124 THE GREEN RISING 



Pacific and other lines in the West, the grants were 

 increased to every alternate section within twenty 

 miles of the railroad. The aggregate of these grants 

 to the Union Pacific approximated 12,000,000 acres; 

 to the Central Pacific, 6,000,000 acres; to the North- 

 ern Pacific, 3,300,000 acres; and the Southern 

 Pacific, 3,600,000 acres. The total grants to all 

 western roads, exclusive of 29,000,000 acres of unad- 

 justed claims, amounted to 115,455,093 acres "an 

 area," says Orfield, "as great as the total expanse of 

 the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, 

 and half of Ohio, and exceeding the total homestead 

 entries made up to June 30, 1911, by 21,000,000 

 acres." 6 



It was inevitable that fraud and dishonest prac- 

 tices would grow out of these enormous grants to 

 railroad corporations. Unscrupulous railroad offi- 

 cials soon began to devise means for defrauding the 

 government. Fraudulent surveys were made where- 

 by railroad sections were made to include water 

 rights. In sparsely watered sections where ranch- 

 ing was almost the exclusive industry, the railroad 

 corporations acquired indirect control over this im- 

 portant industry. By similar frauds lands rich in 

 mineral deposits were acquired by these corpora- 

 tions. One method of defrauding the government 

 involved the purchase of the alternate quarter-sec- 

 tion belonging to a railroad and the other three 



" Federal Land Grants to the States with Special Reference to 

 Minnesota, Bui. of Univ. of Minnesota (1915), p. 108. 



