LAND GRABBING IN TEXAS.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1555, 22 June 1882, Page 2

LAND GRABBING IN TEXAS.

It is. reported from St. Louis that Wisconsin and Michigan lumber and mill men have had in hand a scheme to acquire several millions of acres of pine land in eastern Texas. The syndicate proposed to pay one dollar pev acre for the land. They employed lawyers to have the tracts quietly surveyed and reported upon. The lawyers believed that there was a big money scheme, and as layers sometimes do, concluded to take a hand in the game. So they formed a little sydjcate of their own and offered 1.50d0l per acre for portions— probably the most valuable— of the land. Through this act of the lawyers the 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 thus be able to regulate production and prices according to " their own sweet will." The 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 the land to the State. The late transfer of sufficient Texas territory to form a fair sized State to certain Illinois capitalists in payment for a siugle building for -the use of the Texas State Government, was an astonishingly idiotic trade, but if it has opened the eyes of the people of Texas to the folly 'of ' bartering aw>y for a song ithe choicest portions of their 1 empire, it will not be so bad after all, Texas has millions of acfeVof unoccupied lands, but what - she tieeds is actual settlers to occupy and* 3 till them ; not land monopolists that.Tfill finally manipulate people, • State^Govern- ! ment, andrepresentatives in Congress.- '?*

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