THE ROLL CALL

...Fifteen of the claimants made corroborative affidavits, in which this statement of Cunningham's was confirmed, and fourteen of them added these words: "We have understood among ourselves that when title was secured we would form a company and combine the entire group, since the conditions are such that one claim could not be profitably mined, as any one familiar with coal mining appreciates...

...They neither disputed nor offered to explain any of the following series of facts: 1. That their operations began with the purchase by ten men of twenty-two locations of 160 acres each...

...The service we refer to is that of making access-sible to the public the facts as established by evidence...

...Unless the public understands its intekest and its rights in the premises and makes itself heard in the matter, there is danger that these claims will be patented, that a public domain of enormous value will be turned over to a system monopoly...

...It shows that from the beginning the claimants acted with the definite and sustained intention of defeating the primary purpose and essential spirit of the law—the spirit and purpose to prevent monopoly and to secure competitive development of the nation's resources...

...2. That twelve of these twenty-two locations were recorded in the names of "dummies...

...The parcels post, limited to rural delivery routes as recommended by the President, would certainly benefit the country merchant...

...The Claimants not Pioneers IT MUST NOT BE IMAGINED that in cancelling the claims in the Cunnningham group the government would work an injustice to the pioneers who have braved the hardships and dangers of Alaska...

...To many, the personal aspects of the controversy have clouded the real issue as to the Cunningham claims...

...But at all times all claims were held as the joint property of all the co-owners...

...How many other country merchants would find the same condition among their customers with respect to mail-order business...

...Around the Cunningham coal claims has centered the so-called Pinchot-Ballinger controversy, a controversy involving the highest officers of the government and millions of dollars of public property...

...The claimants confined themselves to a bare denial of the existence of an illegal agreement...

...Is this because they are satisfied with a scheme that induces purchasers to buy in bulk...

...But he does not want to pay high express charges on the article, so he and his neighbors will pore over the catalogue and pick out enough goods to make a freight shipment...

...So far as we know, mail-order houses have never taken any particular interest in the parcels-post...

...In March, 1908, Clarence Cunningham, in an affidavit in which he denied any connection with the Guggenheim interests, admitted that they had "always proceeded" on an agreement to combine their claims when they got title...

...Quite often, if one of my customers could buy from a mail-order house some small article that struck his fancy and have the article delivered cheaply by post, that would be the extent of his mail-order purchase...

...The Issue of Fact THE ISSUE OF FACT in this case is simple...

...The area embraced by the Cunningham claims is approximately 5,280 acres...

...that the subscribers to the joint fund were regarded as "co-owners" and so named by Cunningham...

...The record in our judgment abundantly proves that the claims are illegal and that from the beginning the claimants have conspired to defraud the government...

...On the other side are the names of Pinchot, the father of the American conservation policy, who was dismissed from the government service by President Taft on a charge of insubordination growing out of his efforts to prevent the patenting of the Cunningham claims...

...6. That four of these claims were held in the names of "dummies.' 7. That at no time up to the beginning of the hearings did the number of members of the association correspond with the number of locations owned by them...

...That the expert who reported on the field for the claimants (a) considered the claims as one property, (b) estimated their value as one property, (c) elaborated a plan for operating them as one property, (d) felt called upon to suggest what claims in a neighboring group were worth controlling...

...This fact makes it even more imperative to enforce strictly the provisions forbidding agreements to combine made before patents are issued...

...And he has stayed manifestly with a purpose...

...Second: The book of accounts of the Cunningham group and the reports made by its agents are all evidently based on the assumption that all the claims are one property owned by one association...

...We doubt that an extension of the system would really injure him.—Saturday Evening Post...

...Contrary to the popular impression, the Cunningham claimants are not pioneers at all...

...Claimants Admit Entering Claims to Combine FIFTH: More than half of the claimants have admitted in affidavits that they had always acted with a mutual understanding that they would combine their claims after titles were secured, and one so confessed at the hearings...

...The law allowed an individual to take not more than 160 acres and an association not more than 640 acres...

...The brief of the Pinchots presents the case for the people in such lucid yet powerful style, simplified and the facts arranged in their proper relations so that all may understand...

...Summary of Case for the Government THE CASE FOR THE GOVERNMENT is supported by five main lines of evidence, which, briefly state, are as follows: First: The history of the operations of the Cunningham entrymen in Alaska, as derived from their own records and statements, shows that from beginning to end they were all members of a single association engaged in acquiring a joint property, and that the claimants never owned these claims separately...

...Those claimants who had previously admitted the agreement were called upon to explain their admissions...

