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.