f 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.

Believing that the preemption policy--so deliberately adopted, so long
practiced, so carefully guarded with a view to the disposal of the
public lands in a manner that would promote the population and
prosperity of the country--should not be perverted to the purposes
contemplated by this bill, I would be constrained to withhold my
sanction even if this company were, as natural persons, entitled to the
privileges of ordinary preemptors; for if a corporation, as the name and
the absence of any designation of individuals would denote, the measure
before me is liable to another fatal objection.

Why should incorporated companies have the privileges of individual
preemptors? What principle of justice requires such a policy? What
motive of public welfare can fail to condemn it? Lands held by
corp