...They are a group of wealthy, hard-headed men of affairs, representing chiefly the great corporate interests of the Northwestern states, most of whom have never set foot in Alaska...

...It is generally conceded that practically all of the other locations in Alaska today are fraudulent...

...Isn't there, in fact, a continual drumming up of trade for mail-order houses by purchasers who wish their neighbors to join them, in order to make up a bulky shipment by freight and avoid high express charges...

...whereas, in fact, all the members were acting under an agreement that when titles were secured the claims should be consolidated into one property and operated for the joint benefit of all in equal shares...

...The Cunningham claims are still pending...

...If there was, prior to entry, an understanding or agreement, express or implied, among the Cunningham claimants to turn their claims over to a company after they got title, or to pool their interests and work them together, the claims are illegal...

...Strategic Position of the Claims THE CUNNINGHAM COAL CLAIMS cover a nearly rectangular area running about four miles east and west, by two miles north and south...

...An Effort to Secure Monopoly THE EVIDENCE in this case goes much farther than to establish the fraud of attempting by subterfuge to acquire from the government more coal land than the law allows...

...That frequently when new subscribers joined the group, each was recorded in its book of accounts as having acquired "an interest" in the property...

...The result is that the mail-order house, instead of selling five pounds, sells a hundred pounds or more...

...Columns and pages concerning it have appeared in the press...

...The case against the claimants is already conclusive...

...Not a single report made to the claimants gave any statement of work done on the individual claims, or even mentioned any claim by name...

...THE CHARGE against the Cunningham entries is that they were made in pursuance of a fraudulent plan to acquire for a single association public coal lands in Alaska greatly in excess of the amount allowed by law...

...That the reports and financial statements made to the claimants showed that (a) they were looked upon as "co-owners...

...La Follette's can only print the following outline of the main points of the Pinchot brief, but this will be sufficient to determine any fair and open mind as to the rights respectively of the claimants and of the public...

...That, with a single exception, none of the claimants, on joining the group, paid any attention to the situation or probable value of his claim...

...5. That after the Act of 1904, thirty-seven claims were located in the interests of the thirty-three members of the group...

...The hardy pioneers who discovered and located the Cunningham claims were bought out by Clarence Cunningham in 1903, at about $300 a claim, or $1.88 an acre...

...c) that the discovery of great amounts of coal on some of the claims made Cunningham feel that it was unnecessary to explore other claims carefully...

...The industries of Alaska h?ve been for years largely in the hands of a great and oppressive monopoly, the Guggenheim Syndicate, which has kept out other capital, throttled competition, and held Alaska at a standstill in spite of its vast wealth in minerals, forests, water powers, and fisheries...

...9. That four of them made entry on claims which they believed to be of no value for coal but valuable for timber, if a company was formed...

...that the money jointly contributed by all was being expended on a few claims only, in order to "add to the value of the property...

...On one side are the claimants, a group of associated gentlemen representing powerful interests, headed by Clarence Cunningham, the manager of their undertaking, and Richard A. Ballinger, formerly counsel for Cunninham in his Alaska coal operations, and now Secretary of the Interior, and now proved to have interested himself in this position to promote the patenting of the Cunningham claims...

...He concludes by stating that, if the Syndicate owned the Cunningham claims it would be necessary to obtain control of only two more groups, and possibly of only one, in order to dominate the whole field...

...The device employed was to have each member of the association enter a claim in his own name, and make oath that he did so for his own sole use and benefit...

...What is Charged...

...b) that joint moneys were being contributed to "add to the value of the property" on only a few claims...

...Yet the case of the Alaska coal claims remains in the minds of most people a chaotic jumble of questionable transactions ramifying through the land office, the Interior Department, Department of Justice, and reaching even to the White House itself...

...At the beginning of February, 1903, Cunningham recorded (in the Cunningham Journal) the terms of an agreement whereby each subscriber to the joint fund "shall have one claim of 160 acres recorded in his name and will own same individually until such time as title can be secured for same" when each "agrees to deed his interest to a company to be formed for the purpose of developing and marketing" the coal...

...Coal Development in Aaska is of vital and basic importance, but coal develpoment in the shape of monopoly by the Morgan-Guggenheim interests would merely strengthen the power which today holds Alaska in its paralyzing grip...

...They are in a position of peculiar strategic advantage...

...But Ballinger would not "out...

...Subsequent transactions show that all the disclosures have not served to modify the attitude of the Secretary of the Interior toward the Cunningham claims, or to abate one jot the determined zeal of the claimants and their representatives pressing these claims to patent...

