Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/223

Rh lands to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad, “contrary to the opinion of the Attorney-General and since it was given.” I thereupon showed that “while Attorney-General Devens's opinion was given in 1880, and granted lands were patented the same year, the last approval of indemnity lands (the only kind of lands referred to in the opinion) 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.” You had to admit that your charge was false. The difference between awarding, contrary to the opinion of the Attorney-General, indemnity lands not granted, on the one hand, and the patenting of granted lands on the other, is simply the difference between allowing the road what was not due to it, in the one case, and allowing it what was due to it in the other. The former I did not; the latter I did. And if it should be found, as you say it may, that during some period in the past the road had received lands in excess, then the Land Office, in the adjustment of the grant, will take the proper steps to rectify the mistake, a thing which was done during my administration, repeatedly, in similar cases. But your charge that I favored the railroad to the prejudice of the United States is just as false and absurd in its second form as it was in the first.

But more. Your general allegation that the Interior Department almost invariably decided in favor of the railroads and against the settlers, I confuted by quoting the sworn testimony of the chief of the railroad division of the General Land Office, that in one year, when the rulings and principles established and sustained during my administration were in force, of the office and Department decisions in 824 cases, in 635 the land in controversy was finally awarded to the settlers, and in 189 to the railroads. What now? The only escape you find is in saying that