy of wealth. He is said to possess a fortune of at least $50,000,000, and his daughter, it is reported, is to marry the Duke of the Abruzzi, a scion of the royal family of Italy.

The New Mexico claim of Beaubin and Miranda transferred to L. B. Maxwell, was allowed by the Government in 1869, but for ninety-six thousand acres only. The owner refused to comply with the law, and in 1874 the Department of the Interior ordered the grant to be treated as public lands and thrown open to settlement. Despite this order, the Government officials in New Mexico, acting in collusion with other interested parties, illegally continued to assess it as private property. In 1877 a fraudulent tax sale was held, and the grant, fraudulently enlarged to 1,714,764.94 acres, was purchased by M. M. Mills, a member of the New Mexico Legislature. He transferred the title to T. B. Catron, the United States Attorney for New Mexico. Presently Elkins turned up as the principal owner. The details of how this claim was repeatedly shown up to be fraudulent by Land Commissioners and Congressional Committees; how the settlers in New Mexico fought it and sought to have it declared void, and the law enforced; [Footnote: "Land Titles in New Mexico and Colorado," House Reports First Session, Fifty-second Congress, 1891-92, Vol. iv, Report No. 1253. Also, House Reports, First Session, Fifty-second Congress, 1891-92, Vol. vii, Report No. 1824. Also, House Reports, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, ii: 170.] and how Elkins, for some years himself a Delegate in Congress from New Mexico, succeeded in having the grant finally validated on technical grounds, and "judicially cleared" of all taint of fraud, by an astounding decision of the Supreme Court of the United States--a decision contrary to the facts as specifically shown by successive Government officials--all of these details are set forth fully in another part of this work. [Footnote: See "The Elkins Fortune," in Vol. iii.]

The forgeries and fraudulent surveys by which these huge estates were secured were astoundingly bold and frequent. Large numbers of private land claims, rejected by various Land Commissioners as fraudulent, were corruptly confirmed by Congress. In 1870, the heirs of one Gervacio Nolan applied for confirmation of two grants alleged to have been made to an ancestor under the colonization laws of New Mexico. They claimed more than 1,500,000 acres, but Congress conditionally confirmed their claim to the extent of forty-eight thousand acres only, asserting that the Mexican laws had limited to this area the area of public lands that could be granted to one individual. In 1880 the Land Office re-opened the claim, and a new survey was made by surveyors in collusion with the claimants, and hired by them. When the report of this survey reached Washington, the Land Office officials were interested to note that the estate had grown from forty-eight thousand acres to five hundred and seventy-five thousand acres, or twelve times the legal quantity. [Footnote: House Reports, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, ii: 171.] The actual settlers were then evicted. The romancer might say that the officials were amazed; they were not; such fraudulent enlargements were common.

The New Mexico estate of Francis Martinez, granted under the Mexican laws restricting a single grant to forty-eight thousand acres, was by a fraudulent survey, extended to 594,515.55 acres, and patented in 1881. [Footnote: Ibid., 172.] A New Mexico grant said to have been made to Salvador Gonzales, in 1742, comprising "a spot of land to enable him to plant a cornfield for the support of his family." was fraudulently surveyed and enlarged to 103,959.31 acres--a survey amended later by reducing the area to 23,661 acres. [Footnote: House Reports, etc, 1885-86, ii: 172.] The B. M. Montaya grant in New Mexico, limited to forty-eight thousand acres, under the Mexican colonization laws, was fraudulently surveyed for 151,056.97 acres. The Estancia grant in New Mexico also restricted under the colonization act to forty-eight thousand acres, was enlarged by a fraudulent survey to 415,036.56 acres. [Footnote: Ibid., 173.] In 1768, Ignacio Chaves and others in New Mexico petitioned for a tract of about two and one-fourth superficial leagues, or approximately a little less than ten thousand acres. A fraudulent survey magnified this claim to 243,036.43 acres. [Footnote: Ibid.]

These are a very few of the large number of forged or otherwise fraudulent claims.

Some were rejected by Congress; many, despite Land Office protests, were confirmed. By these fraudulent and corrupt operations, enormous estates were obtained in New Mexico, Colorado and in other sections. The Pablo Montaya grant comprised in all, 655,468.07 acres; the Mora grant 827,621.01 acres; the Tierra Amarilla grant 594,515 acres, and the Sangre de Cristo grant 998,780.46 acres. All of these were corruptly obtained. [Footnote: See Resolution of House Committee on Private Land Claims, June, 1892, demanding a thorough investigation. The House took no action.--Report No. 1824, 1892.] Scores of other claims were confirmed for lesser areas. During Commissioner Sparks' tenure of office, claims to 8,500,000 acres in New Mexico alone were pending before Congress. A comprehensive account of the operations of the land-grabbers, giving the explicit facts, as told in Government and court records, of their system of fraud, is presented in the chapter on the Elkins fortune.

FORGERY, PERJURY AND FRAUDULENT SURVEY.

