Great Fortunes from Railroads Part 2

134:4.] The poor were always the decoys with which the capitalists of the day managed to bag their game. It was to aid and encourage "the man of small resources" to populate the West that the Desert Land Law was apparently enacted; and many a pathetic and enthusiastic speech was made in Congress as this act was ostentatiously going through.

Under this law, it was claimed, a man could establish himself upon six hundred and forty acres of land and, upon irrigating a portion of it, and paying $1.25 an acre, could secure a t.i.tle. For once, it seemed, Congress was looking out for the interests of the man of few dollars.

VAST THEFTS OF LAND.

But plaudits were too hasty. To the utter surprise of the people the law began to work in a perverse direction. Its provisions had read well enough on a casual scrutiny. Where lay the trouble? It lay in just a few words deftly thrown in, which the crowd did not notice.

This law, acclaimed as one of great benefit to every man aspiring for a home and land, was arranged so that the capitalist cattle syndicates could get immense areas. The lever was the omission of any provision requiring _actual settlement_. The livestock corporations thereupon sent in their swarms of dummies to the "desert" lands (many of which, in reality, were not desert but excellent grazing lands), had their dummies get patents from the Government and then transfer the lands. In this way the cattlemen became possessed of enormous areas; and to-day these tracts thus gotten by fraud are securely held intact, forming what may be called great estates, for on many of them live the owners in expansive baronial style.

In numerous instances, law was entirely dispensed with. Vast tracts of land were boldly appropriated by sheep and cattle rangers who had not even a pretense of t.i.tle. Enclosing these lands with fences, the rangers claimed them as their own, and hired armed guards to drive off intruders, and kill if necessary. [Footnote: "Within the cattle region," reported Commissioner Sparks, "it is notorious that actual settlements are generally prevented and made practically impossible outside the proximity of towns, through the unlawful control of the country, maintained by cattle companies."--U. S. Senate Docs., 1885- 86, Vol. viii, No. 134:4 and 5.

Acting Commissioner Harrison of the General Land Office, reporting on March 14, 1884, to Secretary of the Interior Teller, showed in detail the vast extent of the unlawful fencing of public lands. In the Arkansas Valley in Colorado at least 1,000,000 acres of public domain were illegally seized. The Prairie Cattle Company, composed of Scotch capitalists, had fenced in more than a million acres in Colorado, and a large number of other cattle companies in Colorado had seized areas ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 acres. "In Kansas," Harrison went on, "entire counties are reported as [illegally] fenced. In Wyoming, one hundred and twenty-five cattle companies are reported having fencing on the public lands. Among the companies and persons reported as having 'immense' or 'very large' areas inclosed . . . are the Dubuque, Cimarron and Renello Cattle [companies] in Colorado; the Marquis de Morales in Colorado; the Wyoming Cattle Company (Scotch) in Wyoming; and the Rankin Live Stock Company in Nebraska.

"There is a large number of cases where inclosures range from 1,000 to 25,000 acres and upwards.

"The reports of special agents show that the fraudulent entries of public land within the enclosures are extensively made by the procurement and in the interest of stockmen, largely for the purpose of controlling the sources of water supply."--"Unauthorized Fencing of Public Lands," U. S. Senate Docs., First Session, Forty-eighth Congress, 1883-84, Vol. vi, Doc. No. 127:2.] Murder after murder was committed. In this usurpation the august Supreme Court of the United States upheld them. And the grounds of the decision were what?

The very extraordinary dictum that a settler could not claim any right of preemption on public lands in possession of another who had enclosed, settled upon and improved them. This was the very reverse of every known declaration of common and of statute law. No court, supreme or inferior, had ever held that because the proceeds of theft were improved or were refurbished a bit, the sufferer was thereby estopped from recovery. This decision showed anew how, while the courts were ever ready to enforce the law literally against the underlings and penniless, they were as active in fabricating tortuous constructions coinciding not always, but nearly always, with the demands and interests of the capitalist cla.s.s.

It has long been the fashion on the part of a certain prevalent school of writers and publicists to excoriate this or that man, this or that corporation, as the ringleader in the orgy of corruption and oppression. This practice, arising partly from pa.s.sionate or ill- considered judgment, and in part from ignorance of the subject, has been the cause of much misunderstanding, popular and academic.

No one section of the capitalist cla.s.s can be held solely responsible; nor were the morals and ethics of any one division different from those of the others. The whole capitalist cla.s.s was coated with the same tar. Shipping merchants, traders in general, landholders, banking and railroad corporations, factory owners, cattle syndicates, public utility companies, mining magnates, lumber corporations--all were partic.i.p.ants in various ways in the subverting of the functions of government to their own fraudulent ends at the expense of the whole producing cla.s.s.

While the railroad corporations were looting the public treasury and the public domain, and vesting in themselves arbitrary powers of taxation and proscription, all of the other segments of the capitalist cla.s.s were, at the same time, enriching themselves in the same way or similar ways. The railroads were much denounced; but wherein did their methods differ from those of the cattle syndicates, the industrial magnates or the lumber corporations? The lumber barons wanted their predacious share of the public domain; throughout certain parts of the West and in the South were far-stretching, magnificent forests covered with the growth of centuries. To want and to get them were the same thing, with a Government in power representative of capitalism.

