Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/508

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Copyright, 1906, by F. B. Johnston

ETHAN A. HITCHCOCK
Who as Secretary of the Interior opened up "the land fraud system which took from the American people an empire of land, timber and mines"

tigate, and when men like Binger Hermann himself, the head of the land office and an ex-congressman from Oregon, where the land business was understood—when such men reported again and again that there was absolutely nothing in any of the complaints, Mr. Secretary Hitchcock lost all patience with "letter writers," "yellow journalists" and cranks.


"A Crazy Priest"

There was a priest, for example, the Rev. Joseph Schell, of Tillamook County, Oregon, who saw some poor parishioners of his ousted by fraud from their land claims. He followed the agents of the gang to the bank of the banker in whose interest they were working, and thence to the office of the

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