RAILROAD LAND GRANTS. 91 



communities were being planted upon our frontiers, 

 and the frontiers were being constantly extended and 

 advanced. The greatest cost to the settler for his land 

 was one dollar and a quarter per acre, and a small fee 

 for registry and patent ; the whole to be paid after a 

 term of years, without interest. And I believe that 

 no case is known where a bona fide settler was ever 

 disturbed or distressed because of inability to make 

 his payment for the land. The system, in its truest 

 sense, was beneficent, and was working out the best 

 results. 



But after railroad building had become established 

 as a business that would yield good profits, and capi- 

 tal was reaching out, under the stimulus of great me- 

 chanical development, for profitable investment, the 

 doors of some of our State governments were besieged 

 for aid in railroad building, and especially for grants 

 of the unoccupied lands along the lines of the pro- 

 posed roads. Some of these efforts meeting with suc- 

 cess naturally attracted attention from others, both 

 capitalists and the impecunious, who began to devise 

 means whereby the national domain might be at- 

 tacked ; and the halls, anterooms, and doors of Con- 

 gress,, for the last twenty years, have been in a state 

 of constant siege for land grants to aid in the building 

 of railroads. No expedient has been left untried ; no 

 plausible nor good reason that has not been urged ; 

 no means, fair or foul, honest or corrupt, that have 

 not been resorted to to accomplish the end desired. 



The following extract from one of our great dailies 

 describes the knavery of one of the railroad land 

 grants, and the methods pursued to make the fraud 



