Under the laws of 1895, 1897, and 1901 the lessee had at the expiration of his lease a, prior right to purchase as a settler the land which he had leased. This gave lessees an advantage over others, and it was often abused so as to force homeseekers to pay a bonus to speculating lessees or to other speculators who had inside information as to the time leases expired. Even some lessees who were ignorant of the time their leases expired were compelled to pay large bonuses to the members of the courthouse rings, or to the lawyers and land agents who infested the Panhandle and West Texas and who were ever on the alert to file on land which was coming on the market. The competition to file on land which was coming on the market was so keen that violence and bloodshed resulted in some cases. So acute for a time was the danger of trouble and so farcical was the opportunity for the peaceful homeseeker to secure land that the legislature in 1903 suspended for ninety days the privilege of filing on lands which were coming on the market through the expiration of leases.1 There was no revision of the law, however, until 1905.

In the revision of 1905 the very important innovation was made of requiring that school and asylum lands under lease should be widely advertised before they became subject to sale, that written bids for the purchase of the land should be submitted to the commissioner of the general land office, and that the land should be sold to the highest competitive bidder, provided that the price bid should not be less than the appraised value fixed by the commissioner.2 Unsurveyed vacant school lands of which there was no record on the official maps of the land office, unsurveyed swamp lands, and unsurveyed vacant tracts of between 80 and 640 acres of which there was a record on the official maps but which were entirely surrounded by valid surveys, could be purchased for cash or on forty years time and five per cent interest, and without the conditions of residence and improvements upon the land which were imposed upon purchasers of other lands. Unsurveyed tracts of 80 acres or less could be purchased only for cash. The maximum amount of land which could be purchased by a person remained four sections, including former purchases, except that eight sections in the extreme western counties could be purchased.

1 Laws of 1903, p. 242. 2Laws of 1905, p. 159.

Land which was not in demand for settlement could be leased, and the original lessee or assignee was given the preference in securing another lease, provided he paid the highest bid which could not be less than three cents an acre. Original lessees or the assignees of leases were given the preference in buying land out of their leased land, though this privilege was limited to the existing leaseholders or their assignees. This preference privilege was abused by cattlemen who because they were not permitted by Jaw to purchase for themselves as much land as they wanted first assigned their leases to their sons and daughters and employees who fulfilled the conditions of purchase and then sold to the former lessees - the cattlemen. This practice tended to defeat the settlement purpose of the law.1 Amendments to the law which were made in 1907 were intended to minimize the possibility of abuses arising under the law. The amendments of 1907, 1913, and 1915 modified a lessee's privilege to purchase out of his lease, defined anew the conditions as to settlement, provided in the case of some lands for purchase without settlement, and limited the privilege of transferring land which had been bought on condition of settlement.2 b. Timber Lands and Timber.

Texas is one of the principal yellow pine lumber states, and the timber lands which are the source of supply of this valuable product were not so very long ago a part of the public domain. The history of the timber lands up to 1880 shows that a very loose policy was pursued by the state. Through fraudulent classification or through careless valuation the lands were sold for less than their value, and wholesale theft of timber went on unchecked.1

1 Land Office Report, 1907-8.

2 Laws of 1907, Called Sess., p. 490. Laws of 1909, Second Called Sess., p. 429. Rev. Civil Stats., 1911, arts. 5405-5459. Laws of 1911, Reg. Sess., p. 154. Laws of 1913, Reg. Sess., p. 336. Laws of 1915, Reg. Sess., p. 256.

The legislation of 1879 with respect to timber lands was very loose. The only reference to them in the act of 1879 providing for the sale of the school lands was to prohibit the cutting of the timber until the purchase price of the land had been paid in full. The law stated no limit to the amount of timbered land which one person could purchase, and prescribed no other minimum value than the one dollar an acre for school land in general.2 The glaring defects of this legislation were that valuation was left to the county officials, that there was no adequate minimum value fixed, and that it was permitted to purchase timbered lands on credit. The legislation of 1881 did nothing towards correcting these defects, except that it authorized the commissioner of the general land office to approve or disapprove the values put upon land by the surveyor and county commissioners.3 The commissioner of the general land office said in his report of 1882 that "in most of the counties the surveyor and county commissioners have declined to increase the valuations, and in others the increase did not meet my expectations, and the result is that this wealth of pine remains the property of the common schools, and awaits the further action of the legislature."