The timber is not protected, but, on the contrary, is devoted to speedy destruction; for even before the consummation of title the company are allowed to consume whatever may be necessary in the erection of buildings and the business of manufacturing iron.  For these special privileges, in contravention of the land policy of so many years, the company are required to pay only the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, or one-sixteenth of the established minimum, and are granted a credit of two years, or twice the time allowed ordinary preemptors on offered lands.

Nor is this all.  The preemption right in question covers three sections of land containing iron ore and coal.  The act passed on the 1st of July, 1864, made it lawful for the President to cause tracts embracing coal beds or coal fields to be offered at public sale in suitable legal subdivisions to the highest bidder, after public notice of not less than three months, at a minimum price of $20 per acre, and any lands not thus disposed of were thereafter to be liable to private entry at said minimum.  By the act of March 3, 1865, the right of preemption to coal lands is granted to any citizen of the United States who at that date was engaged in the business of coal mining on the public domain for purposes of commerce; and he is authorized to enter, according to legal subdivisions, at the minimum price of $20 per acre, a quantity of land not exceeding 160 acres, to embrace his improvements and mining premises.  Under these acts the minimum price of three sections of coal lands would be thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars ($38,400).

By the bill now in question these sections containing coal and iron are bestowed on this company at the nominal price of $1.25 per acre, or two thousand four hundred dollars ($2,400), thus making a gratuity or gift to the New York and Montana Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company of thirty-six thousand dollars ($36,000).

On what ground can such a gratuity to this company be justified, especially at a time when the burdens of taxation bear so heavily upon all classes of the people?

Less than two years ago it appears to have been the deliberate judgment of Congress that tracts of land containing coal beds or coal fields should be sold, after three months’ notice, to the bidder at public auction who would give the highest price over $20 per acre, and that a citizen engaged in the business of actual coal mining on the public domain should only secure a tract of 160 acres, at private entry, upon payment of $20 per acre and formal and satisfactory proof that he in all respects came within the requirements of the statute.  It can not be that the coal fields of Montana have depreciated nearly twenty fold in value since July, 1864.  So complete a revolution in the land policy as is manifested by this act can only be ascribed, therefore, to an inadvertence, which Congress will, I trust, promptly correct.