report to Congress revealing the flagrant violations of the Act, whereupon Congress passed an Act authorizing the Attorney General to commence suit against the company to recover all of the unsold land remaining in the grant.
The outcome of the case was that the land grant was forfeited by the railroad and returned to the United States. The case was a sensational one. Clearly the railroad had violated the terms of the grant. They had neither limited the price of the land to $2.50 per acre nor sold it in small lots, yet for all that for eight years the case was in the courts. Never before has so much testimony been presented to any court as was presented to the Supreme Court in 1915—seventeen volumes of testimony!
The grounds upon which the railroad sought to hold its rights were that Congress had not the right to enact the restrictive clause of April 10, 1869, which limited the sales price of the land to $2.50 per acre. In addition to this, they claimed that the government had known what was going on all the time and had even given its sanction to some of their dealings and that, admitting they had violated the terms of the grant and the government's right to legislate, the contracts were not enforceable. Both the Circuit Court and the Supreme Court, however, held that the contracts were enforceable.
The question was finally settled by an Act of Congress passed June 9, 1916. By this Act the title of the unsold land reverted to Congress, but granted to the railroad company for the land thus appropriated $2.50 an acre, the sum allowed them in the Act of Congress, April 10, 1869. The Secretary of Interior was to determine the amount of land already patented by the company and that to which they would rightfully have claim and pay the company from the proceeds of the sales of the land the $2.50 per acre. Thus Congress fulfilled the wishes