Reporting, in 1881, to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Henry M. Atkinson, U. S. Surveyor-General of New Mexico, wrote that "the investigation of this office for the past five years has demonstrated that some of the alleged grants are forgeries." He set forth that unless the court before which these claims were adjudicated could have full access to the archives, "it is much more liable to be imposed upon by fraudulent title papers." [Footnote: "The Public Domain," etc. 1124. Also see next Footnote.] In fact, the many official reports describe with what cleverness the claimants to these great areas forged their papers, and the facility with which they bought up witnesses to perjure for them. Finding it impossible to go back of the aggregate and corroborative "evidence" thus offered, the courts were frequently forced to decide in favor of the claimants. To use a modern colloquial phrase, the cases were "framed up." In the case of Luis Jamarillo's claim to eighteen thousand acres in New Mexico, U. S. Surveyor-General Julian of New Mexico, in recommending the rejection of the claim and calling attention to the perjury committed, said:

When these facts are considered, in connection with the further and well-known fact that such witnesses can readily be found by grant claimants, and that in this way the most monstrous frauds have been practiced in extending the lines of such grants in New Mexico, it is not possible to accept the statement of this witness as to the west boundary of this grant, which he locates at such a distance from the east line as to include more than four times the amount of land actually granted. [Footnote: Senate Executive Documents, First Session, Fiftieth Congress, 1887-88, Vol. i, Private Land Claim No. 103, Ex. Doc. No. 20:3. Documents Nos. 3 to 11, 13 to 23, 25 to 29 and 38 in the same volume deal with similar claims.]

"The widespread belief of the people of this country," wrote Commissioner Sparks in 1885, "that the land department has been largely conducted to the advantage of speculation and monopoly, private and corporate, rather than in the public interest, I have found supported by developments in every branch of the service.... I am satisfied that thousands of claims without foundation in law or equity, involving millions of acres of public land, have been annually passed to patent upon the single proposition that nobody but the Government had any _adverse_ interest. The vast machinery of the land department has been devoted to the chief result of conveying the title of the United States to public lands upon fraudulent entries under loose construction of law." [Footnote: House Ex. Docs., 1885-86, ii: 156.] Whenever a capitalist's interest was involved, the law was always "loosely construed," but the strictest interpretation was invariably given to laws passed against the working population.

It was estimated, in 1892, that 57,000,000 acres of land in New Mexico and Colorado had, for more than thirty years, been unlawfully treated by public officers as having been ceded to the United States by Mexico. The Maxwell, Sangre de Cristo, Nolan and other grants were within this area. The House Committee on Private Land Claims reported on April 29, 1892: "A long list of alleged Mexican and Spanish grants within the limits of the Texas cession have been confirmed, or quit claimed by Congress, under the false representation that said alleged grants were located in the territory of New Mexico ceded by the treaty; an enormous area of land has long been and is now held as confirmed Mexican and Spanish grants, located in the territory of Mexico ceded by the treaty when such is not the fact." [Footnote: House Report, 1892, No. 1253:8.]

In Texas the fraudulent, and often, violent methods of the seizure of land by the capitalists were fully as marked as those used elsewhere.

Upon its admittance to the Union, Texas retained the disposition of its public lands. Up to about the year 1864, almost the entire area of Texas, comprising 274,356 square miles, or 175,587,840 acres, was one vast unfenced feeding ground for cattle, horses and sheep. In about the year 1874, the agricultural movement began; large numbers of intending farmers migrated to Texas, particularly with the expectation of raising cattle, then a highly profitable business. They found huge stretches of the land already preempted by individual capitalists or corporations. In a number of instances, some of these individuals, according to the report of a Congressional Committee, in 1884, dealing with Texas lands, had each acquired the ownership of more than two hundred and fifty thousand acres.

"It is a notorious fact," this committee reported, "that the public land laws, although framed with the special object of encouraging the public domain, of developing its resources and protecting actual settlers, have been extensively evaded and violated. Individuals and corporations have, by purchasing the proved-up claims, or purchases of ostensible settlers, employed by them to make entry, extensively secured the ownership of large bodies of land." [Footnote: House Reports, Second Session, Forty-eighth Congress, 1884-85, Vol. xxix, Ex. Doc. No. 267:43.] The committee went on to describe how, to a very considerable extent, "foreigners of large means" had obtained these great areas, and had gone into the cattle business, and how the titles to these lands were se-cured not only by individuals but by foreign corporations. "Certain of these foreigners are titled noblemen. Some of them have brought over from Europe, in considerable numbers, herdsmen and other employees who sustain to them a dependent relationship characteristic of the peasantry on the large landed estates of Europe." Two British syndicates, for instance, held 7,500,000 acres in Texas. [Footnote: House Reports, etc., 1884-85, Doc. No. 267:46.]

