OFFICIAL ANNEXATION

show an aggregate of acres, acres of which were granted between june and march the aggregate length of railroads for which
the grants were made being miles, miles independent of the mileage of the pacific roads; and the reports of the post office
department show that last year the government paid, on miles of land grant railroad, independent of the union pacific system
and the great body of lapsed grants, for postal service. the startling fact appears that in the gradual development of these
grants, great as they are, they still swell in their proportions. i pointed out on a former occasion the startling discrepancies that
appear in the official statements of these grants, and can only say now, as i did then, that in such enormous grants a few
millionaires either way is considered of no moment. Again: there are other grants which I have not included in either of the
foregoing tables where not a spadeful of earth has been dug in the construction of a railroad, yet the lands are withdrawn from
settlement and claimed by the corporation, although the grants were long since forfeited. the forfeiture of these grants will,of
course, be declared. of all of these grants over acres, including over this house has already declard forfeited, are beyond any
reasonable question forfeited, and the declaration of that forfeiture by congress is demanded by the highest consideration of
public policy, common honesty, and justice to the people. even to the extent these land grant railroads enumerated in the first
table were completed, you paid them, as i have shown, last year for transporting your mails. this bill would, as to these roads,
to the extent they are entitled to the lands granted and including the pacific systems, save to the treasury annually, i think,
near a million dollars, perhaps more. deducting from the foregoing statement of land grants to corporations, mr. holman draws
the following picture of what the people may do when they are fully informed and aroused to the enormous extent to which
they have been despoiled by their unfaithful servants in congress: the wealth that builds palaces, undermines the foundations
of free government, and wrings from the heart of labor the cry of despair with the public lands exhausted, with remnants of
the indian tribes despoiled of their reservations, and the lands seized upon by capitalists and merciless speculators (except so
for as you have pledged them in advance to the railroad corporations), and lands everywhere advanced in price beyond the
reach of laboring men, with the hope of better fortune and of independent homes dying out of the heart of labor, why men fully
conscious of the wrong you have done them by your legislation, can the peaceful order of society be hoped for as of old i am not
astonished that gentlemen deem this early hour an opportune moment to urge the policy of a great navy; it will come, if it does
come, in the natural order before a great army. capital is timed and full of suggestion; the navy is the most remote, but i am
not surprised that here and there comes also the intimation that your army is too small. these, too, may be some of the bitter
fruits of your imperial grants. i fear that it will be seen soon enough that when you have destroyed the very foundations of
security and hop upon which labour has rested so long, the old time repose and peaceful order will be no more. gentlemen should
not forget that the wrong that has been done to laboring men and their children by giving over their natural inheritance to an
accursed monopoly will in due time be considered by the most intelligent body of laboring men who ever debated a public
wrong men fully aware of their right and capable of asserting them. but the foreign land shark, and the corporate land shark,
dwindle into insignificance by the side of the individual land shark. every hamlet, town, city, and state in the union is in the
grasp of the individual land holder. starting with his fellows as a pioneer hundred and fifty years ago, why his pickaxe on his
shoulder, he has steadily grown in size and importance, so that today he holds in his hands the destinies of the republicc and the
life of his fellow citizens. his bulk has become mastodonian in proportions and his influence has shriveled up the energies of the
population but to the demand of the market, at such figures as he can extort from the crying necessities of the people through
the operations of corners; he regulates the wheels of government, state and federal, and dictates to the people by making them
bungry and naked. we stand only upon the threshold of governmental existence; the nation, in comparison to the hoary handed
commonwealths of europe, was born but yesterday; but, having adopted at the beginning the system which hastened the
downfall of rome after she had spread her authority over the known world, we are already weak and exhausted, monopoly has
stunted the people, and they stagger to the grave, starved to death by a system of robbery almost too transparent to require
minute elucidation at the hand of the conscientious writer upon economic questions. the suppressed groans of the toiling masses
are echoed and reechoed from every corner of the land, and burst forth in mobocratic fury that the entire police authority finds
it almost impossible to stay. the newspapers are a daily chronicle of the desperate condition to which the country has been
brought by the rapacity and ignorance of legislators and the parasitical manipulations of the gang which has rooted itself in
the soil of the country. the fires of revolution are incorporated into the magna charta of our liberties, and no human power can
avert the awful eruption which will eventually burst upon us as mount vesuvins burst forth upon herculaneum and Pompeii.
it is too late for America to be wise in time. the die is cast. Conclusion i know it is not fashion able for writers on economic
questions to tell the truth, but the truth should be told, though it kill. when the wail of distress encircles the world, the man who

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