OCR Text |
Show LAND FRAUDS IN UTAH. Just now there is considerable talk about land frauds in Utah. This talk has grown out of the. reported but denied, interview with Surveyor-General De- j ment. Utah has a population of about 160,000, and a very 'great'majority of this number are engaged in agricultural pursuits. pur-suits. Any one familiar with the settlements settle-ments in the "Territory will readily understand un-derstand upon what grounds the charge of fraud in entering the public lands is founded. ; Those who live in the settlements settle-ments have complied with the requirements require-ments of the laws as to residence on the land they have entered, and have moved into the f settlements T when "such requirements re-quirements have been met. The land which the settlers have entered they have continued to hold and to till, and from it they derive their livelihood, although they have not continued to reside upon it. They have not bought it for speculative purposes, and they are bona fide settlers upon the land, but have clustered their houses together in small ; hamlets for the sake of society and kin- j dred benefits. Of the great number of freeholders in the Territory comparatively few of that number own or ever have owned 160 acres, the number of acres allowed under the Homestead and Preemption Pre-emption laws. The appearance of fraud has been given to many of the land entries of the Territory through some man enter-ing enter-ing a quarter-section, and the moment he received his patent he has deeded away all his quarter-section' save perhaps twenty or thirty acres. Now, how does this come ?: v The transaction on its face looks - as though such a man had pur- j chased the land of the Government for the purpose of speculation, when in fact nothing of the kind has been- done. The history of these cases is this : A number of men have located upon a quarter-section quarter-section , before r the land came into market: They have- put up division! fences and over the land occupied by j them they have exercised every right of ownership, and this right has been acquiesced in by all the neighbors and other occupants of the1 quarter-section. The' land comes into market and the occupiers oc-cupiers of the quarter-section want to get a Gpvernment.titlo to; their land. Any one of them is perfectly competent to enter en-ter the entire quarter-section,, and so among themselves they agree that some particular occupier, shall enter the quarter-section, each paying pro Tata the expense of such entry, and when he who made the entry receives a patent from the Government, he gives deeds to those who have been occupiers of the land along with himself. To one not acquainted ac-quainted with the history of the whole transaction it has the appearance of being be-ing tinctured with fraud. Doubtless there have been genuine frauds committed, but they are but a small per cent, of the whole number of entries of land. There is also much talk about railroad lands in the Territory and of fraud in connection with' them. Congress may been . unduly influenced in making land grants to the Union Pacific Railway and the Central Pacific Railway, Rail-way, but those roads hold their lands along their route under as valid a title as the United States can give. It is quite popular just at present to cry out ' about land frauds, but land frauds are not nearly so numerous as many think, and special land agents are riot nearly so pro found as they are apt to con aider themselves. them-selves. No doubt a severer morality in all branches of public life would greatly improve the administration of public business, but notwithstanding alf the charges about corruption now-a-days, moralily and virtue, in public as well as in private life, are on the increase, and the nineteenth century is better than any century which has preceded it. |