The Wisconsin men involved are said to be the chief participants in the fraudulent operations for which the indictment which included their names was issued. Oregon men were also implicated in the alleged fraudulent proceedings, but only, it is alleged, as the tools of the Easterners, who are men of wealth and furnished the funds for the operations and also laid the plans by which, it is charged, they illegally obtained great tracts of Government acreage.
The Oshkosh men indicted, Leander Choate, James Matt Bray, Benjamin Doughty, James Doughty and Thomas Daly, operated in Southern Oregon as the Oshkosh Land & Timber Company. August Anderson and Joseph Black, of Shawano, are also said to be connected with this corporation. Choate is said to be very wealthy, and the others are all men of wealth and prominence in their home state.
Bray is the president of the Bray & Choate Lumber Company, and Choate is the treasurer of that company. The Doughtys are retired lumbermen. Daly is the cashier of the Commercial National Bank, and all the men are large stockholders in that institution.
The charge upon which they were indicted is that of obtaining a large tract of timber land east of Klamath by inducing men to file upon it and then turn it over to them for a small consideration. Most of their work is said to have been carried on through representatives in Oregon, but the principals themselvesPage 419
