Page:Looters of the Public Domain.djvu/15

 within her borders the soul so base as to inspire this wholesale depredation; and I hurl back in the teeth of those who have been foul enough to make the charge, the contemptible reflection that has been cast upon her law-abiding community.

Practically all the arrangements for this immense plunder originated among unscrupulous residents of distant parts—in the ranks of the devout moneyed aristocracy beyond the Rocky Mountains, and it has remained for the honest manhood of Oregon to redeem the commonwealth from the stigma of dishonor that has been written across its fair name by the polluted hands of Eastern commercial greed.

Careful analysis of the situation indicates that most of these stupendous schemes of plunder were concocted in the cunning minds of those who had made a life-study of the subject. Upon the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan rests the principal burden for this kind of offspring, because they produced —

A JIM HILL, with his Rainier Mountain Forest Reserve steal of the Northern Pacific;

A WEYERHAEUSER, with his tainted timber wealth that has made him "Richer than Rockefeller;"

A THOMAS B. WALKER, with his 500,000-acre grab of the public domain in California and Oregon, and his celebrated art gallery in Minneapolis, famed for its rare exhibit of $100 bills on the back of picture frames as a kindly remembrance to needy Special Agents of the Land Department;

A C. A. SMITH, with his army of "dummy" entrymen, and his 100,000 acres of perjured titles, which the Government ought to cancel.

And a host of others who are responsible for present conditions. They are the ones upon whom these crimes should be fastened; they are the ones who have waxed fat in the grease of loot at the expense of the rising generations of the West—who, after committing their base robberies, have attempted to affix its stain upon a proud-spirited people, and then laughed in their sleeves at the discomfiture they have caused by the lying insinuation—and it was the kind of laughter that is heard in hell over the loss of a soul.

The records will show that these men have been engaged in like pursuits — as the immortal sea-rovers of olden times followed the Spanish Main—since the days when their own States were the banner lumber producing districts of the country, and that the motives which prompted them to turn their greedy eyes towards Pacific shores, were inspired by the same debasing principles of pillage that actuated Alexander the Great in seeking new worlds to conquer.

Having exhausted the timber resources of the Middle West by their wanton processes of destruction and waste, the virgin forests of the Pacific Coast appealed to them as only purity can attract the elements of lust. —

The question naturally arises: "Why were such men as Thomas B. Walker and C. A. Smith not prosecuted criminally for their plain and deliberate violations of the land laws of this country, but permitted to go scot free when the records show that they fraudulently acquired enough land from the Government to make Puter's efforts along those lines puny in comparison?"

The answer is embodied in the fact that both are millionaires, and because the United States Attorneys for Oregon and California during 1902 and 1903 simply shut their eyes to their duties. In consequence, the statute of limitations was permitted to run against their offenses, but that does not hinder the Government from cancelling their fraudulent claims, as six years from the date of issuance of patent is allowed by law in which to begin such proceedings.

On the Smith entries in Oregon, this time will expire June 4, 1908, and if there is an honest Department of Justice in Washington, there is still ample opportunity for checking this immense steal. The proofs of the frauds relative