This clause in the Act of March 2, 1899, has been construed by the Interior Department as a contract between the Secretary of the Interior and the railway corporation. If it had been a lawful contract from the start, there would never have been any occasion for laying particular emphasis upon it, as a constitutional provision prohibits Congress from passing any act that will impair the obligations of a contract where the Government is a party; so it would seem that there was some doubt upon the subject, even in the controlling minds of the great railroad corporation, and as the Secretary of the Interior is vested with arbitrary power in the interpretation of these fine points, the next move on the programme was in the direction of making sure that there would be no question concerning the confirmation of selections under the act itself.
This was the situation when James Rudolph Garfield assumed the duties of Secretary on March 4, 1907. Up to that time comparatively few of the Northern Pacific selections had been patented, and those already approved by the Interior Department were based upon the recommendation of chiefs of divisions. In this respect the conclusions of the Commissioner of the General Land Office had a certain amount of influence, and whenever any difference of opinion arose upon the subject, the matter would be brought to the attention of the Secretary, who usually referred it to his legal advisers. During the last days of the Hitchcock administration, there was considerable friction between the Interior Department and the General Land Office, for obvious reasons, and, in consequence, the opinions of Commissioners Hermann and Richards carried little weight. Practically everything was left to the discretion of those close to the Secretary, and where there were no serious objections to a list selecting public lands, it was generally approved without much ceremony.
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