received $1,125,469.41, Mississippi received $1,069,926.62, Missouri received $1,060,430.61, while Oklahoma, under that act, up until 1913 had received only $59,000.

Mr. TIMBERLAKE. What did Colorado receive?

Mr. MORGAN. Colorado received $460,748.30; Arkansas received $324,911, or not quite the average. Colorado received about the average. Now, the reason for that, in the first place, was that the United States had conveyed to the Indians all of the public lands in the east half of the State, so that none of those lands were sold. The public lands were given to the Indians. As a matter of fact, they were not given to the Indians, because in reality the United States received a consideration for them. In other words, the Indians gave the United States lands in other States and agreed to remove. It was not a gift to the Indians in Oklahoma, but the United States sold those public lands in order to discharge the debt they owed the Indians, because of the release by the Indians of their claim to lands in other States. Therefore it was a national obligation or a national debt, and not a mere gift to the Indians. Then, in the western half of the State, where most of the lands were disposed of under the public-land laws, they were practically all disposed of before statehood, so that when statehood came there were practically no public lands to be sold. Consequently there is nothing that we can get 5 per cent on. There was only a limited amount of land to be sold afterwards. Now, in Nebraska and in one other State--I think, perhaps, it was Arizonathey have given the States 5 per cent of the amount realized from the sale of public lands from the time of the organization of the Territories, and not from the time of their admission to statehood. California was admitted to statehood in 1850 without getting this grant. It went along that way until 1906, when Congress passed an act a special act-making this grant to Čalifornia, and California has received in recent years over $1,000,000 under this grant. Now, I contend, of course, that Oklahoma should have been granted this 5 per cent of the proceeds arising from the sale of public lands from the inception of the Territory. That would have equalized our grant with those of the other States. We have received only about $50,000 or $60,000, while the average State out of the 28 having this grant has received over $500,000. Many of those States have received $1,000,000 each. Now, there is at least $500,000 that Oklahoma should have received. Oklahoma has been discriminated against to that amount at least.

Now, then, I point out these things to the committee to show that, after a thorough investigation of the various grants that were made to Oklahoma under the enabling act, as you will see, Oklahoma, as a matter of fact, has not received the average of the amounts that other States have received when they were admitted to statehood. I think I can show with absolute clearness that instead of having received more than the other States, we have not been given the average. Now, I think Mr. Teehee can show the committee that we have an absolute legal and statutory right to these lands if we really have not been granted that what we should have been allowed. You have had presented the question involved in the nontaxable Indian lands, which Mr. Carter especially referred to. Of course; we do not believe that the United States Government had the right to exempt those lands from taxation after the Government had disposed of the lands without compensating the State for loss of revenue. Of course, as long as they are public lands, or lands belonging to the Government, it is a well-recognized proposition that the States can not tax them, because they are property of the United States, but after the United States Government parts with these lands, and when the title goes out of the Government and into the hands of private individuals, then those lands should be subject to State taxation; and, as is shown by all of the enabling acts of the early States, the National Government recognized that right of the State, and wherever the National Government had disposed of lands and exempted them from taxation for a period of years, the States were compensated. I think there were about a dozen States to which those special grants were made to compensate them for the loss of taxes. In the case of Oklahoma, the United States Government conveyed those public lands to the Indians, and exempted the lands from taxation, leaving the State of Oklahoma to bear all of that burden. Now, I submit that the Indian problem, so far as it is a problem, is a problem for the Nation. It is a burden that 100,000,000 people should carry, and should not be left for a few Western States to carry. For instance, take a State like Colorado, or a State like North or South Dakota, or, for that matter, most of the Western States, and you will see that many millions of acres of land have been exempted from taxation for many years, and the local authorities and State authorities lose that revenue. That loss of revenue, of course, means an additional tax burden upon other property; so that I contend that if

the United States Government exempts property from taxation and places it beyond the taxing power of the State, the loss which the State incurs and the extra expense which is imposed upon property belonging to others by reason of such tax exemption, should be borne by the Nation. I contend that that is a burden that should be borne by the Nation, or by the entire 100,000,000 people, and not thrown upon the people of a single State. There is no doubt but what the revenue lost by reason of these nontaxable Indian lands, which the Government conveyed to the Indians to discharge a national debt, would amount to from fifty to seventy-five million dollars. I have not been able to figure it out entirely, but there are 20,000,000 acres of land not subject to taxation.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM W. HASTINGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it is not my purpose to argue this at length at this time. Mr. Teehee has prepared an exhaustive argument upon this subject and, in my judgment, an unanswerable one. I want to invite your attention, first, to the act of July 2, 1862 (12 Stats. L. 503), which provides as follows:

