Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/507



IS country owes as much to Ethan Allen Hitchcock, as it does to the ancestor after whom he was named. The debt may never be paid; Mr. Hitchcock is not a popular figure. Undemocratic, uncommunicative, independent, he was in office no respecter of persons. To the President a crooked senator is a senator; Mr. Roosevelt plays the game. To his ex-Secretary of the Interior, a crooked senator is a crook. He cannot play the game. And that's one reason why he was able to open up the land fraud system which not only took from the American people an empire of land, timber and mines, but corrupted the government of many territories many states and the United States.

Mr. Hitchcock was not expected, nor did he intend to perform this great service. Outside of the grafters, few men knew that there was an organized system of land grabbing. Who realized that the great captains of pioneers who had "cleared** Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota had perfected methods by which they were stripping and "fencing in" for themselves Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California? Not Mr. Hitchcock. Who imagined that this corruption had extended from the petty land offices to county and state officials, thence to legislatures and governors, and finally to congressmen and United States senators who, in turn, "stood in" with all the representatives at Washington of ail the "protected" businesses which get privileges out of the government; and that these all worked together until they were controlling the judicial, legislative and the executive branches, not only of states and territories, but of the Federal government? Patriotic Americans had to have either the facts or some imagination to grasp this state of things, and Mr. Ethan Allen Hitchcock had neither. It was necessary to show him.

The mail of any cabinet officer would show him enough to start him aright, if he could read it himself and himself investigate. But when a new Secretary enters his office for the first time, he finds himself at the head of a great machine the mechanism of which he knows nothing about. He is overwhelmed with the magnitude of his task. At that juncture, a few respectful functionaries greet him, take him about and show him the mysteries of red tape. He may have heard of inefficiency, even of corruption among these hold-overs from another administration, and he may have promised their places to friends of his, good men. But now he sees that all this perfectly adjusted, delicate machinery must not be tampered with and that his whole safety lies in these bureaucrats—so expert and polite.

Mr. Hitchcock let these men read his mail for him and answer it. One of the anecdotes related of him tells how he rebelled when, on his first day, a pile of letters was laid before him by a clerk who bade him "sign there, please." The Secretary said huffily that he would read them first. The clerk bowed, withdrew, and by and by brought more letters and more, and more, and as the pile grew, the Secretary surrendered. He read all he could, but he didn't see all, and what he did see he couldn't follow up. He let the "ring" inves- 489