Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/212

178 affirmed in the case of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad against the United States. Of the excess more than 400,000 acres have been awarded contrary to the opinion of the Attorney-General and since it was given.

This is, indeed, “the most remarkable fact,” to be stated; for he who inquires at the Interior Department will learn that, while Attorney-General Devens's opinion was given in 1880, and granted lands were patented the same year, the last approval of indemnity land to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad was made on April 13, 1875, two years before he became Attorney-General, and I, Secretary of the Interior. There is evidently a limit to the “shameful prostitution of the Land department,” but there seems to be none to the cool, unblushing and elaborate audacity of your misrepresentations.

I should stop here were not this letter intended for the public as well as for yourself. To the public a word should be said about your general allegation that the Interior Department almost invariably decided in favor of the railroad companies and against the settlers. When you wrote this you had before your eyes the testimony of the chief of the railroad division of the General Land Office given before a Senate committee. In reply to a question concerning the general drift of decisions, he said:

I find on examination that during the year ended December 31, 1881, there was final action pursuant to office and Department decisions in about 824 cases between settlers and companies, in about 635 of which cases the land in controversy was finally awarded to the settlers, and their filings or entries allowed or permitted to stand awaiting completion, or approved for patenting; and in about 189 cases the land was awarded to the companies, and the filings or entries of the settlers cancelled. In addition, some 227 applications to file or enter land within the limits of grants and reserved therefor were finally rejected.