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 pa.s.sage of an act, the "Stone and Timber Act" was pa.s.sed in 1878 by Congress. An amendment pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociates in the other branches of the capitalist cla.s.s, 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 Hitchc.o.c.k, 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 a.s.serted, had pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mspect.

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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 doc.u.ment 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 ma.s.s, 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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sistance, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts; 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.s 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 un.o.btrusive 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."]

COAL LANDS EXPROPRIATED

Not merely were the capitalist interests allowed to plunder the public domain from the people under these various acts, but another act was pa.s.sed by Congress, the "Coal Land Act," purposely drawn to permit the railroads to appropriate great stretches of coal deposits.

"Already," wrote President Roosevelt in a message to Congress urging the repeal of the Stone and Timber Act, the Desert Land Law, the Coal Land Act and similar enactments, "probably one-half of the total area of high-grade coals in the West has pa.s.sed under private control.

Including both lignite and the coal areas, these private holdings aggregate not less than 30,000,000 acres of coal fields." These urgings fell flat on a Congress that included many members who had got their millions by reason of these identical laws, and which, as a body, was fully under the control of the dominant cla.s.s of the day-- the Capitalist cla.s.s. The oligarchy of wealth was triumphantly, gluttonously in power; it was ingenuous folly to expect it to yield where it could vanquish, and concede where it could despoil.

[Footnote: Nor did it yield. Roosevelt's denunciations in no way affected the steady expropriating process. In the current seizure (1909) of vast coal areas in Alaska, the long-continuing process can be seen at work under our very eyes. A controversy, in 1909, between Secretary of the Interior Ballinger and U. S. Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot brought a great scandal to a head. It was revealed that several powerful syndicates of capitalists had filed fraudulent claims to Alaskan coal lands, the value of which is estimated to be from $75,000,000 to $1,000,000,000. At the present writing their claims, it is announced, are being investigated by the Government.

The charge has been made that Secretary of the Interior Ballinger, after leaving the Land Commissioner's office--a post formerly held by him--became the attorney for the most powerful of these syndicates.

At a recent session of the Irrigation Congress at Spokane, Washington, Gov. Pardee of California charged that the timber, the minerals and the soil had long since become the booty of corporations whose political control of public servants was notorious.]

The thefts of the public domain have continued, without intermission, up to this present day, and doubtless will not cease until every available acre is appropriated.

A recent report of H. H. Schwartz, chief of the field service of the Department of the Interior, to Secretary Garfield, of that Department, showed that in the two years from 1906 to 1908 alone, approximately $110,000,000 worth of public land in States, princ.i.p.ally west of the Mississippi River, had been fraudulently acquired by capitalist corporations and individuals. This report disclosed more than thirty-two thousand cases of land fraud. The frauds on the part of various capitalist corporations in obtaining vast mineral deposits in Alaska, and incalculably rich water power sites in Montana and elsewhere, const.i.tute one of the great current public scandals. It will be described fully elsewhere in this work.

Overlooking the petty, confusing details of the last seventy years, and focusing attention upon the large developments, this is the striking result beheld: A century ago no railroads existed; to-day the railroads not only own stupendous natural resources, expropriated from the people, but, in conjunction with allied capitalist interests, they dictate what the lot, political, economic and social, of the American people shall be. All of this transformation has come about within a relatively short period, much of it in our own time.

But a little while ago the railroad projectors begged and implored, tricked and bribed; and had the law been enforced, would have been adjudged criminals and consigned to prison. And now, in the blazing power of their wealth, these same men or their successors are uncrowned kings, swaying the full powers of government, giving imperial orders that Congress, legislatures, conventions and people must obey.

AN ARRAY OF COMMANDING FACTS.

But this is not the only commanding fact. A much more important one lies in the astonishing ease with which the ma.s.ses of the people have been discriminated against, exploited and oppressed. Theoretically the power of government resides in the people, down to the humblest voter. This power, however, has been made the instrument for enslaving the very people supposed to be the wielders of political action.

While Congress, the legislatures and the executive and administrative officials have been industriously giving away public domain, public funds and perpetual rights to railroad and other corporations, they have almost entirely ignored the interests of the general run of people.

The more capitalists they created, the harder it became for the poor to get settler's land on the public domain. Congress continued pa.s.sing acts by which, in most cases, the land was turned over to corporations. Intending settlers had to buy it at exorbitant prices.

This took place in nearly all of the States and Territories. Large numbers of people could not afford to pay the price demanded by the railroads, and consequently were compelled to herd in industrial centers. They were deliberately shut off from possession of the land.

This situation was already acute twenty-five years ago. "The area of arable land open to settlement," pointed out Secretary of the Interior Teller in a circular letter of May 22, 1883, "is not great when compared with the increasing demand and is rapidly decreasing."