Show LAND FRAUDS A Washington telegram of two or three days aso stated that Commissioner Commis-sioner Stockslagtr has held for cancellation cancel-lation seventynine desert land entries in Wyoming aggregating about 57000 a res It is to be hoped that this is I only the beginning of a raid upon the frauds and crooks and speculators who have been stealing the public domain in our sister Territory right and left The preemption the timber culture and the desert land laws have all bean employed to rob the government and deprive honest settlers of the homes which a generous government intended to give them I I There are in Wyoming today ranch ea and claims covering land from five to twenty miles in extent held by individuals indi-viduals or companies and it is doubted that the title to a foot of the land has L been obtained by a strict and honest a compliance with the law In many instances herders and other employees of speculators have taken advantage of the liberal laws to obtain titles to land for the benefit of their employers the latter paying all fees and expenses merely using the names of their men In other cases land has been entered as desert which has annually II produced good crops of hay for generations genera-tions past The taking out of a small stream of water and the placing under cultivation of a little portion of a section sec-tion have been made to serve as compliance com-pliance with the law requiring the reclamation re-clamation of the entire tract of 640 acres The frauds have been wholesale and comparatively few of the entries are by bona fide settlers either preemptors pre-emptors or homesteaders It is barefaced bare-faced evidence of fraud when one manor man-or a stock company holds the titles to fifteen miles of what was public domain do-main half a dozen years ago The honest settler the poor man for whom the government ostensibly holds the land struggles along five or six years acid happy if he can obtain the patent for 160 acres It would bfi well if all land laws except ex-cept beboni3tead were repealed snci j thc iibjJdfor Jamafida JHsttten Jhjj k t ii can han ly be brought bJut while 1 cue tpsculatuid and lau i shark arc so nom r us the authorities shonM DO particularly careful to see that the lawn are complied with strictly It will nave a good effect if some of the fraudulent fraud-ulent land entries shall be broke i and the land thrown open to honest claimants claim-ants Valuable land is becoming so scarce that the poor man has difficulty In finding 160 acres which will yield him a living In a Jew years if the sharks and speculators are permitted to continue con-tinue as they are going there will be no public domain except in the mountains moun-tains r |