to be surveyed in the very richest copper lands of Wisconsin.

The grants originally made by Congress were meant to cover swamp
lands--that is, lands not particularly valuable for agricultural
uses, but which had a certain value for other purposes. Mineral lands
were strictly excluded. Such was the law: the practice was very
different. The facility with which capitalists caused the most
valuable mineral, grazing, agricultural and timber lands to be
fraudulently surveyed as "swamp" lands, is described at length a
little later on in this work. Commissioner Sparks wrote that the one
hundred thousand acres appropriated in violation of explicit law
"were taken outside of legal limits, and that the lands selected both
without and within such limits were interdicted lands on the copper
range" (p. 189). Those stolen copper deposits were never recovered by
the Government nor was any attempt made to forfeit them. They
comprise to-day part of the great copper mines of the Copper Trust,
owned largely by the Standard Oil Company.

The St. Mary's Falls Canal Company likewise stole large areas of rich
copper deposits. This fact was clearly revealed in various official
reports, and particularly in the suit, a few years ago, of Chandler
vs. Calumet and Hecla Mining Company (U. S. Reports, Vol. 149, pp.
79-95). This suit disclosed the fact that the mines of the Calumet
and Hecla Mining Company were located on part of the identical
alleged "swamp" lands, granted by Congress in 1852. The plaintiff,
Chandler, claimed an interest in the mines. Concluding the court's
decision, favoring the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, this
significant note (so illustrative of the capitalist connections of
the judiciary), appears: "Mr. Justice Brown, being interested in the
result, did not sit in this case and took no part in its decision."