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SERIES NINETEEN

LECTURES ONE HUNDRED AND ONE TO ONE HUNDRED
AND THIRTEEN

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THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER I.

1865-1912.

THE PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM.

The transformation wrought by westward immigration since Civil War - Ending of the public sales period in 1841 The Homestead Law - The Timber Culture Act Land entries to 1908 - Area of public domain

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in 1900- Average acreage of farms - Tendency toward individual ownership of small holdings.

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URING the four and a half decades after the Civil War, the disposition of the public lands proceeded more rapidly and more systematically than ever before. An increasing population spread over the entire West and Alaska, and more land was taken up than in the preceding 80 years of the Republic. The laws which mostly affected the public domain subsequent to the ordinance of 1783 were enacted after 1860 and operated to transform what was once a vast desert territory into a land of cities and towns, flourishing farms, rich mining districts and seats of manufacturing industries. That is the one overwhelming fact in the land history of the country in this period.

In the first 60 years of the land policy of the United States the settlement motive gradually superseded the financial motive which at first controlled the disposition of the public domain. Various laws were passed

between 1800 and 1860, but most of these were of transitory character. All were based upon the idea of sales, by which the Government should draw money into the Treasury. The first plan of selling on credit was not successful, and the cash system adopted in 1821 resulted in wild land speculation and little actual settlement. The preëmption act of 1841 marked the end of the public sales period. Thereafter the land was in theory open to actual settlers only, at a minimum of $1.25 per acre, and under this system there was a steady and healthful progress in sales and settlements for 20 years.

The very considerable failure of these early laws to accomplish all that was desired in the making over of this new territory, provoked constant agitation in Congress for more than a quarter of a century prior to the Civil War. As early as 1852 the project of a homestead law was agitated and

shortly became a question of National Land Act accomplished the ends for

politics. The Free Soil Democracy made that one of its leading political principles. For eight years legislation to this end was bandied about from one branch of Congress to the other, but not before 1860 was a homestead bill actually passed, and then only to be vetoed by President Buchanan.

In 1862 the Homestead Law was finally adopted. Under this law any actual settler could secure a section of 160 acres for nothing, provided only he should live upon and cultivate the land. This principle of dividing and distributing the land free of cost in order to promote general settlement has been adhered to as a definite governmental policy ever since. Its success in populating and developing a domain of princely proportions and in contributing to enrich and strengthen the Nation, despite failures and abuses that have been connected with it, has far exceeded the most extravagant prophecies made concerning its probable effects.

From 1863 to 1891 the Timber Culture Act was in effect. This measure provided specifically for the planting and cultivating of timber as a method of acquiring individual ownership of land sections. In 1873 a Desert Land Act was passed by Congress. This had liberal provisions intended to encourage the taking up of large tracks of undesirable land requiring irrigation to make them productive. Neither the Timber Culture Act nor the Desert

which they were designed, being among the many causes of the land frauds so conspicuous in this period. Laws existing in the opening decade of the Twentieth century for the sale and disposition of the public domains permitted entries and locations by individuals, associations and corporations. Several classes of land were recognized, as follows: mineral, timber and stone, saline, town-site, desert, coal, and agricultural. In this period contention became rife over the mineral, coal and timber lands, and their preservation in the interests of the general public was a problem that loomed large in the administrations of Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, who would keep them from the hands of promoters and corporations.

Land entries in acres to the close of the fiscal year June 30, 1908, were: homestead, 11,424,828; timber and stone, 11,832,131; desert, 4,869,368; coal, 474,834. The acreage set apart from National forests was 167,974,886. The unappropriated acreage was 754,895,296, and there were 655,040,084 acres of unsurveyed lands. In the two decades 1890-1910 the public lands continued to be taken up rapidly. In 1890 there remained unappropriated and unsurveyed 955,746,461 acres, which in 1910 had been reduced to 711,986,409. This area was largely in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. More than one-half of it, 368,014,735

THE PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM.

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acres, was in Alaska. It is interesting to note that some of it still remains in a few of the older States Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Mississippi and Louisiana. Land offices are established in 28 States and Territories.

The total area of the public domain in 1900, grouped in five divisions and expressed in square miles, was: North Atlantic, 162,103; South Atlantic, 268,620; North Central, 753,550; South Central, 610,215; Western, 1,125,742. In the same year the farm acreage, improved and unimproved, in these five sections was, respectively, 65,409,089, 104,297,501, 317,349,474, 257,738,845 and 93,796,860; total, 838,591,774. In preceding decades the farm acreage, improved and unimproved, was: 1850, 293,560,614; 1860, 407,212,538; 1870, 407,735,041; 1880, 536,081,835; 1890, 623,218,619. During this halfcentury (1850-1900) the improved acreage showed a large and steady increase, from 113,032,614 acres in 1850 to 414,793,191 acres in 1900. In the North Central section there was the greatest advance in improved farm acreage, due in large measure to the phenomenal agricultural development of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and neighboring States.

From 1850 to 1900 there was an almost regular decrease, decade by decade, in the average size of farms. In 1900 the average acreage of farms in the different sections was: North Atlantic, 96; South Atlantic, 108; North Central, 144; South Central,

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105; Western, 386. 105; Western, 386. This record is especially interesting as an illustration of the gradual breaking up of large estates into small holdings. In the East this began early in the Eighteenth century, when the feudal properties and large land patents of thousands of acres were disintegrated and came into the hands of many small owners. In the South and the West, owing to the abundance of land in proportion to the population, the movement was later in starting, but it came inevitably with the increase in population. In the North Central and the Western regions the larger farm acre average remained in 1900 what it was in 1850.

The acreage of the Western farms was double and treble that of other sections, and yet it was much smaller than in the years immediately following the Civil War. In the latter period came the great grazing ranches, thousands of acres in extent, and the attempts of the cattle and sheep men to fence in tracts of land equal to small States. For at least two decades there was a steady warfare between the herdsmen on the one side and the Government, State and National, and the public on the other, in regard to this monopolizing of the public domain; the question of ownership by alien landlords entered considerably into the consideration of the subject. At the end of the first decade of the Twentieth century large ranches were still in existence. Many of them have since disappeared, however, and the

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