Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1884.djvu/18

 had been ordered in several hundred cases. It was found impossible to carry on both, as the expenses of each singly would exhaust the appropriation. Hearings could not be had without the presence of special agents, who are material witnesses, and the payment of their expenses would leave no means to defray other costs.

It was therefore determined, as the only available course, to continue in the field such number of special agents as the appropriation permits and to suspend all hearings ordered on their reports. The result is that final action cannot be taken for the cancellation of entries examined and reported fraudulent until Congress shall make provision for the expenses of formal hearings, or obviate the necessity of them by clearly investing the executive department with power to summarily cancel entries found fraudulent upon special examination.

For a similar reason of the inadequacy of the appropriation to the needs of the serv- ice I have been compelled to remove general suspensions of entries in localities in which fraudulent appropriations have been reported as prevalent, and to permit en- tries to go to patent without the investigation necessary to determine the bona fide or fraudulent character of any of them. It is obvious that some decisive action by Congress is called for by every consider- atiou of public policy and administrative expediency. If it is the legislative purpose to adhere to the policy of preserving the remaining public lauds for actual settlers, and to prevent the acquisition of great bodies of land in fraud of law by single individuals and corporations, American or foreign, sufficient means should be placed at the disposal of the Land Department to prevent the vast and widespread violations of law which have been brought to the knowledge of this Department and the notic i of Congress. I have discharged my own duty in presenting this subject, as I have from time to&gt; time in my annual reports and in special reports submitted to Congress, as clearly and forcibly as I could, and I leave to the higher power of that body the responsibility of determining the course to be pursued.

It appears from the foregoing that if the pre-emption and timber- culture laws are not repealed more liberal appropriations should be made for the detection and punishment of fraud on the Government through the agency of said laws. But even with liberal appropriations for the detection of frauds of the character before mentioned, it will be impossible to prevent unscrupulous persons in the thinly-settled regions of country from appropriating public land by a mere technical compli- ance with the laws, while the spirit thereof is violated. There is but one remedy, and that is in the repeal of the law no longer necessary to enable the actual settler to secure a title to the land he occupies on the public domain. The public lands ought to be reserved for actual set- tlers, and should be conveyed only when the settler has shown his good faith by a residence on the land for the period provided for by the homestead law. TSo commutation of homesteads should be allowed. In connection with this subject I call especial attention to the Com- missioner's report on the disposal of public lauds. He says: The surveyed public lands of the United States have largely been disposed of, or appropriated by various claims under general laws, or pledged for the satisfaction of educational, internal improvement, or other public grants. The total area surveyed rom the commencement is 938,940,1'25 acres. The estimated area unsurveyed, exclu- sive of the Territory of Alaska, is 506,495,454 acres. This estimate is of a very gen- eral nature, and affords no index to the disposable volume of land remaining, nor to the amount available for agricultural purposes. It includes Indian and other publio reservations, unsurveyed private land claims, the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections