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THE POLICY
"r( / f-s /
Railroad Land Grants.
A LECTURE DELIVERED BY E. T. PETERS,
BEFORE
THE PRE-EMPTORS' UNION,
IN
METZEROTT HALL, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
ON
WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL 27th, 1870.
If we would create a society composed of overbearing landlords on the one hand and
pendent tenants or oppressed laborers on the other, let us freely dispose of our public
nd to monopolies ; but if we desire that the masses who are to till the soil shall be a
■,e yeomanry, owning the land they cultivate, let us part with it only in small tracts
actual settlers.
THE POLICY
OF
RAILROAD LAND GRANTS
"Business before pleasure," is a maxim
of some age and respectability. I ear¬
nestly hope it is in favor with my pres¬
ent auditors, for I am about to ask your
attention to a matter which is in a most
important, practical, and literal sense
the business of every American citizen.
I do not expect to amuse you; I shall
not even attempt to entertain you; but
the facts which I have to present have
so direct and vital a bearing upon the
well-being of the whole nation, includ¬
ing yourselves as individual citizens,
that, however dry they may be, however
unsuitable they may seem for a popular
lecture, I shall nevertheless expect you
to follow me, not merely with attention,
but with lively interest. I do not pre¬
tend to krvrw anything as to the pecu¬
niary circumstances of any one of you,
but I may truthfully assert that the
least affluent among you is the owner of
a certain amount of real estate. Not to
mystify you as to my meaning, let me
say at once that 1 refer to the share
which each of you owns in the public
domain. Let no one be too much elated,
and imagine himself at once a rich
landowner, for there are over forty mil¬
lions of us in all, and if we should con¬
clude now to divide the whole estate
which #e at present own in common
into forty million equal shares, taking
in good land and bad, valuable and
valueless, we should only get about thirty
acres apiece.
Now thirty acres is more or less valu¬
able, according to the standpoint from
which it is viewed.
1 To the English nobleman, with his fifty
(fertile farms, or the American railroad
company, with its land grant equal to
'two or three good-sized States, thirty
acres seems a mere speck of dust in the
scale—(yet I may say parenthetically
that when it comes to parting with thirty
acres it seems sufficiently valuable even
to them.) But to the indigent laborer,
inhabiting an attic or a cellar in a great
city, working for a pittance, when he
lias work to do, and often lacking even
this; engaged without ceasing in fighting
off the grim specter of starvation from
his wife aud little ones; to him who
knows what it is to look at a ten cen
piece as the slender barrier between him
and a day's fasting, and to rake up his
last coppers for the purchase of a few
sticks of fuel ; who often sees his chil¬
dren hungry and shivering for the want
of even those few cents ; to him thirty-
acres seems a vast estate. It means
comfort, decency, food, clothing, educa¬
tion for his children, respectability, so¬
ciety, and the power to hold up his heaa
among men—everything in short which
makes life desirable. And so wide and
impassable is the gulf which separates
him from it, that he looks upon its for¬
tunate possessor with the despair of
Dives looking from the bottomless pit at
Lazarus in Heaven.
Therefore, since thirty acres may be so
much to millions of our people, I shall
not quarrel with you if you insist ppon
regarding it as a highly valuable inheri¬
tance.
Indeed, it is because I believe most of
you, in common with the people gene¬
rally, underestimate your share in the
national estate that I am speaking to
you at this moment.
I judge this from the extreme liberal¬
ity,'or rather the prodigality, with which,
through the agency of the Government,
you are giving it away. Already you
have given away, to railroads alone,
more than 182,000,000 acres, which is
about four and a half acres apiece, or
more than one-seventh as much as your
entire remaining share in the public do¬
main. It will be well, also, to reflect
that this 182,000,000 acres is an area more
than seven times as large as the great
State of Ohio, and if settled as densely as
that State, would accommodate a popula¬
tion of fifteen or twenty millions. More¬
over, 124,000,000 acres of this amount, or
over two-thirds of the whole, has been
presented to the various Pacific Railroad
companies within the last six years, and
it was only on Thursday last that the
Senate passed a bill granting additional
lauds to the Northern Pacific company,
a corporation to which had already been
given the alternate sections in a belt of
land, eighty miles wide, extending from
the western boundary of Minnesota to
Pu get's Sound, in Washington Terri-
tory, and a belt forty miles wide, within
the State of Minnesota, from Lake Su¬
perior westward.
