the public domain covered a period of more than 20 years, while all that Burke did not know about Land Office records would make a book of such huge proportions that this volume would resemble a vest pocket edition of a postage stamp in comparison. And yet, he had the audacity to say in his report to the Commissioner of the General Land Office that my charges were based upon personal prejudice against the Land Office officials.
Before he left for Marysville I had given him a written memoranda at his request, telling him where he could find each book bearing upon my charges, but if he ever went near the office he certainly made no personal examination for the simple reason that it would have been a physical and mental impossibility for him to have done so in the limited time he took from his turkey.
So far as any prejudice against the Land Officials is concerned, I never met any of them prior to my inspection, and the only acquaintance I had there was with Attorney Charles E. Swezy, hitherto referred to, who had been associated with me at Bakersfield, Cal., in the fight against the oil men, and had 1 been inclined to favor anybody it most certainly would have been one with whom I had long been on terms of intimate friendship.
Commissioner Hermann sustained Inspector Burke in his report, and then the officers of the State Mining Bureau got exceedingly busy. Most of them had personal knowledge that my charges were true, and President William C. Ralston, of that institution, declared war on the whitewashing policy of the Land Department. He went to Washington forthwith, and, accompanied by United States Senator George C. Perkins, of California, called upon Commissioner Hermann, and endeavored to dissuade him from perpetrating a wrong by upholding Burke's false findings.
They received a most frigid reception from Hermann, so it is said, and in view of subsequent events connecting the ex-Land Commissioner with Oregon indictments for complicity in the frauds, the action of Hermann is not at all surprising. It would never do to let the light of day shine on any transaction where he was liable to be concerned, and so the head of the public land service sought in every way possible to stave off what he must have then realized was the judgment day. That accounts for his motive in frowning on every effort to probe for the facts.
He reckoned without his host, however, in his dealings with Ralston. That individual, famed for his aggressive spirit, was all the more determined to sift the matter to the bottom, with the result that he succeeded in interesting President Roosevelt upon the subject. In response to the Chief Executive's direction. Secretary Hitchcock dispatched S. G. Ruby, Special Inspector of the Interior Department, and a man in whom he had the most implicit confidence, to the scene, and, after making a thorough investigation, Mr. Ruby sustained me in every particular.
One of the fruits of Ruby's report was the enforced retirement of F. E. Johnson as Register of the Marysville Land Office as soon as his term of office expired a short time after these occurrences; and the following Associated Press dispatch, taken from the San Francisco Bulletin of November 11, 1903. tells its own story as to what happened to Burke:
LAND AGENT BURKE IS ALLOWED TO RESIGN.
Secretary of the Interior Was Dissatisfied With the Work Done in the Marysville Land Fraud Cases.
Washington, Nov. 11.—The Secretary of the Interior today accepted the resignation of Andrew H. Burke, a former Governor of North Dakota, who went to California some months ago under appointment of the then Land Commissioner Hermann to investigate the alleged land frauds in the Marysville district. It was said at the Interior Department that Mr. Burke would have been removed had he not resigned. The reason is that Secretary Hitchcock was dissatisfied with the report Burke made of theinvesti-
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