ville, and they all had to be returned, as. we had corralled everything in sight. As soon as I got back to Portland, Mr. Thorson paid me my commission of 50 cents an acre on the 20,000 acres, and later the lands were patented to the Manestee Lumber Co.
It all goes to show that Uncle Sam was a big loser by the operation, as under the timber and stone act the Government would have received $2.50 an acre for the land, or practically $50,000, while under the act of June 4, 1897, it got nothing except an equivalent area in the San Francisco Mountain Forest Reserve, of slight intrinsic value.
Had the original plan terminated in success, my profits on this one deal would have probably exceeded $25,000. Mays also would have come in for a goodly share of the proceeds by reason of his services in expediting the patents, as it will be remembered he was to receive one-half the $150 location fee, or a total of $8,100 for the 108 claims. No doubt he would have retained the lion's share of this amount, as that was second nature with him, although he doubtless would have been obliged to let go of some of it as a lubricant for the machinery at Washington for grinding out the land patents.
Although I netted about $7,500 by the transaction, I stood to lose at least $2,000 on account of the death of Mr. Bradley, my first financial backer. Had I not met with so much bad fortune, there is hardly any doubt that Mays' scheme, as originally planned, would have been carried out to the letter, and title to the entire tract, under the Timber and Stone act, would have been procured, and, so far as the Government was concerned, it would have been an utter impossibility to have secured convictions for conspiracy or any other criminal charge. My object in mentioning this is merely to show what an easy matter it would have been to defraud the Government out of this tract of timber, and at the same time avoid any possible chance of prosecution, either against those who made the filings, the purchasers of the lands from the original entrymen, or myself.
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