"That there be granted to the several States, for the purposes hereinafter mentioned, an amount of public land to be apportioned to each State a quantity equal to 30,000 acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the State is respectively entitled by the apportionment under the census of 1860: Provided, That no mineral lands shall be selected or purchased under the provisions of this act."

This grant is made for the use of colleges for agriculture and the mechanic arts, as the subsequent sections of the act indicate. This section based it upon the apportionment under the census of 1860, and it provides that there shall be no mineral lands included in the grant.

I want next to invite your attention to the act amendatory of it, the act of July 23, 1866. It is found in 14 Statutes at Large, page 208, and it was approved July 23, 1866:

That the time in which the several States may comply with the provisions of the act of July 2, 1862, entitled 'An act donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts,' is hereby extended so that the acceptance of the benefits of the said act may be expressed within three years from the passage of this act, and the colleges required by the said act may be provided within five years from the date of the filing of such acceptance with the Commissioner of the General Land Office.'

I want to invite your special attention to this provisio which extends the benefits of the act of 1866 to future States when admitted:

"Provided, That when any Territory shall become a State and be admitted into the Union, such new State shall be entitled to the benefits of the said act of July 2, 1862, by expressing the acceptance therein required within three years from the date of its admission into the Union, and providing the college or colleges within five years after such acceptance, as described in this act: Provided further, That any State, which has heretofore expressed its acceptance of the act herein referred to shall have the period of five years within which to provide at least one college, as described in the fourth section of said act, after the time for providing such college, according to the act of July 2, 1862, shall have expired."

You will note, gentelmen of the committee, that this act of 1866 extended the benefits of the act of 1862 to all future Territories when admitted to statehood, conditioned upon the acceptance of the terms of the act. Oklahoma was admitted to statehood in 1907 and when it was admitted it had five Members of Congress and two Senators, making seven. If you give each State 30,000 acres of land for each Member, Oklahoma would have been entitled, under this act and the amendatory act, to 210,000 acres of land.

It has already been explained that the eastern half of the State was inhabited by the Five Civilized Tribes and that that amount was given in lieu of sections 16 and 36 for the common-school fund; that grant was made for the eastern half of the State and not in lieu of land for colleges for agriculture and mechanic arts. As has already been stated, Mr. Teehee has made an exhaustive study of this question, and Mr. McClintic has already placed in the record the facts which show that each State admitted subsequent to 1866 has received the benefits of 114794-303

these acts or there has been something given in lieu of this amount of land or some exception made in the enabling act admitting the respective States to statehood. Oklahoma has not received any land in lieu of it, and it is our contention that she is entitled to it. As has already been stated here, there are only about 40,000 acres of public lands in Oklahoma, an insufficient amount to give the State the 210,000 acres of land to which we submit she is entitled.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES S. DAVENPORT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. DAVENPORT. All of the States, since the passage of the act of Congress of 1862 and the amendment of 1866, as you will find, have either received the benefit of the act by a grant of 30,000 acres for each of their Representatives in Congress or there was a specific reservation and a specific appropriation covered in the enabling act providing and exempting a particular State from receiving that specific appropriation, one of the two. You will not find a single' State admitted since the passage of the act of 1862 and the amending act of 1866 that did not receive either of those two things.

Mr. TIMBERLAKE. Were there some States whose enabling act forbade their receiving this?

Mr. DAVENPORT. Not at that time, that I remember; I do not recall a single one. This grant was made at that time because the States were not coming into the Union very rapidly, and some of them had come in that had not received any of the benefits, and the act of 1862 was intended, evidently, to give to those States which had come in and had not received any public-land grant at all the benefit of the public-land grant on the establishment of agricultural, mechanical, and scientific colleges. It is my understanding that the act of 1862 applied to those States that were in the Union, and that the act of 1866 goes further in its provisions and extends that act to the States that might thereafter come into the Union, or to Territories which might be admitted into the Union as States, and gives to them the benefit of that grant.

