Great Fortunes from Railroads

by Gustavus Myers

SPOLIATION ON A GREAT SCALE.

The "poor settler" catspaw was again made use of. At the behest of the lumber corporations, or of adventurers or politicians who saw a facile way of becoming multimillionaires by the simple passage of an act, the "Stone and Timber Act" was passed in 1878 by Congress. An amendment passed in 1892 made frauds still easier. This measure was another of those benevolent-looking laws which, on its face, extended opportunities for the homesteader. No longer, it was plausibly set forth, could any man say that the Government denied him the right to get public land for a reasonable sum. Was ever a finer, a more glorious chance presented? Here was the way open for any individual homesteader to get one hundred and sixty acres of timber land for the low price of $2.50 an acre. Congress was overwhelmed with outbursts of panegyrics for its wisdom and public spirit.

Soon, however, a cry of rage went up from the duped public. And the cause? The law, like the Desert Land Law, it turned out, was filled with cunningly-drawn clauses sanctioning the worst forms of spoliation. Entire trainloads of people, acting in collusion with the land grabbers, were transported by the lumber syndicates into the richest timber regions of the West, supplied with the funds to buy, and then each, after having paid $2.50 per acre for one hundred and sixty acres, immediately transferred his or her allotment to the lumber corporations.

Thus, for $2.50 an acre, the lumber syndicates obtained vast tracts of the finest lands worth, at the least, according to Government agents, $100 an acre, at a time, thirty-five years ago, when lumber was not nearly so costly as now.

The next development was characteristic of the progress of onsweeping capitalism. Just as the traders, bankers, factory owners, mining and railroad magnates had come into their possessions largely (in varying degrees) by fraud, and then upon the strength of those possessions had caused themselves to be elected or appointed to powerful offices in the Government, State or National, so now some of the lumber barons used a part of the millions obtained by fraud to purchase their way into the United States Senate and other high offices. They, as did their associates in the other branches of the capitalist class, helped to make and unmake judges, governors, legislatures and Presidents; and at least one, Russell A. Alger, became a member of the President's Cabinet in 1897.

Under this one law,—the Stone and Timber Act—irrespective of other complaisant laws, not less than $57,000,000 has been stolen in the last seven years alone from the Government, according to a statement made in Congress by Representative Hitchcock, of Nebraska, on May 5, 1908. He declared that 8,000,000 acres had been sold for $20,000,000, while the Department of the Interior had admitted in writing that the actual aggregate value of the land, at prevailing commercial prices, was $77,000,000. These lands, he asserted, had passed into the hands of the Lumber Trust, and their products were sold to the people of the United States at an advance of seventy per cent. This theft of $57,000,000 simply represented the years from 1901 to 1908; it is probable that the entire thefts for 10,395,689.96 acres sold during the whole series of years since the Stone and Timber Act was passed reaches a much vaster amount.

Stupendous as was the extent of the nation's resources already appropriated by 1876, more remained to be seized. The Government still owned 40,000,000 acres of land in the South, mainly in Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi. Much of this area was valuable timber land, and a part of it, especially in Alabama, was filled with great coal and iron deposits,—a fact of which certain capitalists were well aware, although the general public did not know it.

During the Civil War nothing could be attempted in the war-ravaged South. That conflict over, a group of capitalists set about to get that land, or at least the valuable part of it. At about the time that they had their plans primed to juggle a bill through Congress, an unfortunate situation arose. A rancid public scandal ensued from the bribery of members of Congress in getting through the charters and subsidies of the Union Pacific railroad and other railroads. Congress, for the sake of appearance, had to be circumspect.