fraud, and then had the laws so arranged as to exempt those estates
from taxation, so has the money aristocracy of the United States
proceeded on the same plan. As we shall see, however, the railroad
and other interests have not only put through laws relieving from
direct taxation the land acquired by fraud, but also other forms of
property based upon fraud.

This survey, however, would be prejudicial and one-sided were not the
fact strongly pointed out that the railroad capitalists were by no
means the only land-graspers. Not a single part of the capitalist
class was there which could in any way profit from the theft of
public domain that did not wallow in corruption and fraud.

The very laws seemingly passed to secure to the poor settler a
homestead at a reasonable price were, as Henry M. Teller, Secretary
of the Interior, put it, perverted into "agencies by which the
capitalists secures large and valuable areas of the public land at
little expense." [Footnote: Report of the Secretary of the Interior
for 1883. Reporting to Secretary of the Interior Lamar, in response
to a U. S. Senate resolution for information, William A. J. Sparks,
Commissioner of the General Land Office, gave statistics showing an
enormous number of fraudulent land entries, and continued:

"It was the ease with which frauds could be perpetrated under
existing laws, and the immunity offered by a hasty issue of patents,
that encouraged the making of fictitious and fraudulent entries. The
certainty of a thorough investigation would restrain such practices,
but fraud and great fraud must inevitably exist so long as the
opportunity for fraud is preserved in the laws, and so long as it is
hoped by the procurers and promoters of fraud that examinations may