Great Fortunes from Railroads | Page 3

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 get land for which payment could be gradually made?
But this law worked even better to the advantage of the capitalist class than the old. By bribing the land officials the capitalists were able to cause the choicest lands to be fraudulently withheld, and entered by dummies. In this way, vast tracts were acquired. Apparently the land entries were made