Land fraud

“ Who as Secretary of the Interior opened up "the land fraud system which took from the American people an empire of land, timber and mines"
investigate, 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. ”

“ All of the men named in the indictment are accused, under section 5440 of the revised statutes, of conspiring together to defraud the Government of immense acreage in Southern Oregon. The conspiracy is alleged to have commenced some time during 1901 and to have been effective up to August 26, 1904. The general plan of the scheme, as it is outlined in the indictment, is very similar to those of the other two large land fraud indictments that were returned by the grand jury. ”

“ Two United States senators were convicted of land frauds. The application to all kinds of lands, whether coal lands, timber tracts, water rights or other natural resources, of the general principle of homesteads governing the acquisition of agricultural lands, had invited fraudulent entries. The Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber Culture Act of 1873, the Desert Land Act of 1877, the Stone and Timber Act of 1878 had all been used by corporations to secure great tracts of valuable land through employing men to homestead them, and the laws themselves were loosely enforced. ”

“ The inequality between the value of the land and the amount of the purchase money is too egregious to be overlooked. It is the very sign and badge of fraud to the transaction. It proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the knowledge of the parties of the defects of the title, and existence of a corrupt conspiracy to supply this all-important link, and without which it was wholly worthless, as subsequent events have shown, by a forged document, and by using Judge Watrous' court to sustain such forgrd muniment of title. ”

“ The certainty of a thorough investigation would restrain such practices, but fraud and great fraud must inevitably exist so long as the opportunity for fraud is preserved in the laws, and so long as it is hoped by the procurers and promoters of fraud that examinations may be impeded or suppressed." If, Commissioner Sparks urged, the preŽmption, commuted-homestead, timber-land, and desert-land laws were repealed, then, "the illegal appropriation of the remaining public lands would be reduced to a minimum."—U. S. Senate Documents, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-1886, Vol. ”

“ That private property in land is a public wrong based on force and fraud, and that to right one wrong it is sometimes necessary to do another. This they took to be a lesson in practical politics; and what it points to, in practice, is perfectly clear. Resume possession of the stolen land, if you please, for as private property it still is, and under its present ownership it must ever remain, a wrong to the community. For the rest, though compensation must be made for whatever is in the land which was not in it when it was stolen, yet to right one wrong it is sometimes necessary to do another. ”

“ On the contrary, there are reasons why the government in this class of cases should not be held to the same diligence in guarding against fraud as a private owner of real estate. The government owns millions and millions of acres of land, which are by law open to pre-emption, homestead, and public and private sale. ”

“ Fraud is not imputable to a government; but if it were, where is there scope found for the imputation of it in the relation between a State and the patentee of its vacant lands? In selling the warrant, the State enters into contract no farther than that the purchaser shall have that quantity of vacant land if he can find it. And when the patent issues, it is to the patentee, if to any one, that the fraud is imputable, if the land be not vacant. The State never intends to grant the lands of another ”

“ But where upon the assumption of the existence of a body of water or lake a meander line is through fraud or error mistakenly run because there is no such body of water, riparian rights do not attach because in the nature of things the condition upon which they depend does not exist and upon the discovery of the mistake it is within the power of the Land Department of the United States to deal with the area which was excluded from the survey, to cause it to be surveyed and to lawfully dispose of it. ”

“ As the coal company purchased a part of the lands with notice of the equities of the United States against the land company, it took subject to those equities, and can be in no better position with respect to them than its grantor. The land company, a party to the fraud by which the certification of the lands to the state was procured, and to the decree in the first suit which so determined, could not improve its position by taking any further conveyance from the state. ”

“ It is quite obvious that the ground of relief set out in this bill is that the excess of 265,000, acres lying within the present state of Colorado was included within the survey by fraud, and that this fraud should be remedied. No attempt is made in the bill to assail the remainder of the grant, or to point out any reason why the patent should not be good for all the lands in New Mexico. ”

“ Laidler's authorities. They affirm that several ownership of land originated in force and fraud—whereby the nation, in whom the ownership was previously vested, was robbed of its rights. And from these data they argue that the nation is justified in "resuming" its "rights to the soil."
Now, this is an assertion as to a matter of historical fact which can be tested. In the course of the last thirty years a vast amount of evidence has been obtained respecting the manner in which land is and has been held by people in an early stage of civilization all over the world. ”

“ Estell, 47 Miss. 4, 21, the supreme court of Mississippi said: 'In an action for the price of land sold, the purchaser may set up in defense the fact that the vendor defrauded him by false representations as to the quantity, quality, condition, and boundaries of the land. An offer to rescind the contract is not necessary in order to entitle the purchaser to maintain an action for damages for the fraud, * * * nor to entitle him to defend to the extent that he has suffered by the fraud; that it, to the extent that he would be entitled to recover in an action for damages founded on the fraud. ”

“ It was not an act to enlarge the grant of 1850. It was not an act to oust the land department of its ordinary jurisdiction to inquire into and ascertain what were swamp and overflowed lands, but was an act confirming and ratifying the methods thus far pursued. Congress must have been aware of the fact that there were charges of fraud or mistake in reference to the surveys in the state of Michigan. It had appropriated large sums for resurveys. They had partially been made, and mistakes, if not frauds, had been found. ”

