Great Fortunes from Railroads Part 5

A comparatively few of the whole were able to get land direct from the Government. Naturally the course of this extensive migration followed the path of transportation, that is to say, of the railroads. This was exactly what the railroad corporations had antic.i.p.ated. As a rule the migrating farmers found the railroads or cattlemen already in possession of many of the best lands. To give a specific idea of how vast and widespread were the railroad holdings in the various States, this tabulation covering the years up to 1883 will suffice: In the States of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi about 9,000,000 acres in all; in Wisconsin, 3,553,865 acres; Missouri, 2,605,251 acres; Arkansas, 2,613,631 acres; Illinois, 2,595,053 acres; Iowa, 4,181,929 acres; Michigan, 3,355,943 acres; Minnesota, 9,830,450 acres; Nebraska, 6,409,376 acres; Colorado, 3,000,000 acres; the State of Was.h.i.+ngton, 11,700,000 acres; New Mexico, 11,500,000 acres; in the Dakotas, 8,000,000 acres; Oregon, 5,800,000 acres; Montana, 17,000,000 acres; California, 16,387,000; Idaho, 1,500,000, and Utah, 1,850,000. [Footnote: "The Public Domain," House Ex. Doc. No. 47, Third Session, Forty-sixth Congress: 273.]

Prospective farmers had to pay the railroads exorbitant prices for land. Very often they had not sufficient funds; a mortgage or two would be signed; and if the farmer had a bad season or two, and could no longer pay the interest, foreclosure would result. But whether crops were good or bad, the American farmer constantly had to compete in the grain markets of the world with the cheap labor of India and Russia. And inexorably, East or West, North or South, he was caught between a double fire.

On the one hand, in order to compete with the immense capitalist farms gradually developing, he had to give up primitive implements and buy the most improved agricultural machines. For these he was charged five and six times the sum it cost the manufacturers to make and market them. Usually if he could not pay for them outright, the manufacturers took out a mortgage on his farm. Large numbers of these mortgages were foreclosed.

In addition, the time had pa.s.sed when the farmer made his own clothes and many other articles. For everything that he bought he had to pay excessive prices. He, even more than the industrial working cla.s.ses, had to pay an enormous manufacturer's profit, and additionally the high freight railroad rate.

On the other hand, the great capitalist agencies directly dealing with the crops--the packing houses, the gambling cotton and produce exchanges--actually owned, by a series of manipulations, a large proportion of his crops before they were out of the ground. These crops were sold to the working cla.s.s at exorbitant prices. The small farmer labored incessantly, only to find himself getting poorer. It served political purpose well to describe glowingly the farmer's prosperity; but the greater crops he raised, the greater the profit to the railroad companies and to various other divisions of the capitalist cla.s.s. His was the labor and worry; they gathered in the financial harvest.

METHODS OF THE GREAT LANDOWNERS.

While thus the produce of the farmer's labor was virtually confiscated by the different capitalist combinations, the farmers of many States, particularly of the rich agricultural States of the West, were unable to stand up against the encroachments, power, and the fraudulent methods of the great capitalist landowners.

The land frauds in the State of California will serve as an example.

Acting under the authority of various measures pa.s.sed by Congress-- measures which have been described--land grabbers succeeded in obtaining possession of an immense area in that State. Perjury, fraudulent surveys and entries, collusion with Government officials-- these were a few of the many methods.

Jose Limantour, by an alleged grant from a Mexican Governor, and collusion with officials, almost succeeded in stealing more than half a million acres. Henry Miller, who came to the United States as an immigrant in 1850, is to-day owner of 14,539,000 acres of the richest land in California and Oregon. It embraces more than 22,500 square miles, a territory three times as large as New Jersey. The stupendous land frauds in all of the Western and Pacific States by which capitalists obtained "an empire of land, timber and mines" are amply described in numerous doc.u.ments of the period. These land thieves, as was developed in official investigations, had their tools and a.s.sociates in the Land Commissioner's office, in the Government executive departments, and in both houses of Congress. The land grabbers did their part in driving the small farmer from the soil.

Bailey Millard, who extensively investigated the land frauds in California, after giving full details, says:

When you have learned these things it is not difficult to understand how one hundred men in the great Sacramento Valley have come to own over 17,000,000 acres, while in the San Joaquin Valley it is no uncommon thing for one man's name to stand for 100,000 acres. This grabbing of large tracts has discouraged immigration to California more than any other single factor. A family living on a small holding in a vast plain, with hardly a house in sight, will in time become a very lonely family indeed, and will in a few years be glad to sell out to the land king whose domain is adjacent. Thousands of small farms have in this way been acquired by the large holders at nominal prices. [Footnote: "The West Coast Land Grabbers." Everybody's Magazine, May, 1905.]

SEIZURE OF IMMENSE AREAS BY FRAUD.

Official reports of the period, contemporaneous with the original seizure of these immense tracts of land, give far more specific details of the methods by which that land was obtained. Of the numerous reports of committees of the California Legislature, we will here simply quote one--that of the Swamp Land Investigating Committee of the California a.s.sembly of 1873. Dealing with the fraudulent methods by which huge areas of the finest lands in California were obtained for practically nothing as "swamp" land, this committee reported, citing from what it termed a "mighty ma.s.s of evidence,"

"That through the connivance of parties, surveyors were appointed who segregated lands as 'swamp,' which were not so in fact. The corruption existing in the land department of the General Government has aided this system of fraud."

