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, and when men like Binger Hermann himself, the head of the land office and an ex-congressman from Oregon, where the land business was understood—when such men reported again and again that there was absolutely nothing in any of the complaints, Mr. Secretary Hitchcock lost all patience with "letter writers," "yellow journalists" and cranks.

There was a priest, for example, the Rev. Joseph Schell, of Tillamook County, Oregon, who saw some poor parishioners of his ousted by fraud from their land claims. He followed the agents of the gang to the bank of the banker in whose interest they were working, and thence to the office of the 490