SECRETARY PAYNE IS MAN OF
(BY J. J. UNDERWOOD)
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 18.—
This is where the Seattle Times’
Washington bureau scoops the con
jg* gressional mountebanks and other
propagandists. Hearken to this dole
ful tale!
John Barton Payne, secretary of
the interior, has gone over to Wall
^Street! The giant trusts—the colos
sal financial octopii—have got him
clutched in their tentacles, and
through him they are sucking the
nation dry of its very lifecblood!
Through him, these greedy and per
nicious corporations are acquiring
millions of acres of public land,
which is the rightful heritage of all
the pe-e-e-pul! As a nation we are
being robbed of our birthrights!
Harrumph!
That is what you are going to hear
in a few weeks—if the propagandists
can put it over. They haven’t dis
cvered it yet, but Secretary Payne
is issuing patents to public land with
a reckless disregard of what the
demagogues will have to say about
him. Likewise he is leasing oil lands
on liberal terms.
It all began about two months ago
when a man dropped in from Colo
rado to inquire about a patent to a
fceoal land claim which had been pend
ing for the short term of fourteen
years. He had some vague hopes
of getting possession at some remote
date in the future of this property,
on which he had expended hundreds
of thousands of dollars. He didn’t
really expect he would get this
patent right away, but he thought
Judge Payne might give it a sort of
boost along, so that his standing
would be a little better when the
new administration comes in next
March. He nearly died of heart
failure when Judge Payne signed
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CLEANING OUT ARCHIVES
The secretary went a great deal
further than that. He issued an or
der that all matters in regard to
public lands that had been pending
for more than sixty days be brought
to his desk for disposition. There
* was a great cleaning out of the
archives. Many of the claimants, to
he sure, had died of old age since
making their applications, but patents
were issued to their heirs. Since
that time the general land office has
been up on its toes, and daily hear
ings have been the first order of busi
ness. A lot of patents have been
issued, some of these having been
pending for nearly two decades. I
know of some that have been pend
ing still longer than that, but the
claimants haven’t yet found out what
kind of a man Secretary Payne is.
But Judge Payne isn’t going to get
through without a lot of trouble. He
has run foul of the forestry service,
whose officials are the world’s cham
pion putters-off. The friction, if such
it be, arose over an Oregon case in
which a man who had settled on
forty acres of land near a forest re
serve twelve years ago wanted a
patent to his farm. It was not within
the forest reserve, but forestry offi
cers thought that some day or other
they might like to include it within
the reserve. A hearing was called,
at which Judge Payne presided, and
the forestry department was repre
sented.
DELAY AND MORE DELAY
The secretary ordered the patent
to issue. The forestry department
lawyer requested time to file a brief.
He was given a month to do so. The
brief was not forthcoming. Judge
Payne called him up and gave him
another two weeks. The day before
the time expired a bill was intro
duced to include this settler’s land
within the forest reserve and Sec
retary Payne was asked to withhold
Ipatent pending the legislation. He
refused, and the patent issued. The
secretary thought that the homeseek
ers have some rights.
But don’t get the idea that Secre
tary Payne opposes national forests
and parks and out-of-doors places.
He doesn’t, but he believes that farm
land, and mineral land and all other
kinds of land, should be developed.
Judge Payne is a man of decision.
At ground and lofty deciding, he is
about the best Jittle decider that has
ever been in Washington. For two
years past a bunch of miners at
Nenana, Alaska, have been mining
coal, which under their permit can
be sold only to the government.
Knowing the government's leisurely
manner of doing things, they wrote
asking permission to sell part of this
coal to the public. There were no
long hearings about it, no briefs
*
were filed and there were no legal
arguments. Judge Payne wrote a
i short order and then telegraphed the
J miners to go ahead and sell coal to
anybody who wanted to buy it—he
* would forward the official order by
j mail.
DOESN’T ALWAYS WAIT
And he doesn’t always wait for
people to ask him to do things,
j Newspaper publishers have been in
i Washington lately on a news-print
j supply investigation. There is some
( pulp-wood in Alaska outside the for
| est reserves, which comes under the
jurisdiction of the interior depart
ment. Judge Payne wrote the presi
dent of the American Newspaper j
I Publishers’ Association asking if they
wanted any of this pulp wood, or if I
he could assist them in any way.
Judge Payne would be a good man
to have on a commission or board:
or something of that kind—if the!
rest of the members be either dead i
or asleep. All they would have to
| do would be to come to long enough
to vote. Judge Payne would make
all the decisions. He is the anti
thesis of the usual department man.
The usual procedure for department
men is to sit around and discover1
reasons why whatever they have to
do should not be done. They believe
that a department never should put
off until tomorrow what it can just
as well put off till next year. But
Judge Payne is not a putter-off.
Deciding right off the bat and put
ting the stop to eloquence and gar
rulity are about the best things he
does. There is no chance for any
body to get away with endless pala
ver when Judge Payne is the lis
tener. He makes people come to the
point—quick.
EXAMPLE OF ONE EXPERIENCE
T had one experience with him in
connection with the mineral land
leasing law. The departmental plan
was to fix the royalties at 50 per
cent on oil wells, and then if nobody j
took a lease the first year, to reduce
it to 45 per cent the next year, and j
.so on. This would have resulted ini
a subversion of "the law. No oil
wells would have been drilled on
government land for the next twenty
years. It made no difference to me;
personally, as I do not own a ilivver,
but there is a very serious shortage j
of petroleum. I spent a good many
hours looking up rates of leasing pri
vately owned land in Oklahoma,
Texas, Kansas, Wyoming and other
states. I was going to make a pro
test. I had so many statistics that
my head rattled when I walked. I
was framed to make the argument of
my life and to talk all day if neces
sary. I had proceeded about thirty
words beyond the “Good morning,
Mr. Secretary,” stage, when he looked
at me with a cold eye and said:
“Just what do you want me to
do?”
“I want you to fix the royalties in
the oil regulations on a basis that
people can take a lease with the
royalties—”
“All right. Leave me those papers,
j set out some oil regulations, and
if they don’t suit you, come back and
tell me what’s wrong with ’em.”
I withered toward the door. I
didn’t even have a chance to tell him
that I don’t own any oil wells per
sonally. I expected that about a year
hence the regulations .would issue.
To my utter amazement I received a
copy of them four days later. The
regulations were more liberal than
anybody could have anticipated, and
tney were short, terse and to the
point. There could be no misunder
standing about what they meant. A
large number of oil leases have al
ready been entered into, and wells
are being dug. ,
One of the banes of governmental
business transactions is the fact that
every departmental official—with few
exceptions—has a mortal fear of criti
cism. They take no action that can
be criticized. Whenever it is possi
ble the decision is passed to some
body else, so that in case of criticism
their own skirts will be clear. This
results in lack of decisions in many
important matters. Everlasting post
ponement is the result.
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