Fraud
But since much of the land was unfit for development, it did not attract many settlers. However, the land was very rich in timber, which meant that timber companies would pay much more than $2.50 an acre. So to circumvent the requirements of the land grant, Edward Harriman, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad—which then owned the O&C—hired former surveyor Stephen A. Douglas Puter to round up people from saloons in Portland's waterfront district, escort them to the land office, have them register for an O&C parcel as a settler, and then transfer it to Puter's men. The accumulated parcels were then sold in large blocks to the highest bidder for timber harvest.
Read more about this topic: Oregon Land Fraud Scandal
Famous quotes containing the word fraud:
“Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He saw, he wish’d, and to the prize aspir’d.
Resolv’d to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;
For when success a lover’s toil attends,
Few ask, if fraud or force attain’d his ends.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)