I 



ANTI-CONSERVATION ACTIVITY 189 



and Representative J. N. Williamson, were convicted, the latter after 

 three trials, but both men appealed.®^ Mitchell died pending appeal, 

 but Williamson was granted a new trial by the Supreme Court of the 

 United States, on a question of constitutionality unconnected with 

 the question of his guilt,®* and on May 2, 1913, the case against him 

 was dismissed by the Attorney-General. The case against Binger 

 Hermann was also dismissed in 1910.®" 



were implicated in a vast network of conspiracy against the law in connection with 

 the theft of public land in Oregon. I had been acting on Senator Fulton's recom- 

 mendations for office in the usual manner. Heney had been insisting that Fulton 

 was in league with the men we were prosecuting, and that he had recommended 

 unfit men. Fulton had been protesting against my following Heney's advice, par- 

 ticularly as regards appointing Judge Wolverton as United States Judge. Finally 

 Heney laid before me a report which convinced me of the truth of his statements. 

 I then wrote to Fulton as follows on November 20, 1905: 'My dear Senator Fulton: 

 I inclose you herewith a copy of the report made to me by Mr. Heney. I have seen 

 the originals of the letters from you and Senator Mitchell quoted therein. I do 

 not at this time desire to discuss the report itself, which of course I must submit 

 to the Attorney-General. But I have been obliged to reach the painful conclusion 

 that your own letters as therein quoted tend to show that you recommended for 



the position of District Attorney B , when you had good reason to believe that 



he had himself been guilty of fraudulent conduct; that you recommended C 



for the same position simply because it was for B 's interest that he should 



be so recommended, and, as there is reason to believe, because he had agreed to 



divide the fees with B if he were appointed ; and that you finally recommended 



the reappointment of H with the knowledge that if H were appointed he 



would abstain from prosecuting B for criminal misconduct, this being why 



B advocated H 's claim for reappointment. If you care to make any state- 

 ment in the matter, I shall of course be glad to hear it. . . .' Senator Fulton gave 

 no explanation. I therefore ceased to consult him about appointments under the 

 Department of Justice and the Interior, the departments in which the crookedness 

 had occurred." (Roosevelt, "Autobiography," 391, 440.) 

 C7 153 Fed. Rep., 46: 199 U. S., 616. 



68 28 Sup. Ct. Rep., 165, 177: 207 U. S., 425. 



69 The question of the guilt or innocence of Binger Hermann has never been 

 judicially cleared up. The dismissal of the suit against him is of course not con- 

 clusive evidence in his favor. The government had first indicted him for com- 

 plicity in the land frauds, but, being unable to convict, had prosecuted him on the 

 charge of having destroyed certain records of the Land Office. Secretary Hitch- 

 cock had apparently notified him of his dismissal but had given him sufficient time 

 to destroy some of the letters in the office before leaving. It is certain that he 

 destroyed some of the letters, but he claimed that only those of a personal nature 

 had been destroyed. This was regular enough, for it is the custom of the Com- 

 missioners of the Land Office to keep copies of all letters that they write, and on 

 leaving office, to destroy personal letters. The government was unable to prove 

 that Hermann had destroyed any of the records of the Land Office, and no one 

 but Hermann himself knows what was in the letters he destroved. The writer 



