laws passed, or in evading such laws as were on the statute books by
means of the systematic purchase of the connivance of Land Office
officials.

By act of Congress, passed on April 21, 1792, the Ohio Land Company,
for example, received 100,000 acres, and in the same year it bought
892,900 acres for $642,856.66. But this sum was not paid in money.
The bankers and traders composing the company had purchased, at a
heavy discount, certificates of public debt and army land warrants,
and were allowed to tender these as payment. [Footnote: U. S. Senate
Executive Documents, Second Session, Nineteenth Congress, Doc. No.
63.] The company then leisurely disposed of its land to settlers at
an enormous profit. Nearly all of the land companies had banking
adjuncts. The poor settler, in order to settle on land that a short
time previously had been national property, was first compelled to
pay the land company an extortionate price, and then was forced to
borrow the money from the banking adjuncts, and give a heavy
mortgage, bearing heavy interest, on the land. [Footnote: U. S.
Senate Documents, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1835-36,
Doc. No. 216: 16.] The land companies always took care to select the
very best lands. The Government documents of the time are full of
remonstrances from legislatures and individuals complaining of these
seizures, under form of law, of the most valuable areas. The tracts
thus appropriated comprised timber and mineral, as well as
agricultural, land.


VAST TRACTS SECURED BY BRIBERY.

One of the most scandalous land-company transactions was that