...No resort to a court or a rehearing of the case is necessary to secure justice and protect the people's property...

...The Responsibility of the Executive WE BELIEVE that the duty of the Executive in regard to the Cunningham claims is obvious and immediate...

...At the outset, ten men purchased jointly twenty-two claims...

...The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES YOUR BRIEF, by the Pinchots IN THEIR BRIEF, submitted to the President, on the case of the Cunningham coal claims in Alaska, the Pinchot brothers, Gifford and Amos, have performed a real service for the people...

...That all of the claimants made entry and paid their entry fees of $1,600 each, although their expert's report showed great value on the part of the property, remote possibilities elsewhere, and probably no workable coal at all on four other claims...

...Glavis, whose investigations as an agent of the government laid bare the frauds which called for the canceliation of these claims and who was dismissed from the service for seeking the support of public opinion to prevent the patenting of the Cunningham claims when it became apparent that it was the determination of the higher offiicials to ignore the frauds and force the claims to patent...

...The Interests accused with him were powerful...

...3. That thereafter the ownership of these twenty-two locations was sub-divided among twenty.seven claimants, no man owning a separate claim but each a one-twenty-seventh interest in the entire group...

...The claims should be cancelled by the President FORTHWITH...

...and Brandeis, who, as Glavis' attorney before the joint investigating committee of Congress, by Herculean labor, by endless digging and searching of records, and by masterly examination of witnesses, laid bare the hidden facts of one of the most gigantic conspiracies to defraud the government that has blackened the pages of our national history...

...The Claimants Carry Out Their Illegal Agreement FOURTH: Within the shortest practicable time after final certificates were issued (whereupon it became legal to combine, provided there had been no prior agreement), the Cunningham associates took steps to turn over their claims to a corporation on a basis of equal shares, although they knew that their claims were of unequal value...

...The Defense Analyzed IN PRESENTING their side of the case, counsel for the claimants called to the stand every one of the entrymen...

...The claimants contend that each entered his claim entirely for his own use and benefit, and that no one of them has any interest in any claim except his own...

...We state this independently of whatever measure of consideration the brief may have at the hands of the President...

...and (d) that the agents and experts of the group were preparing plans for operating the claims as one property and had already spent money in furtherance of such plans...

...Their value has been conservatively estimated at $25,000,000...

...That after securing receiver's receipts they immediately took steps to combine claims of unequal value on a basis of equality...

...Storrs, the engineer of the Morgan-Guggen-heim Syndicate...

...4. That the agreement which Cunningham originally made with each of the associates gave him authority to group them together, as he undertook to do, into partnerships of four, each partnership to acquire 640 acres...

...They show, thirdly, that the claims were regarded as one property...

...Annual Reports to Claimants ANNUAL REPORTS and financial statements were made by Cunningham to his contributors and accepted by them as a basis for further payments...

...Ballinger has stayed on...

...That none of them ever called for information concerning his particular claim apart from the field as a whole...

...Each was asked a set of formal questions tending to elicit a denial of the existence, at any time before the receipt of final certificates, of any agreement or understanding to combine their claims...

...At other times when there were more locations than co-owners, the surplus claims were recorded in the names of "dummies...

...These claims were recorded in the local land office, ten in the names of the subscribers, and twelve in the names of "dummies...

...The government contends that all the Cunningham entries were made for a single association, and that they were recorded in separate names merely as a device to evade the law...

...This phase merits consideration...

...Only thus can monopoly be prevented...

...They dominate the Bering River district...

...The Claims Were Not Held Separately WHEN THERE WERE more co-owners (as Cunningham then called them) than locations the claims were held for the benefit of all...

...Not a single subscriber ever called for information concerning his claim separately from the field as a whole...

...8. That all thirty-three subscribers shared in the expense of buying twenty-two squatter locations—a purchase which would have been of no benefit to those among the thirty-three who were not located on any of the squatter territory unless there was an agreement to consolidate the whole tract...

...Prompt Development Important THE PROMPT DEVELOPMENT of the public coal fields of Alaska is of great importance...

...Country Trade and the Parcel Post A COUNTRY MERCHANT in New England writes us: "My experience in competing with mail-order houses leads me to think a parcels-post system would be a benefit to me rather than an injury...

...The ease with which a company owning these claims could control the whole Bering River coal field has been shown by Mr...

...Ballinger Stays in Cabinet UPON the heels of these disclosures, reverberated through the land the cry of an enraged nation, "Out with Ballinger...