The Scandal That Shook the Interior
A federal investigation into Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger reveals allegations of land fraud and corruption involving Washington state coal claims.
Unless the Ballinger-Pinchot investigating committee makes a radical change from the mode of procedure it has adopted, its work will be interminable. Already it has appeared necessary that witnesses shall be called from Seattle and other points in the West, and that office records may have to be obtained from Juneau, Alaska. Louis R. Glavis, the star witness in the investigation, has concluded his direct testimony. Summarized, his charges against Secretary Ballinger are: That prior to entering the Government service, Ballinger acted as an attorney in drawing up an agreement in escrow and deeds in the Wilson Coal Company cases in Lewis County, Washington, these cases being an alleged fraud upon the land laws. Mr. Ballinger, as Commissioner of the Land Office in 1907, did not show due diligence in investigating alleged frauds connected with the Cunningham coal land claims in Alaska; he had knowledge of all circumstances of these claims, and, in spite of this, entered the employ of one of the claimants after leaving the Land Office and before becoming Secretary of the Interior; that he ordered these claims to be 'clear listed' for patent without due investigation, and that they would have gone to patent if Glavis and others had not intervened.
“Glavis expressed belief that the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the land office, Fred Dennett, were acting inimically to the people's interests, if not directly conspiring.”
The Ballinger-Pinchot affair was a defining conservation battle of the early 20th century, pitting the protection of public lands against industrial exploitation. Today, the tension between federal land management and private resource extraction remains a central, unresolved argument in Washington state politics.
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