| Show ct A dinow litow ino 10 EVIL EVILL THE washington correspondent of the chicago tribune says in a letter to that paper that the people of the united states can have no clear conception of what their senators benn bena tors and congressmen are giving away he says saya that the public land which only after long and acrimonious discussion was par P ar celled out in homesteads homesteads for all t the he people is now disappearing by h hundreds of thousands and by millions mil mii liona of acres almost daily he says two hundred million acres of the land are already gone and three hundred milt lions lloil 9 more are now demanded by corporations po rations of one kind and another he thinks that by these means endowments of tyranny are created to plague posterity and embarrass republican government enterprise of a pacific railroads across two chains of moun mountains to the cities of salt lake and san ban francisco he says the people hailed with applause and did not grudge the costly donation which was to construct this wonderful highway fifty millions of dollars were security for it and fifty millions of acres were a homestead for lc it but it strengthened the union and was a monument to the nations generosity and public spirit excited at seeing congress so liberal with the pacific railroad every lobbyist and speculator in the country he says conceived that he might grow rich out of this precedent number were started and audacious corporations sprang up and their bills were introduced under pressure though not satisfied with the performances of the original pacific railroad corporation he is not in favor of congress doing anything to lessen the value of this thi undertaking the country has endowed it the two ends of it are closely approaching each other and we shall shail have at least communication right speedily between the two oceans every competing road that congress assists lessens the chance of the union and central pacific railway being able to pay for its construction he denounces in no measured terms many of the projects as unmitigated swindles and gives a list of bills for railroads rall Eail roads now before congress thatis that is startling in its length and the amount of land asked for to aid in their construction st if his figures be correct and they ber every mark of correctness Congress has granted or is asked to grant to private corporations more than one fourth of the total area of the united states including alaska and its icebergs these statements are startling and they show the madness of avarice and speculation which has seized these corporations in all sections of the country should congress legislate upon these bills and grant all the lands asked for to carry out these schemes serious evils must inevitably follow the best beat lands in the united states would be monopolized by corporations and the foundation be laid for a future landed aristocracy the danger of such proceedings x may ay not strike the minds of members of the national legislature at the present time land is so abundant and cheap that it may seem valueless to them especially between the missouri river and the sierra nevada mountains but in the settlement of these valleys we have shown what a thrifty industrious population can cande do in making land valuable there is us scarcely a spot in the public domain or in any of the lands asked for as a donation to assist railroads that ia is not as susceptible of improvement as many parts of the territory of utah where there are now flourishing settlements and the placing of large tracts of land in the hands of companies is a bear bearrien rier nier to settlement and if uninterruptedly continued will be a plague to future generations i the correspondent referred to bays says we could better afford to declare war with the whole of europe than to ua ux I 1 dermake to build and endow the roads for which grants of land are asked As I 1 far as money is concerned if war could be waged without loss of life we could better afford such a war |