This donation comprises some 47,-
000,000 acres, or about 16,000 square
miles more than the entire area of Eng¬
land and Wales—a zone embracing the
finest lands between the Mississippi and
the Pacific, and having a very small pro¬
portion of waste surface.
Such liberality—that is the name by
which many of the newspapers call it—
such liberality on the part of the Gov¬
ernment seems almost incredible; but I
assure you there is no mistake about the
figures, for they are taken from the offi¬
cial records. Nor does it seem that this
"liberality" is likely to stop here. It is es¬
timated that the land-grant bills, intro¬
duced during the present Congress, pro¬
pose to give away some 150,000,000 acres,
and a correspondent of the New York
Tribune, writin g from this city in Decem¬
ber last, estimated tbe afnount to be
given away, by bills then pending, at
upwards of 248,000,000.
It would seem, therefore, that Senator
Thurpaan's statement on Monday, the
11th instant, in the debate on the North¬
ern Pacific railroad bill, to ttie effect
that bills are now pending proposing to
donate nearly 400,000,000 acres to rail¬
road and other companies, was not very
wide of the truth.
Of course it is not to be supposed that
all these bills will be enacted into laws;
but many of them will be supported by
a very strong outside pressure, and to
judge by past experience, it is quite
probable that a very large number ot'
them will pass, unless we and the people
generally indicate to Congress in some
way that we do not approve of quite
so much generosity. Beside?, we may
expect to see an indefinite number of
new applications each year, for each new
grant is used by other applicants as a
precedent whereon to base claims for
similar favors. ■ .
In answer to all objections t,<3 these
immense grants, it is customary to dilate
upon the vast importance of railroads as
a means of promoting the growth and
prosperity of the country. Says Senator
Stewart, in his report accompanying the
Northern Pacific railroad bill, "The
highways of nations are the measure of
their civilization." Now, no one doubts
tbe utility of railroads in general. But
when we are asked to subsidize a par¬
ticular enterprise, the question for con¬
sideration is, the plain business question
which enters into all exchanges—a ques¬
tion of relative value, viz: will the bene¬
fits derived by the nation from the rail¬
road, for the building of which its as¬
sistance is solicited, be worth the subsi-
— • —
dy it is asked to grant? In answer
to this question I confidently assert:
1st. That the advantages to be derived
by the pation are usually greatly over¬
estimated, the mass of the benefits gen¬
erally accruing to a small number of in¬
dividuals, and that neither directly nor
indirectly does the nation as a whole de¬
rive anything like the amountof advant¬
age represented by the advocates of sub¬
sidies.
2d. That the lands granted are rated
far below their real value.
3d. That the ability of the Government
to make such enormous grants, as have
lately been the fashion, is grossly exag¬
gerated, the amount of our territory
which is available for occupancy and
cultivation being scarcely half as large
as is popularly supposed.
Without taking up these propositions
seriatim, I hope to succeed in making it
quite apparent that they are all true.
Beginning with the last,let me illustrate
the manner in which the public mind is
led astray'upon this point by reading a
. brief extract from an editorial published
in a leadingNew York paper some weeks
ago.
After dilating at sbme length and in
highly grandiloquent strain upon the
great results brought about by land sub¬
sidies to railroads, the writer proceeds:
"And yet this more than reyal bounty
of the Government has not'destroyed
the public domain thus given; hut, like
the spared books of the Sybil, the re¬
maining public domain, by this liberal
policy of giving away, has become more
valuable than the whole was before.
