THE "CASH SALES" ACT.
By 1876, however, the public agitation had died away. The time was propitious. Congress rushed through a bill carefully worded for the purpose. The lands were ordered sold in unlimited areas for cash. No pretense was made of restricting the sale to a certain acreage so that all any individual could buy was enough for his own use. Anyone, if he chose, could buy a million or ten million acres, provided he had the cash to pay $1.25 an acre. The way was easy for capitalists to get millions of acres of the coveted iron, coal and timber lands for practically nothing. At that very time the Government was selling coal lands in Colorado at $10 to $20 an acre, and it was recognized that even that price was absurdly low.
Hardly was this "cash sales" law passed, than the besieging capitalists pounced upon these Southern lands and scooped in eight millions of acres of coal, iron and timber lands intrinsically worth (speaking commercially) hundreds of millions of dollars. The fortunes of not a few railroad and industrial magnates were instantly and hugely increased by this fraudulent transaction. [Footnote: "Fraudulent transaction," House Ex. Doc. 47, Part iv, Forty-sixth Congress, Third Session, speaks of the phrasing of the act as a mere subterfuge for despoilment; that the act was passed specifically "for the benefit of capitalists," and "that fraud was used in sneaking it through Congress.">[ Hundreds of millions of dollars in capitalist bonds and stock, representing in effect mortgages on which the people perpetually have to pay heavy interest, are to-day based upon the value of the lands then fraudulently seized.
Fraud was so continuous and widespread that we can here give only a few succinct and scattering instances. "The present system of laws," reported a special Congressional Committee appointed in 1883 to investigate what had become of the once vast public domain, "seem to invite fraud. You cannot turn to a single state paper or public document where the subject is mentioned before the year 1883, from the message of the President to the report of the Commissioner of the Land Office, but what statements of 'fraud' in connection with the disposition of public lands are found." [Footnote: House Ex. Doc. 47: 356.] A little later, Commissioner Sparks of the General Land Office pointed out that "the near approach of the period when the United States will have no land to dispose of has stimulated the exertions of capitalists and corporations to acquire outlying regions of public land in mass, by whatever means, legal or illegal." In the same report he further stated, "At the outset of my administration I was confronted with overwhelming evidence that the public domain was made the prey of unscrupulous speculation and the worst forms of land monopoly." [Footnote: Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for October, 1885: 48 and 79.]
THE "EXCHANGE OF LAND" LAW. Not pausing to deal with a multitude of other laws the purport and effect of all of which were the same—to give the railroad and other corporations a succession of colossal gifts and other special privileges—laws, many of which will be referred to later—we shall pass on to one of the final masterly strokes of the railroad magnates in possessing themselves of many of such of the last remaining valuable public lands as were open to spoliation.
This happened in 1900. What were styled the land-grant railroads, that is to say, the railroad corporations which received subsidies in both money and land from the Government, were allotted land in alternate sections. The Union Pacific manipulated Congress to "loan" it about $27,000,000 and give it outright 13,000,000 acres of land. The Central Pacific got nearly $26,000,000 and received 9,000,000 acres. To the Northern Pacific 47,000,000 acres were given; to the Kansas Pacific, 12,100,000; to the Southern Pacific about 18,000,000 acres. From 1850 the National Government had granted subsidies to more than fifty railroads, and, in addition to the great territorial possessions given to the six railroads enumerated, had made a cash appropriation to those six of not less than about $140,000,000. But the corruptly obtained donations from the Government were far from being all of the bounty. Throughout the country, States, cities and counties contributed presents in the form of franchises, financial assistance, land and terminal sites.
The land grants, especially in the West, were so enormous that Parsons compares them as follows: Those in Minnesota would make two States the size of Massachusetts; in Kansas they were equal to two States the size of Connecticut and New Jersey; in Iowa the extent of the railroad grants was larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island, and the grants in Michigan and Wisconsin nearly as large; in Montana the grant to one railroad alone would equal the whole of Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The land grants in the State of Washington were about equivalent to the area of the same three States. Three States the size of New Hampshire could be carved out of the railroad grants in California. [Footnote: "The Railways, the Trusts and the People": 137.]
The alternate sections embraced in these States might be good or useless land; the value depended upon the locality. They might be the richest and finest of agricultural grazing, mineral or timber land or barren wastes and rocky mountain tops.
For a while the railroad corporations appeared satisfied with their appropriations and allotments. But as time passed, and the powers of government became more and more directed by them, this plan naturally occurred: Why not exchange the bad, for good, land? Having found it so easy to possess themselves of so vast and valuable an area of former public domain, they calculated that no difficulty would be encountered in putting through another process of plundering. All that was necessary was to go through the formality of ordering Congress to pass an act allowing them to exchange bad, for good, lands.
This, however, could not be done too openly. The people must be blinded by an appearance of conserving public interests. The opportunity came when the Forest Reservation Bill was introduced in Congress—a bill to establish national forest reservations. No better vehicle could have been found for the project traveling in disguise. This bill was everywhere looked upon as a wise and statesmanlike measure for the preservation of forests; capitalist interests, in the pursuit of immediate profit, had ruthlessly denuded and destroyed immense forest stretches, causing, in turn, floods and destruction of life, property and of agriculture. Part of the lands to be taken for the forest reservations included territory settled upon; it was argued as proper, therefore, that the evicted homesteaders should be indemnified by having the choice of lands elsewhere.
So far, the measure looked well. But when it went to the conference committee of the two houses of Congress, the railroad representatives artfully slipped in the four unobtrusive words, "or any other claimant." This quartet of words allowed the railway magnates to exchange millions of acres of desert and of denuded timber lands, arid hills and mountain tops covered with perpetual snow, for millions of the richest lands still remaining in the Government's much diminished hold.
So secretly was this transaction consummated that the public knew nothing about it; the subsidized newspapers printed not a word; it went through in absolute silence. The first protest raised was that of Senator Pettigrew, of South Dakota, in the United States Senate on May 31, 1900. In a vigorous speech he disclosed the vast thefts going on under this act. Congress, under the complete domination of the railroads, took no action to stop it. Only when the fraud was fully accomplished did the railroads allow Congress to go through the forms of deferring to public interests by repealing the law. [Footnote: In a letter to the author Senator Pettigrew instances the case of the Northern Pacific Railroad. "The Northern Pacific," he writes, "having patented the top of Mount Tacoma, with its perpetual snow and the rocky crags of the mountains elsewhere, which had been embraced within the forest reservation, could now swap these worthless lands, every acre, for the best valley and grazing lands owned by the Government, and thus the Northern Pacific acquired about two million acres more of mineral, forest and farming lands.">[