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So the President (to whom a special act of Congress had given authority to prescribe some better plan) and his advisers devised a method of drawing lots for the Kiowa land. The crowds who thronged to Lawton and El Reno all through July filed applications to take part in the drawing at the land offices established for the purpose. Each applicant whose qualifications were satisfactory received. a card with his name, descriptions and credentials, which was placed in an unmarked but numbered envelope. On the day of the drawing, beginning July 29th, these 165,865 names were placed in two big box-wheels (these being the substitutes for the "hat or larger receptacle" of the statute), and the names were drawn out by ten boys "all under age and consequently not registered for claims."

THE SCENE ON THE OPENING DAY

"Twenty thousand excited, expectant people crowded about the platform. When finally the ten boys were lined up before the two wheels and awaited the word to draw out the first en

velopes, a great cheer arose. A moment later, when a deputy marshal called loudly for order, the crowd was stilled instantly.

"Colonel Dyer, one of the three commissioners, read the President's proclamation relating to the drawing. The wheels containing the envelopes were turned repeatedly to insure a thorough mixing, and then the drawing began.

"The first envelope taken from the wheel contained the name of James R. Wood of Weatherford, Okla., who had registered for a homestead in the Lawton district. Mattie H. Beals of Wichita, Kan., whose birthplace is in Missouri (and who was a telephone operator at Wichita at a salary of $9 a week), drew No. 2, also in the Lawton district. The crowd made a great demonstration at the announcement. Without doubt Mr. Wood and Miss Beals, who thus have the right to make the first filings, will select the two quarter-sections which adjoin the Lawton townsite district, and which are believed to be worth $40,000 each. When Colonel Dyer announced that the woman's age was twenty-three and her height the same as that of Mr. Wood, 20,000 persons shouted in chorus: They must get married.'"

One thousand names were drawn the first day, 2,500 the next, and so on until the entire

order of their numbers; the far greater portion of the crowd who had been unsuccessful went back home, or anathematized the Government, or wrote to the papers in high moral indignation at the spectacle of Uncle Sam conducting a lottery, or entered suit to test the validity of the titles thus acquired-according to their several temperaments.

The Assistant Attorney General has vouched for the legality of the plan employed, and an attempt to secure in the names of a number of Indians an injunction restraining the Government from distributing these homesteads proved fruitless; while other schemes to secure choice spots under cover of the law of 1887, giving any homeless Indian the right to make entry for public land not in possession of a homesteader, will probably be equally abortive. So the lucky 13,000 need not be at all worried; they are probably a permanent part steaders who have taken advantage of our of the great army of over a million homeGovernment's paternal offer to all comers of an opportunity to make a farm home without any preliminary expenditure.

It is a picturesque record even in its quieter aspect; and most dramatic is the swift leap into being of full-grown towns where a large tract of land like this Kiowa region is suddenly thrown open. This issue of THE WORLD'S WORK goes to press just as the drawings are taking place; these two million acres are still a fertile but uninhabited wilderness. By the time the magazine is on the newsstands this section will pulse with human life and effort. It will contain (temporarily) at least 100,000 people; three incorporated towns will have come into being -Hobart, Lawton and Anadarko with streets, stores and dwellings (the business and residence lots in which are auctioned off to the highest bidders by Government officials); and instead of an Indian reservation it will comprise Kiowa, Comanche and Caddo counties, in a territory rapidly approaching Statehood. It is a splendid chance to study the adaptability, and colonizing force, and capacity for self-government of the American people.

LAND GRABBERS OF THE NORTHWEST

13,000 for which homestead could be supplied SINCE the homestead law went into force

had been exhausted. The lucky ones, all of whom had inspected the ground beforehand and made choice of the best spots, went into the promised land, entering their claims in the

thirty-five years ago fully 190,000,000 acres have been taken up under its provisions. It has been an incalculable agency for good in developing the resources of our

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country, particularly the trans-Mississippi region. Like all beneficent laws, it has not escaped abuse. Within the last few weeks Attorney-General Knox and the Secretary of the Interior have unearthed a gigantic system of land swindles in Idaho and Montana. They promptly got out ten indictments for perjury and subornation of perjury in matters of land transfer, and suits have been entered against some millionaire landholders over rights involving some hundreds of thousands of acres worth several million dollars. Strenuous efforts are being made to drag off these alert public officials by a political leash, but the scandal has been given sufficient publicity to make this extremely improbable.

The methods upon which these Northwestern land grabbers have operated have been so barefaced that they must have been brought to justice long ago but for political influence and in all probability direct bribery.

There have been cases where fifty men have settled on contiguous sections, swearing the land was for their own use, and then, have unanimously sold out to a single lumber company. No sane man could doubt that the socalled independent locators were really the employees of the company; and yet the agents of the local land office have often been remarkably blind or inert.

It is to be hoped that these prosecutions will be pressed to the utmost. Leaving out of the question the criminality of the act, we cannot longer afford to be prodigal of the public lands; for though there are nearly a billion acres still vacant and subject to entry, only a small proportion of this is suitable for agricultural purposes without irrigation, and no privilege of the nation should be more jealously safeguarded than that of offering to every citizen the chance to make a living from the soil.

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they purchased the timber rights-since the land was actually not worth the taxes. It has been discovered that these despised lands grow as fine potatoes as can be produced, and the last few years have seen a steady influx of farmers, largely Scandinavians, and a resultant remarkable rise in prices. It is estimated that 150,000 settlers moved into the Northwest last year, and a larger number still, probably fully 200,000, will be added to the population during 1901. This has resulted in creating a very brisk market for farm properties, till it is now quite common for the owners of land worth $50 to $100 an acre to sell out and move further on to a less developed region, or even to the edge of the wilderness again-richer by some thousands of dollars.

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THE TORRENS LAND LAW

F course the speculators have seen their chance in this activity, and have vied with the farmers in land buying and selling; and the business has assumed such proportions that special attention has been called to the recent adoption by the State of Minnesota of the Torrens Land Law, which goes into operation in September.

By this system-which like the secret ballot is an importation from Australia-the business of transferring land is so simplified that it is well nigh incredible the plan has not been universally adopted in the United States. Its fundamental idea is that each land title is registered at the Register's office, and the state, having thoroughly searched the title, issues a certificate of ownership to the holder. All subsequent transfers, liens, mortgages or conveyances of any sort are entered upon this certificate, duplicate records being kept, carefully indexed, by the officials. The Government guarantees the titles to the holders of these certificates. The total initial expense is only $24, and of subsequent registration only $3. Under the present system, whenever a piece of land is transferred or a mortgage is given, a lawyer must be employed to search through a voluminous mass of records, often in a shocking state of confusion-and if the same parcel is sold again next year, the whole process is once more gone through with from the beginning. The system is inconceivably cumbersome, antiquated and expensive. Until the advent of the private title guarantee companies the

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