Also, the committee commented with deep irony, "the loose laws of the State, governing all cla.s.ses of State lands, has enabled wealthy parties to obtain much of it under circ.u.mstances which, in some countries, where laws are more rigid and terms less refined, would be termed fraudulent, but we can only designate it as keen foresight and wise (for the land grabbers) construction of loose, unwholesome laws." [Footnote: Report of the Swamp Land Investigating Committee, Appendix to California Journals of Senate and a.s.sembly. Twentieth Session, 1874, Vol. iv, Doc. No. 5:3. ]

After recording its findings that it was satisfied from the evidence that "the grossest frauds have been committed in swamp matters in this State, "the committee went on:

Formerly it was the custom to permit filings upon real or alleged swamp lands, and to allow the applications to lie unacted upon for an indefinite number of years, at the option of the applicants. In these cases, parties on the "inside" of the Land Office "ring" had but to wait until some one should come along who wanted to take up these lands in good faith, and they would "sell out" to them their "rights"

to land on which they had never paid a cent, nor intended to pay a cent.

Or, if the nature of the land was doubtful, they would postpone all investigation until the height of the floods during the rainy season, when surveyors, in interest with themselves, would be sent out to make favorable reports as to the "swampy" character of the land. In the mountain valleys and on the other side of the Sierras, the lands are overflowed from melting snow exactly when the water is most wanted; but the simple presence of the water is all that is necessary to show to the speculators that the land is "swamp," and it therefore presents an inviting opportunity for this grasping cupidity.

[Footnote: Report of the Swamp Land Investigating Committee, etc., 5.]

In his exhaustive report for 1885, Commissioner Sparks, of the General Land Office, described at great length the vast frauds that had continuously been going on in the granting of alleged "swamp"

lands, and in fraudulent surveys, in many States and Territories.

[Footnote: House Doc.u.ments, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, Vol. ii.] "I thus found this office," he wrote, "a mere instrumentality in the hands of 'surveying rings.'" [Footnote: Ibid., 166] "Sixteen towns.h.i.+ps examined in Colorado in 1885 were found to have been surveyed on paper only, no actual surveying having been done. [Footnote: Ibid., 165 ] In twenty-two other towns.h.i.+ps examined in Colorado, purporting to have been surveyed under a "special- deposit" contract awarded in 1881, the surveys were found wholly fraudulent in seven, while the other fifteen were full of fraud."

[Footnote: House Doc.u.ments, etc., 1885-86, ii: 165]

These are a very few of the numerous instances cited by Commissioner Sparks. Although the law restricted surveys to agricultural lands and for homestead entries, yet the Land Office had long corruptly allowed what it was pleased to term certain "liberal regulations." Surveys were so construed as to include any portion of towns.h.i.+ps the "larger portion" of which was not "known" to be of a mineral character. These "regulations," which were nothing more or less than an extra-legal license to land-grabbers, also granted surveys for desert lands and timber lands under the timber-land act. By the terms of this act, it will be recalled, those who entered and took t.i.tle to desert and timber lands were not required to be actual settlers. Thus, it was only necessary for the surveyors in the hire of the great land grabbers to report fine grazing, agricultural, timber or mineral land as "desert land," and vast areas could be seized by single individuals or corporations with facility.

Two specific laws directly contributed to the effectiveness of this spoliation. One act, pa.s.sed by Congress on May 30, 1862, authorized surveys to be made at the expense of settlers in the towns.h.i.+ps that those settlers desired surveyed. Another act, called the Deposit Act, pa.s.sed in 1871, provided that the amounts deposited by settlers should be partly applied in payment for the lands thus surveyed.

Together, these two laws made the grasping of land on an extensive scale a simple process. The "settler" (which so often meant, in reality, the capitalist) could secure the collusion of the Land Office, and have fraudulent surveys made. Under these surveys he could lay claim to immense tracts of the most valuable land and have them reported as "swamp" or "desert" lands; he could have the boundaries of original claims vastly enlarged; and the fact that part of his disburs.e.m.e.nts for surveying was considered as a payment for those lands, stood in law as virtually a confirmation of his claim.

ACTUAL SETTLERS EXCLUDED FROM PUBLIC DOMAIN.

"Wealthy speculators and powerful syndicates," reported Commissioner Sparks,

covet the public domain, and a survey is the first step in the accomplishment of this desire. The bulk of deposit surveys have been made in timber districts and grazing regions, and the surveyed lands have immediately been entered under the timber land, preemption, commuted homestead, timber-culture and desert-land acts. So thoroughly organized has been the entire system of procuring the survey and making illegal entry of lands, that agents and attorneys engaged in this business have been advised of every official proceeding, and enabled to present entry applications for the lands at the very moment of the filing of the plots of survey in the local land offices.

Prospectors employed by lumber firms and corporations seek out and report the most valuable timber tracts in California, Oregon, Was.h.i.+ngton Territory or elsewhere; settler's applications are manufactured as a basis for survey; contracts are entered into and pushed through the General Land Office in hot haste; a skeleton survey is made... entry papers, made perfect in form by competent attorneys, are filed in bulk, and the manipulators enter into possession of the land. . . . This has been the course of proceeding heretofore. [Footnote: House Doc.u.ments, etc., 1885-86, ii: 167.]

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 ma.s.s 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 Was.h.i.+ngton Territory and the princ.i.p.al 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 hara.s.sed and a.s.sailed.

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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Doc.u.ments, 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 doc.u.ments 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 a.s.sess 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 t.i.tle to T. B. Catron, the United States Attorney for New Mexico.

Presently Elkins turned up as the princ.i.p.al 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 t.i.tles 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, a.s.serting 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 quant.i.ty. [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 pet.i.tioned 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 t.i.tle 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 Doc.u.ments, First Session, Fiftieth Congress, 1887-88, Vol. i, Private Land Claim No.

103, Ex. Doc. No. 20:3. Doc.u.ments Nos. 3 to 11, 13 to 23, 25 to 29 and 38 in the same volume deal with similar claims.]