You will find, as I said, that each State coming in between 1866 and the time Oklahoma came in was given that grant by legislative enactment or got some other grant or some other donation of some kind which was specifically provided for in the enabling act. Oklahoma did not get that, nor is there any specific provision exempting it from that grant or saying that any grant given to Oklahoma was in lieu of that grant, as provided for in the acts of 1862 and 1866. Oklahoma got, as far as the records show, $5,000,000, but that was only to cover the question of the common schools in the eastern part of Oklahoma where there were no sections 16 and 36, as it had always been carried in the States with reference to school lands. The western part of the State had received that school land grant, and the $5,000,000 was only intended to cover or equalize all parts of the State in common-school matters.

Following that, the next two States that came into the Union were Arizona and New Mexico, and grants were made to them by specific provisions in lieu of the 30,000 acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress, as specifically set forth in their enabling acts. From my standpoint this shows that there was no intention to exempt anything because of any donation or grant made to the State of Oklahoma for school purposes or any other purposes. There was no intention to exempt her from the provisions of this act, which was then in force, because if there had been it would have been written in the law. No mention is made of it, and no attempt is made in any way whatever in the Oklahoma enabling act to exempt her from that grant, but when Arizona and New Mexico came in, after Oklahoma was admitted, they being the fortyseventh and forty-eighth States, an exemption was made, and it was specifically provided they should have in lieu of that grant other lands.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES D. CARTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I have been so busy with other matters that I have not had time to keep up with this matter as closely as I would like. The question as to the legal right of our State to this land has been so thoroughly covered by the gentlemen who have preceded me a to need no further justification at my hands. I do want to say something, however, about the equitable and moral right of the State of Oklahoma to the recognition of all of her just claims against the Federal Government. I will not detain the committee long, but it will be necessary for me to state briefly the condition of the State of Okla

homa at the time she was admitted into the Union. When we were admitted into the Union we had no Territorial form of government on the Indian Territory side of the State, which embraced about hald of what is the present State of Oklahoma. The east side of the State, then known as Indian Territory, was occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes, and every acre of the land belonging to the Five Civilized Tribes was inalienable, and by former treaties made nontaxable. The part that has been purchased by white people, which was a small portion in the little towns, was nontaxable until all of the payments had been made upon the land. The other part, which was the major portion of it, was allotted to the Indians and made nontaxable for 21 years. Therefore we had this condition in our State. The entire eastern half of Oklahoma, composing some 19,500,000 acres of land, was nontaxable. There were something more than 20,000,000 acres on the western, or old Oklahoma Territory side, and much of that was also allotted to Indians and made nontaxable. From Indian Territory side 40 counties were created from a solid mass of contiguous territory averaging about 150 miles east and west and almost 250 miles north and south, containing a population at that time exceeding 700,000 and not embracing one single foot of taxable land.

Mr. TIMBERLAKE. Without 1 foot of taxable land?

Mr. CARTER. Without 1 foot of taxable land.

Mr. TIMBERLAKE. I understood you to say that about 19,500,000 acres of it was exempt from taxation?

Mr. CARTER. We have 40,000,000 acres of land in the entire State, and about 19,500,000 acres of that is in the Indian Territory, or on the east side of the State, embracing about 40 counties, and not 1 acre in those 40 counties was taxable. Much of the land on the west or old Oklahoma side is also nontaxable, but conditions over there are not quite so deplorable.

Mr. DAVENPORT. Outside of cities and towns.

Mr. CARTER. No, sir; the purchasers did not get deeds or titles to town lots until all the payments were made, and the land could not be taxed until deeds were finally made to the land. The patents were not executed until some time after statehood, so all of it was nontaxable. There was not an acre of taxable land there.

