FIFTY-FIFTH CONGRESS, 1897-1899. 1785 
enough financially to meet all of her just and legal debts without ask- 
ing any reduction or compromise. But knowing as I do the inability 
of the State and the demands upon her, I have for twelve years 
earnestly and persistently worked and anxiously hoped for some 
amicable adjustment which would make it possible for her to establish 
a credit and in an honorable way provide for her other debts. With 
these bonds settled, the State will be in a condition to pay or adjust 
upon honorable terms the remainder of her debt. The State is 
improving in many ways, and with this menace removed, I shall 
expect such an influx of immigration and capital as will astonish the 
world. 
This is a compromise.—Confessing her inability tomake payment of 
these old bank debts, the State has for many years urged a settlement 
by compromise, relying largely upon the liberality of the United 
States to allow her to use her claim to land and land indemnity, the 
only available assets she has for such a purpose. By the act of 
August 4, 1894, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of the 
Treasury were fully authorized and empowered to compromise, adjust, 
and finally settle with the State all matters growing out of the old 
Real Estate Bank bonds and the unadjusted land grants, upon such 
terms and conditions as to them might seem just and equitable, subject 
to approval by Congress. 
* * * * * * * 
The benefits to accrue to the United States under the settlement are 
(1) that the State must pay the sum of $160,572 into the Treasury of 
the United States before January 1, 1900, and (2) must release all her 
claim to the money received by the United States for confirmed swamp 
lands sold by the United States; (3) title will forever be quieted in the 
United States to about a million acres of land now in dispute between 
them and the State; (4) and it prevents any claim against the United 
States for indemnity lands by the land-grant railroad companies if the 
lands certified to the State for railroad purposes should be held to 
have previously passed to the State under the swamp-land grant. 
The great benefits to accrue to the State are (1) an honorable release 
from the old bonds and make it possible for her to re-establish her 
credit and honor in the financial world; (2) a final settlement of the 
old contentions and disputes growing out of the several land grants, 
which have cost the State more than she can hope to realize from 
them, and which have been a fruitful source of troublesome litigation 
and annoyance to the people of the State and still beclouds the title to 
the homes of thousands of the best citizens of the State; (3) it will 
open to the settlers under the homestead and other public-land laws 
all of the vacant lands now in dispute between the State and the United 
States. 
Mr. Speaker, this is a brief history of an old, confused, and com- 
