The Fight Over Unpaid Rail Taxes

At last the House has turned aside from the discussion of the silver question and the tariff to the consideration of such measures as the Fitzjohn Porter and arrears of pension bills, long enough to pass a bill in which the people of a large section of the country are deeply interested. This is the bill compelling the Pacific railroads, to which grants of land have been made, to pay the cost of surveying their lands and to have them patented at once, under penalty of forfeiting all lands not patented within a certain time. The people of the West have long understood the monstrous injustice of the method of dealing with their land grants which the Pacific railroads have adopted. Under the law as it stands, granted lands cannot be patented to the companies until they pay the cost of survey. By refusing to pay for the surveys, they have allowed their lands to remain unpatented and accordingly untaxable so long as it served their interests. Thus, it happened in many places that large tracts of land which had actually passed out of the hands of the railroad companies and were under cultivation, remained untaxable, as the title to them was still vested in the Government. In this manner, a double burden of taxation has been thrown upon the people of the counties in which railroad lands are located.