"As before shown, we had, on the 30th
June, 1868, about 1,400,000,000 acres un¬
sold. How insignificant, in view of this
imperial domain, are the 100,000,000 acres
granted in aid of other great lines of rail¬
ways and canals needed for the full de¬
velopment of our immense natural re¬
sources, and for the establishment of
lines of iron steamships that shall make
our commerce whiten every sea, and the
power and enterprise of the, United
States be acknowledged in every part ot'
the world."
All this sounds very fine and plausible,
but let us now inquire as to the facts;
and, first, as to the actual exteht of the
public lands and- the proportion thereof
available for use. The States and Te i-
ritories carved out of the public domain
are as follows:
1. All those between the Mississippi
river and the Pacific, except Texas,
which is proprietress of her own public
lands.
2. The five States included between
the forks of the Ohio and Mississippi
and tbe lakes, viz: Michigan, Wisconsin,
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
3.-"Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.
4. Alaska.
The aggregate area of these States and
Territories is nearly 1,835.000,000 acres,
almost all of which was a wilderness up
to the beginning of the present century.
Out of this .the amount disposed of up
to the 30th of June last is stated by the
Commissioner of the General Land Of¬
fice at a little less than 439,000,000 acres.
This, however, includes only those por¬
tions of land grants to railroads for which
patents have been issued, amounting to
something over twenty-two million acres ;
whereas we have seen that the Commis¬
sioner states the amount granted up to
the same date at more than one hundred
and eighty-two million acres. This gives
us very nearly one hundred and sixty
million acres more to add to the amount
disposed of, making a total of about
593,509,000 acres, and leaving in the pos¬
session of the Government a little over
1,' 230,000,000.
This is unquestionably a magnificent
estate; but is it as fine or as large as it
seems? In considering this question We
must have regard to quality as well as
to quantity.
It must be remembered first that the
part of our territory already taken up
embraces the finest portion of the conti¬
nent, whether considered with reference
to the general fertility of its soil, its rare
climatic advantages, its unequaled in¬
land navigation by lake and river, its
admirable distribution of timber and
prairie on the surface and of minerals
beneath, or the great variety of its
adaptations for the development of a di¬
versified and prosperous industry.
Now whatof the 1,236,000,000 of acres
which remain?
This territory certainly embraces vast
tracts of country rich in all natural
resources, and capable of supporting an
immense population. But what else does
it embrace ?
First. It embraces Alaska, with an
area exceeding 369,000,900 acres.
I do not wish to disparage this terri¬
tory, but we know that it is rather
iurther" north than comports with our
ideas of a comfortable and desirable
climate. Few of us 1 fancy would care
to locate a homestead there, nor do I
bear of any railroad companies soliciting
land grants within'its limits.
Second. This 1,236,000,000 acres com¬
prises all the waste land of the Rocky
Mountain chain, extending upwards of
a thousand miles jn length and several
hundred miles in breadth, the Sierra Ne-
vadas in California, the Cascade, Coast,
and Blue Mountains of Oregon and)
Washington, and the various arid andi
desert tracts of the intra and sub-mon-
taue regions, together with a considéra-'
ble quantity of land in the older States
which lias been passed over by the settler
as comparatively worthless.
Third. It comprises the entire water
surface embraced within the limits of all
the public land States and Territories,
including lakes, rivers, bayous, &c.
Beginning with the Rocky Mountain
region, we find that, together with the
Great Interior Basin, also mountainous,
lying between this range and the Sierra
Névadas, it includesthe State of Nevada
and the Territories of Idaho, Montana,
Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico,
and Arizona, having an aggregate area of
over five hundred and fifty-five million
acres. This region embraces many large
and fertile valleys; the beautiful parks
of Colorado, the intra-montane basins
of Montana, and numerous extensive
table lands or plains well adapted for
grazing. But it is, nevertheless, consid¬
ered as a whole, a region broken up
throughout by mountain ridges, and of
the portions that are not mountainous,
immense tracts are described as un¬
fitted for agriculture, and suited only
for grazing purposes ; while, owing to
the aridity of the climate, irrigation
is more or less essential in every one of
the territories above named, and more
especially in those lying further south.
