To Mark Sullivan Collier's Weekly
Washington, November 6, 1913
MY DEAR SULLIVAN,—I want to thank you for your sympathetic notice regarding my hard luck out in California, and to let you know that I am in just as good shape now as I have been for twenty years.
[Illustration with caption: FRANKLIN K. LANE, MRS. LANE, MRS.
MILLER, AND ADOLPH C. MILLER]
At the end of your little comment you spoke of conditions in the lower grades of the Department as being almost as bad as if they were corrupt. I have not your article before me, but I think this is the meat of it. I wish you would tell me just what you mean by this. I know that lots of things come to men like you that do not reach my ears, although I have retained pretty well my old newspaper faculty of smoking things out.
If we have anything here that is almost rotten, I want to know it before it gets thoroughly rotten. I have found a lot of things that were wrong, and have set most of them right. There has already been a great improvement; for instance, in Indian affairs. Under the last Administration, for example, the highest bid on 200,000 acres of Indian oil lands was one-eighth royalty and a bonus of one dollar an acre. We recently leased 10,000 of these same acres at one-sixth royalty and a bonus of $500,000.
I have had an examination made into probate matters, in Oklahoma, and found an appalling condition of things. In one county where there are six thousand probate cases pending, all involving the interests of Indian minors, the guardians in three thousand cases were delinquent in filing reports, and otherwise in complying with the law. This week I have arranged with the Five Civilized Tribes to institute a cooperative method of checking up all of these accounts and giving them personal consideration; especially appointing an attorney to look after the interests of these minors in each of the counties in eastern Oklahoma. We are to aid the Oklahoma courts in cleaning up the State.
Let me have any facts that will be of help. Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Edward M. House