THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



71 



of scrip which could be sold later to timber men for 

 entry upon Government land on which was located 

 large quantities of pine and other timber. Some way 

 or. another the land grant railroads and heavy land men 

 throughout the country, speculators and others held 

 enormous tracts of land of inferior quality in what was 

 set aside as forest reserves. Wherever this land was 

 poor it was immediately turned over for scrip, which 

 was entered on the best timber lands in the Northwest. 

 The representative of THE IRRIGATION AGE, who is at 

 present investigating this subject, is looking into the 

 transaction whereby the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 

 Railway Compan}' were able to dispose of something 

 like one million acres of scrip which it is alleged was 

 issued to them under this clause and for which they 

 subsequently, it is alleged, obtained from $3.00 to 

 $5.00 per acre, the purchasers being speculators in paper 

 of this character, large lumber men throughout the 

 Northwest, many of whom are to be found in Minne- 

 apolis, Duluth and elsewhere, the scrip being entered 

 on very valuable pine land throughout Minnesota as 

 well as the Pacific coast pine regions. It is our inten- 

 tion to carefully investigate this subject and learn ex- 

 actly the character of land turned back to the Govern- 

 ment as forest reserve by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa 

 Fe Railway Company, in lieu of which they, or their 

 agents, received the right to make entry upon land of 

 valuable character as above indicated. 



If it is true that the Santa Fe Company, turned large 

 areas of land, as has been stated by some readers, land 

 which had not enough timber on it to enclose the land 

 with a rail fence, there is some sort of "a nigger in 

 the wood pile.'' One writer in Arizona has stated that 

 to his certain knowledge there were large areas of land 

 turned in to the Government as forest reserve under 

 the lieu land clause, on which could not not be found 

 enough timber to place a rail fence around the entire 

 tract. This is rather a pitiable condition of affairs, 

 to put it mildly. The Secretary of the Interior has 

 made a request for information along these lines from 

 certain individuals, and that information, it is expected, 

 will be forwarded to him at no distant date, when 

 no doubt the Government will commence investigations. 

 If, as is alleged, the Santa Fe Railway Company lifted 

 from three to four million dollars of good money on 

 the transfer of this land, would it not place the 

 officials of that railway in rather a difficult position? 



Was it not the duty of Gifford Pinchot, Forester 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture, to 

 learn something about the character of the land turned 

 in under the forest reserve clause? If the statements 

 which we have quoted above are correct, will not Mr. 

 Pinchot be placed in a position to make explanations ? 

 This is one of the reasons why THE IRRIGATION AGE 

 has continually harped on the fact that neither Mr. 

 1, of the Reclamation Service, nor Mr. Pinchot, 



of the Forestry Bureau, is beyond reproach. 



In a recent article in the Prescott, Ariz., Herald, 

 it is stated that few in Yuvapi County, or Arizona, 

 for that matter, realize the immensity of the act of 

 Congress, which on March 12, 1872, awarded the Santa 

 Fe Railway every odd section of land within fifty miles 

 of each side of its right of way throughout the South- 

 west. As a result of this Congressional act the old 

 Atlantic & Pacific Railway, which was afterward ab- 

 sorbed by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, 

 received no less than six million acres of land in Ari- 

 zona alone. Some of this land extended south from the 

 railroad to within ten miles of Prescott, the nearest 

 point being at the Point of Rocks and running in east- 

 erly and westerly directions from that point. It is 

 stated that the Santa Fe Railway Company received no 

 less than 40,000 acres of land in Yuvapi County, for 

 the most of which they received scrip from the Secretary 

 of the Interior. 



The Prescott Herald further states that the Santa 

 Fe, instead of taking up every odd section of land, took 

 up its grant in the forest reserves, and instead of giv- 

 ing them possession, the Government paid them in scrip 

 which the railroad company is allowed to dispose of in 

 whatever manner it sees fit. This journal also states 

 that most of this scrip is sold to settlers. THE IRRIGA- 

 TION AGE does not agree with them in this connection. 

 The scrip is usually disposed of to speculators, or tiuv 

 ber men, as stated above. This article goes on to say 

 that the object of the Government in having the rail- 

 way take up its grant in the forest reserve is because it 

 could be handled better than that which is not included 

 in the reserve and concludes by saying that it is esti- 

 mated that as a result of the six million acres awarded 

 to the Santa Fe Railway in the Territory of Arizona, 

 they are not less than $25,000,000 to the good, as at the 

 lowest estimate the scrip for each acre sells for $4.50 

 and at this figure, it would mean much more to tlte 

 railroad than the figures given. 



If, as some of our writers allege, the Santa Fe 

 Railway Company has turned in barren lands under the 

 forest reserve clause on which scrip has been issued 

 that has been sold for entry upon fine timber lands in 

 the Northwest, this company may possibly be asked to 

 make some explanation, to the Department of the 

 Interior. 



Which would be the most beneficial to the country 

 at large, to allow the Santa Fe Railway Company to 

 dispose of scrip for entry on land that is presumably 

 worth $25,000,000 and place that sum of money in 

 their treasury, or allow say 30,000 citizens of the 

 United States to take up the land on which this scrip 

 was entered and pay into the United States Treasury 

 $12,500,000, which would be about the sum the Gov- 

 ernment would receive on that amount of land entered 

 under the Timber and Stone Act, and allow the set- 