In addition to that, we had no public improvements in the State. We had no county courthouses, and we had no county jails. We had no provision whatever for public schools, and there was not a public school in those 40 counties. We had no improved roads, and there was no way of improving the roads. There were no bridges and no internal improvements of any kind. The State of Oklahoma has struggled along, and the east side of that State has done the best it could with this 19,500,000 acres of nontaxable land. It is true that we had $5,000,000 paid to the State of Oklahoma for common-school purposes, but that was in lieu of sections 16 and 36. Therefore, we came into the Union under a greater handicap than even any of the 13 original States. It has been a great burden to the people, on the east side of the State especially to carry on their county governments, maintain education, and make necessary internal improvements under these conditions. Therefore, we need every dollar that is coming to the State, and especially that part of the State, in order to carry on our county and State governments and to make those internal improvements that are necessary in every civilized community.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM H. MURRAY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. MURRAY. I merely wish to say that we feel this is a just and a legal claim, and that we are entitled to this additional amount of public land. Oklahoma has many problems to consider, many burdens to carry, even for the Federal Government. This is due to the fact that we have more than one-third of all the Indians in the United States, encumbering our probate and other courts, requiring us to pay the costs of the courts all the way from justice of the peace to the supreme court of the State, and other matters growing out of these Federal questions. We do not ask this as a generosity or as a gratuity, but as a matter of even-handed justice to which we are entitled under the law. I adopt the argument of Mr. Teehee, and recognize McClintic's efficient course so far.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH B. THOMPSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. THOMPSON. I have not gone carefully over the briefs that were filed and have just gone, in a hurried manner, over the report of the Secretary of the Interior, or the report of the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who passed on this matter, but from what I gather there are just two questions involved: First, that the department has no authority to grant this land because the act of 1862 only applied to States that were in the Union at that time, and, second, that the act of 1866 was not a grant but a mere pledge and that it always requires subsequent legislation in order to carry the pledge into effect. As Hastings has said, every State that came into the Union between 1862 and 1866 received the benefits of the act of 1862. There were three that came in between 1862 and 1866, West Virginia, Nevada, and Nebraska, and they all received the benefits of the act of 1862, and, of course, after 1866 there were a great number of States that were admitted prior to the admission of Oklahoma. To every one of those States that pledge was carried out by supplemental action on the part of Congress. Therefore, the Secretary says that in order to carry out the provisions of the act of 1862 and the act of 1866 it is necessary to have legislative action, that it is necessarily a legislative matter and not a matter for action on the part of the department.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Washington, May 10, 1916.

MY DEAR MR. FERRIS: I am in receipt of your request for report upon H. R. 15156, which proposes to grant to the State of Oklahoma a number of acres of public land, or its equivalent, provided for in the acts of July 2, 1862, and July 23, 1866, relating to land grants made to new States for the support of educationaĺ institutions, on the basis of 30,000 acres for each Representative.

The claim of the State was submitted to this department and considered at length, resulting in decision of April 24, 1916, copy of which I inclose for the information of the committee. The grant to Oklahoma made by the act of Congress approved June 16, 1906 (34 Stat. 273, 274, 275), granted to said State all sections 13 in the Territory and lands selected in lieu thereof, providing that one-third thereof were for the use and benefit "of the Agricultural and mechanical College and the Colored Agricultural Normal University." It further granted "for the benefit of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, 250,000 acres; for the benefit of the Colored Agricultural and Normal University, 100,000 acres," the lands to be selected by the Territory immediately after the approval of the

act.

I have also to advise that, according to the statement prepared in the General Land Office showing vacant public lands July 1, 1915, there were at that time only 42,177 acres of vacant lands in the State of Oklahoma. Doubtless some of this area has since been entered under the homestead law. It is also possible that some other tracts have become vacant through the relinquishment or cancellation of homestead entries, but it is clear that there is no public land in the State sufficient in area to satisfy the claim presented by the State. This would involve either permitting the State to select public lands in other States, or issuance of scrip, which could be located only on public lands subject to private entry (now confined to the State of Missouri), or receivable as cash in the commutation of homestead entries at $1.25 per acre. If scrip were issued to the State, it would be necessary probably for the State to dispose of same through local dealers in small quantities. The dealers would require a payment of a substantial commission and the purchasers who might desire to use it in payment for homestead lands would also expect to obtain the same at a discount. It would therefore seem that the State would not be able to realize anything like $1.25 per acre for such scrip.

The department having concluded and decided that it can not, under existing law, recognize or satisfy the claim of the State, the matter of whether such claim is one that should be allowed or recognized is for the consideration of Congress. Should Congress determine that such a grant should be made to the State of Oklahoma, I believe it would be inadvisable to undertake to issue scrip therefor, but believe the State would secure more benefit and both the United States and