LAND GRABBING IN TEXAS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2544, 3 June 1882, Page 3

LAND GRABBING IN TEXAS.

It is reported from St. Louis that Wisconsin and Michigan lumber and mill men have had in hand a schema to acquire several millions of acres of pine land in eastern Texas Tho syndicate proposed to pay one dollar per acre for the land. Theyjemployed lawyers to have the tracts quietly surveyed and reported upon. The lawyers believed that there was big money in tho scheme, and as lawyers sometimes do, concluded to take a hand in the game. So they formed a little syndicate of their own and offered 1 50dol per acre for portions — probably the most valuable—of the land. Through this act of the lawyers tho whole scheme leaked out, and the Land Commissioner of the State rejected the propositions of both parties. The lumbermen thought to gain a monopoly of the lumber business of the South-west, as well as of the North-west, and thuo be able to regulate production and prices according to 11 their own sweet will. Tho sensible Governor of Texas sees through the whole business, and. will look after the best interests of the State by recommending the next Legislature to provide for the sale of timber on the stump to actual mill men, and reserve tho land to tho State. The late transfer of sufficient Texas territory to form a fair sized State to certain Illinois capitalists in payment for a single building for the use of the Texas State Government, was an astonishingly idiotic trade, but if it “ as opened tho eyes of the people of Texas to the folly of bartering away for a eovg the choicest portions of their empire, it will not be so bad after all. Texas has many millions of acres of unoccupied lands, but what she 1 needs is actual settlers to occupy_till I'him ; not land monopolize that will finally \ manipulate people, State Government, and 'representatives in Congress.