“ On one grant of 27,017 acres the house cost less than ten shillings. In another case a sheriff found in one county 30,000 acres upon which there was nothing which could be distrained for quit rents. At times false names were made use of in securing patents in order to avoid the restrictions of the law. [100]
Amid these acts of deception and fraud one deed is conspicuous. Col. Philip Ludwell had brought into the colony forty immigrants and according to a law which had been in force ever since the days of the London Company, this entitled him to a grant of two thousand acres of land. ”

“ His administration of the Interior Department was beyond comparison the best we have ever had. It was based primarily on the conception that it is as much the duty of public land officials to help the honest settler get title to his claim as it is to prevent the looting of the public lands. The essential fact about public land frauds is not merely that public property is stolen, but that every claim fraudulently acquired stands in the way of the making of a home or a livelihood by an honest man. ”

“ Krueger at the time she purchased the land must be held to have had constructive notice of facts which, if investigated, would have led her to the knowledge of the fraud, and that she was not entitled as a bona fide purchaser to hold the land as against the government. ”

“ There is no case 'decided in England, Ireland, or the United States, grounded upon common-law principles, declaring that an occupant of land, without a special contract, is entitled to payment for his improvements as against the true owners, when the latter had not been guilty of a fraud in concealing the title.' p. ”

“ Every present fraud offers a future bribe. The future cheapness offered to land-holders is too distant and uncertain, to induce them to enter into this conspiracy with the capitalists against the mechanicks; and besides, why should they get less than the English landlords for doing so? ”

“ It is indisputably clear that hundreds of millions of acres of the public domain have been obtained by outright fraud.
Notwithstanding the fact that only a few years before, the Government had held far more than enough land to have provided every agriculturist with a farm, yet by 1880, a large farm tenant class had already developed. Not less than 1,024,061 of the 4,008,907 farms in the United States were held by renters. One-fourth of all the farms in the United States were cultivated by men who did not own them. ”

“ The officers of the land department are specially designated by law to receive, consider, and pass upon proofs presented with respect to settlements upon the public lands, with a view to secure rights of pre-emption. If they err in the construction of the law applicable to any case, or if fraud is practised upon them, or they themselves are chargeable with fraudulent practices, their rulings may be reviewed and annulled by the courts when a controversy arises between private parties founded upon their decisions ”

“ Whether, for instance, a certain tract is swamp land or not, saline land or not, mineral land or not, presents a question of fact not resting on record, dependent on oral testimony; and it cannot be doubted that the decision of the land department, one way or the other, in reference to these questions, is conclusive, and not open to relitigation in the courts, except in those cases of fraud, etc., which permit any determination to be re-examined. ”

“ The facts and proceedings attending this transfer of title are fully disclosed in the bill. They point to fraud and wrong, and equally to inadvertence and mistake; and, if the latter be shown, the bill is sustainable, although the former charge against the defendant may not have been fully established. For satisfactory answer to this inquiry, a fuller statement of facts is necessary. On May 19, 1879, defendant made in the proper land-office of the United States a desert-land entry for 240 acres, including therein the lands in controversy. ”

“ I am as innocent as a babe unborn of any complicity in any land frauds in Oregon or elsewhere, and if it is true that an indictment has been returned against me, I assert in the most positive terms that it must be based upon the testimony of self-confessed and convicted land thieves and perjurers, who have been offered immunity in case they, to meet the vindictive desire of Secretary Hitchcock and his agents, will, by their testimony, involve me and others in the frauds. ”

“ Thus the land frauds were not only violations of the land laws; they were a general violation of the policy of the government; and they were bringing about a condition in which, as in the old countries, a comparatively small number of large land-owners would own the land in the United States. Burns saw that this process of appropriation was carried on by several methods, and he studied them all, but he worked out most carefully the schoolland, lieu-scrip frauds, since they were the specialty of Hyde and Benson, his first case. ”

“ Persons who lose in bad deals become suspicious of real business done by reliable men in the community. They refuse to invest in local developments in which the returns are sure, though smaller than those promised by promoters. Many are put out of business entirely by land frauds.
Do you agree with me in that it is not good business to farm the land, cash in its fertility and then scatter the proceeds among grafters? Let us quit chasing the ends of the rainbow, and turn our attention more towards the right use of the fruits of our labor in education and home building. ”

“ The influence of any class imbued with corruptive methods is detrimental to the best interests of a community, and there is no use in denying that those who have been instrumental in causing so much rank perjury in connection with the acquisition of titles, are responsible for a condition that has left its mark upon the people of the public land States in a manner comparable to the trail of a serpent.
There is a compensating side to these land frauds, after all. ”

“ The court said (p. 402 (36 S.C.t. 367) ) :
'The objection assumes that the suit is upon the same plane as if brought by an individual vendor to annul a sale of land fraudulently induced. But, as this court has said, the government in disposing of its public lands does not assume the attitude of a mere seller of real estate at its market value. ”

“ In general, one might say that the ways open to immigrants for learning of land opportunities are defective. Misrepresentation of land conditions and actual money frauds have made them suspicious of any land dealer, so that the best land companies experience, in the immigrants' suspicion, a handicap in the development of their business. This in part explains why the various real-estate associations are trying to get some sort of public regulation for their business and why a number of states which are interested in the development of their lands have begun to talk of regulation. ”