Corporations Used Dummies in Vast Timber Land Fraud
Corporations are using the lieu land law to snatch up millions of dollars worth of public timberland in the Pacific Northwest, leaving the honest homesteader with nothing.
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The colossal postal grafts and frauds that flourished for years under the Hanna-Heath regime are now being succeeded in public interest by the exposure of gigantic land frauds, by which many millions of dollars worth of valuable timber land in Washington, Oregon and California have been grabbed by corporations acting through dummies. The lieu land law is the cover under which these land robbers work. The law was no doubt designed for no other purpose than to enable certain corporations to steal the public domain and at the same time to enrich certain members of the senate and house of representatives who labored to secure its passage. Five United States senators from the Western states, several members of the lower house and many land office officials are said to be implicated in the frauds which have been discovered. Through leaks in the land office at Washington, speculators learned the exact boundaries of proposed forest reserves and were able to use this information to the best advantage. By hiring men to locate on land and by using scrip, the timber syndicates have gained possession of most of the timber land west of the Cascades along the Pacific coast, and the honest homesteader and homebuilder is left in the lurch. It is to be hoped that the Roosevelt administration will prosecute the scoundrels guilty of these outrages upon the rights of the public with severity and that none of the shameless gang will escape.
“The honest homesteader and homebuilder is left in the lurch.”
The 'lieu land' schemes of 1903 highlight a long history of public land privatization in the West, where corporate interests used legislative loopholes to consolidate vast territories. Today, this legacy persists in debates over federal land management and the ongoing challenge of securing affordable access to nature in a region where the land was carved up by industrial syndicates a century ago.
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