76 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



Even had the representatives of the Land Office always been honest 

 and possessed of sufficient funds to provide for careful inspection of 

 cases, proof of fraud under the law would have been very difficult to 

 sustain because of the stand taken by the Supreme Court of the 

 United States, In the famous case of Budd vs. United States, evidence 

 showed that a certain timberman had bought approximately 10,000 

 acres from various entrymen in a certain vicinity; that the deeds 

 recited a consideration of $1 given for lands worth $5000 ; that in 

 at least two instances land had been transferred to this timberman 

 before final payment had been made to the government ; that the same 

 two witnesses had served in twenty-one of these entries ; and that one 

 of the witnesses had been engaged in examining the lands and report- 

 ing to the timberman ; yet in the face of this evidence of bad faith 

 the Supreme Court, Justices Brown and Harlan dissenting, held that 

 since there was no absolute proof of a prior agreement in regard to 

 the particular tract in question, the government suit for cancellation 

 of patent must fail. The court even went so far as to add the dictum : 

 "Montgomery [the timberman] might rightfully go or send into 

 that vicinity and make known generally or to individuals a willingness 

 to buy timber land at a price in excess of that which it would cost to 

 obtain it from the Government, and any person knowing of that offer 

 might rightfully go to the land office and make application and pur- 

 chase a timber tract from the Government." Whatever may be said of 

 the judicial logic of this decision, the result was to render the sup- 

 pression of frauds under the Timber and Stone Act very difficult 

 indeed.*^ 



That the Timber and Stone Act would thus prove an instrument 

 of fraud was foreseen, even before it passed Congress, and thereafter 

 its evil effects were pointed out repeatedly. In 1878, Commissioner 

 Williamson, in a letter to Secretary Schurz, made the following pre- 

 diction : "Under the provisions of the bill the timber lands will, in 

 my opinion, be speedily taken up, and pass into the hands of specu- 



ment inspectors see Conservation, Nov., 1908, 579-584. In one of the cases there 

 described, an attempt was made to poison the government agent by putting rough- 

 on-rats in his coffee at a special dinner to which he had been invited. 



42 144 U. S., 154, 162. See also U. S. vs. Williamson; 207 U. S., 425: Olson vs. 

 U. S.; 133 Fed. Rep., 849, 852, 853: "Lumber Industry," I, 266. 



