in Wyoming; and the Rankin Live Stock Company in Nebraska.

"There is a large number of cases where inclosures range from 1,000
to 25,000 acres and upwards.

"The reports of special agents show that the fraudulent entries of
public land within the enclosures are extensively made by the
procurement and in the interest of stockmen, largely for the purpose
of controlling the sources of water supply."--"Unauthorized Fencing
of Public Lands," U. S. Senate Docs., First Session, Forty-eighth
Congress, 1883-84, Vol. vi, Doc. No. 127:2.] Murder after murder was
committed. In this usurpation the august Supreme Court of the United
States upheld them. And the grounds of the decision were what?

The very extraordinary dictum that a settler could not claim any
right of preëmption on public lands in possession of another who had
enclosed, settled upon and improved them. This was the very reverse
of every known declaration of common and of statute law. No court,
supreme or inferior, had ever held that because the proceeds of theft
were improved or were refurbished a bit, the sufferer was thereby
estopped from recovery. This decision showed anew how, while the
courts were ever ready to enforce the law literally against the
underlings and penniless, they were as active in fabricating tortuous
constructions coinciding not always, but nearly always, with the
demands and interests of the capitalist class.

It has long been the fashion on the part of a certain prevalent
school of writers and publicists to excoriate this or that man, this
or that corporation, as the ringleader in the orgy of corruption and
oppression. This practice, arising partly from passionate or ill-