many cases interest due to the trust funds was not paid when due, because of ignorance or accident, and he recommended therefore that purchasers of lands who failed to pay their interest when due be protected by the granting of a reasonable equity of redemption when such lands had been entered by other persons and that the time for redemption after the advertising of the lands for resale be extended.62 The law enacted in this year provided that lands that had been forfeited for three months be advertised for sale, but that the sale should not take place less than three months nor more than six months after the advertisement appeared. This law was extended in 1862 to apply to swamp as well as to school and university lands.63 A law of the same year, 1862, declared that no land mortgaged to the state by a union soldier or non-commissioned officer was to be sold prior to three months after his discharge. Any soldier or non-commissioned officer, his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns might within three months after his discharge or the close of the war redeemed land mortgaged to secure a loan from the state or any lands held on certificate and forfeited, by paying the interest due from January 1, 1861. This law applied only to volunteers; two years later it was extended to apply to drafted men also.64 In 1872 it was enacted that lands held on certificates which lands had been sold because of non-payment of taxes or of interest might be redeemed at any time within ninety days of the date of sale, provided that the former owner could show that at the time of sale the land was under cultivation in whole or in part or adjoined and was being used in connection with other cultivated land owned by him. The redemptioner was obliged to pay to the state treasurer for the benefit of the purchaser the amount paid for the land at its resale, "with twenty-five per cent of the amount paid for taxes, interest, and costs." No patent to such lands was issuable until the ninety days had expired. Later the law was made less liberal toward the redemptioner. deem his land at any time before its sale by paying the interest Governor's Message 1855, 9. 3 Laws of 1855, ch. 22; Laws of 1862, ch. 129. General Laws 1862, ch. 131. He might re due, taxes unpaid, cost occasioned by his delay in paying and damages amounting to three per cent of the whole sum owed for the land. In 1889 it was provided that redemption might be made at any time within five days of the sale. 65 The wasteful and often shamelessly corrupt management of Wisconsin's public lands illustrates two very important principles of public financial administration; first, it is folly to economize unduly in the management of great public interests, and second, laws will not execute themselves. The framers of the Wisconsin Constitution provided for a false economy in the management of the state lands when they placed the responsibility for that management in the hands of officers whose other duties took first place, instead of establishing or providing for the establishment of a well organized department for the management of that splendid source of wealth bestowed upon the state by the National Government. The legislature enacted many land laws that were excellent in themselves, but which failed to accomplish their ends or did so only in a minor degree, because good and efficient administrative machinery for their enforcement was lacking. The problem was by no means an easy one, but the way in which its public lands and its trust funds have been managed should be a source of regret and of shame to the great state of Wisconsin. 483. Laws of 1872, ch. 133. Revised Statutes 1878, Sec. 225. Laws of 1889, ch. CHAPTER VI FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION I. THE FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE DEPARTMENTS The first systematic and thorough investigation of the State Departments was made in 1856. In the chapter on the Administration of the Trust Funds are given the results of that investigation and of others in so far as they had to do with the school land office. In 1855 numerous persons complained that they could not get their claims against the state satisfied. When at the end of that year State Treasurer Janssen retired from office, it was rumored that he was short in his accounts, and such was indeed the case. Accordingly, an investigation of his office and of the other state offices was undertaken by a select joint committee of the legislature. This committee found that the books in the office of the Treasurer and in the School Land Office had been kept in a loose and careless manner, in a way totally devoid of system. In the school land office the books were disfigured and defaced by erasures of names and figures and by the substitution of other names and figures with interpolations, remarks, and alterations, thus making it impossible to ascertain original entries, dates, or the amount of principal and interest originally paid. The entries in the treasurer's office presented no regular succession of dates; his vouchers were in a confused mass; many were missing; many offered no evidence of the payment of money to any one.1 In several instances money had been drawn from the treasury without authority of law. State officers and 1 Report of Joint Select Committee 1856, 4 in Wisconsin Miscellaneous Pamphlets, XXVIII. clerks anticipated their salaries, leaving only a slip of paper marked "good for so many dollars." Sums were paid to persons who merely expected appropriations in their favor.2 Beriah Brown was paid $3,000 before any appropriation to him had been made. In some cases there had been double payments.3 Payments on the sales books of the land office to the amount of $5,900.61 did not appear on the Treasurer's books. Payments on land certificates that could not be found on the Treasurer's books amounted to $16,245.94. Payments on loans to the amount of $575 had not been entered in the books of the Treasurer.* Testimony was giver showing that while Treasurer Janssen was absent from Madison, Seaver, his deputy, was grossly inattentive to his duties. He was frequently found intoxicated in his office with the vaults open. Persons not connected with the office were sometimes with him. On two occasions he opened the vault at night. At another time he and another man both intoxicated were discovered in the vault looking at the money. Liquor was kept in the vault. One night, on which Seaver went into the vault, he lost several hundred dollars at a gaming table in Madison. All these things were well known about the capitol at the time. There was manifested at the time considerable disposition to excuse Janssen, at least in part. The Appleton Crescent said, "No one who knows him regards him as a willful plunderer. He left his official matters-that sacred school fund-in the hands of harpies, political adventurers, mere speculators and spendthrifts. He must suffer the consequences of an overweaning confidence in the rotten-hearted men who were washed to the surface by the waves of ill-directed political sentiment."" In the legislature, Mr. Noggle declared that Janssen had been the victim and tool of the most infamous set of scoundrels that ever got into office. There were some, however, who were dis 2 Ibid. 6, 7. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 99, 162. Quoted in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 19, 1856. • Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 21, 1856. inclined to believe that Janssen had been a mere tool. It was said that he had been nominated for the office of treasurer not because of any special fitness for the place, but merely in order to catch the German vote, without which "Sham Democracy" in Wisconsin was a mere ghost of a party. In 1857 Janssen petitioned the legislature asking that his liabilities to the state be canceled. He affirmed that he had gone out of office no better off than when he entered office, that the deficit* in the treasury arose from carelessness in bookkeeping and the dishonesty of his assistants and others who had access to the vaults, that he was obliged to leave the business of his office to his assistants during a considerable time because of private misfortunes, the burning of his house and of one of his children, and the death in rapid succession from cholera of his brother, his father-in-law and three of his children, that under the circumstances he would have resigned his office if he had not thought that the Governor would have demanded from the Treasurer's office the quarterly reports required by law. He affirmed further that not a cent of the deficit had been appropriated to his own use or to the use of any other person through him and that he was not guilty of gambling or speculating. The Milwaukee Sentinel asked whether the interests of the public demanded that Janssen be made the victim of his political friends whom he had trusted and be stripped of his little property or whether the state should charge the deficit to profit and loss and thank Heaven that it had gotten rid of the "Forty Thieves" with no greater loss. However, as is shown in the chapter on the Administration of the Trust Funds, the "Forty Thieves" cost the state much more than Janssen's deficit. After much debate and much amending and referring and re-referring to committees, the assembly by a vote of 46 to 41 passed a bill to discontinue temporarily the suit against Janssen and his sureties and directing the Governor to settle with the sureties if a settlement could be made on favorable terms. In the Senate after 7 Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 20, 1857. The deficit was $34,973.95, Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 16, 1856; later it was reduced to $31,318.54, Secretary of State's Report, 1858, 132. • Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 10, 1857. |