thing "specific" on Hall, and he got "something specific" later on. He has this fellow under indictment now on two conspiracies, one to impede the administration of justice, the other "to unlawfully maintain a fence around lands of the United States." But Heney did not have to wait so long to get rid of Hall.
Burns had heard that Sorensen was coming home, and McKinley knew when. Heney haled Hall before the Grand Jury and, making him tell about Sorensen 's offer of a $5000 bribe from the dentist, indicted Sorensen. When Sorensen arrived. Burns brought him to Heney, who read him Hall's testimony.
"Dentist!" said Sorensen. "Hell, it was for you fellows (Puter and McKinley) and, by God, he arranged to meet me at St. Louis and take the money."
Heney had Hail removed from office by wire.
Hall had become by this time a very small speck on Heney's horizon, but he loomed large in Oregon, and his removal, consummated before he or anybody else knew of the confessions of Puter et al., startled the state. Heney, with his big stick a-swing, was a terrible sight in the minds of men; he fascinated the guilty consciences, and Burns, purring reassurances, was steering them to him to confess. The investigators knew just whom they wanted. Puter's outline of the System showed them that it was the same as that of California. Even the method of stealing was alike, so like indeed that they asked Puter how it happened. And he told them:
Hyde and Benson and Schneider introduced it into Oregon. Puter said that he and men like Mays, the railroads and all the other land grabbers began by bribing all sorts of people—"good** citizens and '^bad," men and women, sailors and bankers, farmers and merchants, dentists and other professional persons, mayors, legislators and politicians—^to swear falsely that they had lived on homesteads or otherwise '* proved up" on claims which they turned over to the grafters. Thus was the foundation of the system laid de^ and broad in Oregon on the corruption of the people themselves.
Oregon Learns from California
But the grafters gradually learn everywhere that it is unnecessary to share the graft with the people, and Hyde and Benson of California taught Oregon a lesson. When they came up these they had a grafter's row with one Page, whose attorneys were Carey and Mays. Page, intent only on the land he and Benson were fighting over, proposed to produce certain letters which flowed that Benson had paid "fees" to Senate Mitchell. But Carey was Mitchell's Northern Pacific Railroad manager in politics. And Mitchell and Tanner were Benson's attorneys. A settlement was arranged, therefore, in the interest of graft. The territory was divided. Since Benson had a use in California for the Oregon Senator's influence at Washington, he agreed to keep out of Oregon. He and Hyde were to have the Federal land-graft in their own state and that of Oregon was to be left to the Oregon grafters. And, as a token o€ good will, Hyde and Benson and Schneider explained their improved method of forging fictitious names to claims. That's how the people of Oregon lost their share of the land-graft of Oregon.
This established Burns's theory of parallels between states, and following it, Heney went next after Ormsby, the ex-Superintendent of Forests, who reported to Washington the recommendations for forest reserves. If Oregon was like California, the land grafters drew the maps and bribed the Forest Superintendent to send them on. Burns used the fear of Heney on Ormsby to make him "come through," and, sure enough, the old man confessed that he got from Pierce Mays the map of the Blue Mountain Reserve. Nor was that all. This map was made in the Land Office at Portland, with the Land Commissioner, Binger Herrman, out on one of his vacations, looking it over with Mays.
Here at last was Binger Herrman, the sly, whom Burns had failed to get in California. And they had also Mays, a state legislator and a railroad attorney, and Ormsby, a bribed Superintendent of Forests. A Congressman turned up next. Col. Greene, seeing his friend Hall out of power, went to Heney one day with a tip that a certain Special Agent, Thomas B. Neuhausen, could "deliver" Congressman Williamson. This was a bad introduction for Neuhausen, but when he appeared, young, clean, keen and jolly, Heney took a fancy to him. Neuhausen did have a case on Williamson. The Congressman had "got