This spoliation of the public domain was one of the chief grievances of the National Greenback-Labor party in 1880. This party, to a great extent, was composed of the Western farming element. In his letter accepting the nomination of that party for President of the United States, Gen. Weaver, himself a member of long standing in Congress from Iowa, wrote:

An area of our public domain larger than the territory occupied by the great German Empire has been wantonly donated to wealthy corporations; while a bill introduced by Hon. Hendrick B. Wright, of Pennsylvania, to enable our poor people to reach and occupy the few acres remaining, has been scouted, ridiculed, and defeated in Congress. In consequence of this stupendous system of land-grabbing, millions of the young men of America, and millions more of industrious people from abroad, seeking homes in the New World, are left homeless and destitute. The public domain must be sacredly reserved to actual settlers, and where corporations have not complied strictly with the terms of their grants, the lands should be at once reclaimed.

INCREASE OF FARM TENANTRY.

Without dwelling upon all the causative factors--involving an extended work in themselves--some significant general results will be pointed out.

The original area of public domain amounted to 1,815,504,147 acres, of which considerably more than half, embracing some of the very best agricultural, grazing, mineral and timber lands, was already alienated by the year 1880. By 1896 the alienation reached 806,532,362 acres. Of the original area, about 50,000,000 acres of forests have been withdrawn from the public domain by the Government, and converted into forest reservations. Large portions of such of the agricultural, grazing, mineral and timber lands as were not seized by various corporations and favored individuals before 1880, have been expropriated west of the Mississippi since then, and the process is still going, notably in Alaska. The nominal records of the General Land Office as to the number of homesteaders are of little value and are very misleading. Immense numbers of alleged homesteaders were, as we have copiously seen, nothing but paid dummies by whose entries vast tracts of land were seized under color of law. It is indisputably clear that hundreds of millions of acres of the public domain have been obtained by outright fraud.

Notwithstanding the fact that only a few years before, the Government had held far more than enough land to have provided every agriculturist with a farm, yet by 1880, a large farm tenant class had already developed. Not less than 1,024,061 of the 4,008,907 farms in the United States were held by renters. One-fourth of all the farms in the United States were cultivated by men who did not own them. Furthermore, and even more impressive, there were 3,323,876 farm laborers composed of men who did not even rent land. Equally significant was the increasing tendency to the operating of large farms by capitalists with the hired labor. Of farms under cultivation, extending from one hundred to five hundred acres, there were nearly a million and a half--1,416,618, to give the exact number--owned largely by capitalists and cultivated by laborers. [Footnote: Tenth Census, Statistics of Agriculture: 28.]

Phillips, who had superior opportunities for getting at the real facts, and whose volume upon the subject issued at the time is well worthy of consideration, thus commented upon the census returns:

It will thus be seen that of the 7,670,493 persons in our country engaged in agriculture, there are 1,024,601 who pay rent to persons not cultivating the soil; 1,508,828 capitalist or speculating owners, who own the soil and employ laborers; 804,522 of well-to-do farmers who hire part of their work or employ laborers, and 670,944 who may be said to actually cultivate the soil they own: the rest are hired workers.

Phillips goes on to remark:

Another fact must be borne in mind, that a large number of the 2,984,306 farmers who own land are in debt for it to the money lenders. From the writer's observation it is probable that forty per cent, of them are so deeply in debt as to pay a rent in interest. This squeezing process is going on at the rate of eight and ten per cent., and in most cases can terminate in but one way. [Footnote: "Labor, Land and Law": 353. It is difficult to get reliable statistics on the number of mortgages on farms, and on the number of farm tenants. The U.S. Industrial Commission estimated, in 1902, that fifty per cent, of the homesteads in Eastern Minnesota were mortgaged. Although admitting that such a condition had been general, it represented in its Final Report that a large number of mortgages in certain States had been paid off. According to the "Political Science Quarterly" (Vol. xi, No. 4, 1896) the United States Census of 1890 showed a marked increase, not only absolutely, but relatively in the number of farm tenants. It can hardly be doubted that farm tenantry is rapidly increasing and will under the influence of various causes increase still more.]

A LARGELY DISPOSSESSED NATION.

These are the statistics of a Government which, it is known, seeks to make its showing as favorable as possible to the existing regime. They make it clear that a rapid process of the dispossession of the industrial working, the middle and the small farming classes has been going on unceasingly. If the process was so marked in 1900 what must it be now? All of the factors operating to impoverish the farming population of the United States and turn them into homeless tenants have been a thousandfold intensified and augmented in the last ten years, beginning with the remarkable formation of hundreds of trusts in 1898. Even though the farmer may get higher prices for his products, as he did in 1908 and 1909, the benefits are deceptively transient, while the expropriating process is persistent.

There was a time when farm land in Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and many other States was considered of high value. But in the last few years an extraordinary sight has been witnessed. Hundreds of thousands of American farmers migrated to the virgin fields of Northwest Canada and settled there--a portentous movement significant of the straits to which the American farmer has been driven.

Abandoned farms in the East are numerous; in New York State alone 22,000 are registered. Hitherto the farmer has considered himself a sort of capitalist: if not hostile to the industrial working classes, he has been generally apathetic. But now he is being forced to the point of being an absolute dependant himself, and will inevitably align his interests with those of his brothers in the factories and in the shops.

With this contrast of the forces at work which gave empires of public domain to the few, while dispossessing the tens of millions, we will now proceed to a consideration of some of the fortunes based upon railroads.