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 passed 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 documents of the period. These land thieves, as was developed in official investigations, had their tools and associates 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.]