Great Fortunes from Railroads | Page 3

for comparatively small plots. No laws
were in existence compelling the purchaser to be a bona fide settler.
Absentee landlordism was the rule. The capitalist companies were
largely composed of Northern, Eastern and Southern traders and
bankers. The evidence shows that they employed bribery and
corruption on a great scale, either in getting favorable laws passed, or
in evading such laws as were on the statute books by means of the

systematic purchase of the connivance of Land Office officials.
By act of Congress, passed on April 21, 1792, the Ohio Land Company,
for example, received 100,000 acres, and in the same year it bought
892,900 acres for $642,856.66. But this sum was not paid in money.
The bankers and traders composing the company had purchased, at a
heavy discount, certificates of public debt and army land warrants, and
were allowed to tender these as payment. [Footnote: U. S. Senate
Executive Documents, Second Session, Nineteenth Congress, Doc. No.
63.] The company then leisurely disposed of its land to settlers at an
enormous profit. Nearly all of the land companies had banking adjuncts.
The poor settler, in order to settle on land that a short time previously
had been national property, was first compelled to pay the land
company an extortionate price, and then was forced to borrow the
money from the banking adjuncts, and give a heavy mortgage, bearing
heavy interest, on the land. [Footnote: U. S. Senate Documents, First
Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1835-36, Doc. No. 216: 16.] The
land companies always took care to select the very best lands. The
Government documents of the time are full of remonstrances from
legislatures and individuals complaining of these seizures, under form
of law, of the most valuable areas. The tracts thus appropriated
comprised timber and mineral, as well as agricultural, land.
VAST TRACTS SECURED BY BRIBERY.
One of the most scandalous land-company transactions was that
involving a group of Southern and Boston capitalists. In January, 1795,
the Georgia Legislature, by special act, sold millions of acres in
different parts of the State of Georgia to four land companies. The
people of the State were convinced that this purchase had been obtained
by bribery. It was made an election issue, and a Legislature, comprising
almost wholly new members, was elected. In February, 1796, this
Legislature passed a rescinding act, declaring the act of the preceding
year void, on the ground of its having been obtained by "improper
influence." In 1803 the tracts in question were transferred by the
Georgia Legislature to the United States Government.
The Georgia Mississippi Land Company was one of the four companies.

In the meantime, this company had sold its tract, for ten cents an acre,
to the New England Mississippi Land Company. Although committee
after committee of Congress reported that the New England Mississippi
Land Company had paid little or no actual part of the purchase price,
yet that company, headed by some of the foremost Boston capitalists,
lobbied in Congress for eleven years for an act giving it a large
indemnity. Finally, in 1814, Congress passed an indemnification act,
under which the eminent Bostonians, after ten years more lobbying,
succeeded in getting an award from the United States Treasury of
$1,077,561.73. The total amount appropriated by Congress on the
pretense of settling the claims of the various capitalists in the "Yazoo
Claims" was $1,500,000. [Footnote: Senate Documents, Eighteenth
Congress, Second Session, 1824-25, Vol. ii, Doc. No. 14, and Senate
Documents, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836-37, Vol. ii, No. 212. After
the grants were secured, the companies attempted to swindle the State
of Georgia by making payments in depreciated currency. Georgia
refused to accept it. When the grant was rescinded, both houses of the
Georgia Legislature marched in solemn state to the Capitol front and
burned the deed.] The ground upon which this appropriation was made
by Congress was that the Supreme Court of the United States had
decided that, irrespective of the methods used to obtain the grant from
the Georgia Legislature, the grant, once made, was in the nature of a
contract which could not be revoked or impaired by subsequent
legislation. This was the first of a long line of court decisions validating
grants and franchises of all kinds secured by bribery and fraud.
It was probably the scandal arising from the bribery of the Georgia
Legislature that caused popular ferment, and crystallized a demand for
altered laws. In 1796 Congress declared its intention to abandon the
prevailing system of selling millions of acres to companies or
individuals. The new system, it announced, was to be one adapted to
the interests of both capitalist and poor man. Land was thereafter to be
sold in small quantities on credit. Could the mechanic or farmer
demand a better law? Did it not hold out the opportunity to the poorest
to