However fertile the soil, this necessity
for irrigation detracts immensely from
the value of the land. Moreover, there
are extensive regions in which irrigation
will.only be possible through the aid of
artesian wells, in which case it is evident
the lands can only be made available
through a large expenditure of capital.
It is easy to see that the possession of a
few score millions of acres of such land
would afford no reason for recklessly
giving away an equal quantity of choice
agricultural land in a more favored re¬
gion.
[Detailed estimates, based chiefly upon
the last report of the Commissioner of
the General Land Office, were here
given, showing the amount of waste
land in the Rocky Mountain territories,
the mountain regions of the Pacific
coast, the sand hills, and "mauvaises
terres" of Nebraska and Dakota, to¬
gether with that included in the 62,000,-
000 acres which remain unsold in the
States east of the Mississippi river, and
in the first tier of States west of that
stream, exclusive of Minnesota.]
Adding together the several amounts
we have obtained, we find they foot up
to All,000,000 acres, exclusive of Alaska,
and if to this we add the 369,000,00o
comprised in that territory, we get a
grand total of 610,000,000 acres, which,
either on account- of quality or climate,
or both, is so very far inferior to the re¬
mainder, as to warrant us in describing
6
it in general terms as comparatively
worthless, much of it being absolutely
so. Subtracting this from the 1,236,-
000,000 acres which we have already seen
to be comprised in the public domain as
now constituted, we find that there, re¬
mains outside of Alaska only 626,000,-
000 acres of valuable land, from which
slight deductions might still be made on
account of reservations which, in the
settlement of the vexed Indian question,
we shall probably have to set apart.
This, let it be observed, is not • thirty
acres apiece to our present population,
but a little over fifteen acres.
If it should be thoughtthatthe 610,000,-
000 acres deducted einbracelands which,
for various purposes, wiil prove valua¬
ble, it must be remembered that 1 have
made a very large allowance for moun¬
tain land which may be valuable for
umber and for mineral, for arid land
susceptible of irrigation, and for
laud which, although uusnited for
agriculture, is nevertheless available.for
grazing purposes. Alb these allowan¬
ces are included in the 626,000,000 acres,
and the last mentioned, viz: that, de¬
nominated grazing land unsuited for cul¬
tivation, can hardly amount to less than
160,000,000 acres, it is, therefore, very
doubtful whether there remain 500,000,-
000 acres out of the entire extent of our
public domain which will come up to
the average quality of the lands already
disposed of, lor these, as I have already
said, occupy the fineBt region on the
North American continent.
Assuming, then-, tiie approximate ac¬
curacy of tue above figures, we have
outside of Alaska 626,000,000 acres of
valuable land and 241,000,000 of com¬
paratively worthless land, and of water
surface; the first being a little over
seventy-two and the second a little less
than twenty-eight per cent, of the whole.
The 182,000,000 acres given away to rail¬
roads therefore constitute an area equal
to nearly three-tenths, and the land:
asked for in hills now pending before
Congress is equal to nearly three-fifths
of the area of all the available portion
of the public domaiu now remaining.
These facts may assist members of
Congress in judging whether the nation
can afford to make such grants as are
now asked for and such as have been so
freely made within the last few years.
Let it be remembered, then, that "every
lifty million acres given away equals very
nearly one-tvvelftli of our entire avail¬
able area. With this clear idea of the
extent of our resources constantly in
mind, we shall be better able to "cut
our coat according to our cloth."
It may be said here that the rail¬
roads get a proportional share of the
waste land as well as the good. This,
however, would at best only be true of
the waste land outside of that great re¬
pository of waste land, Alaska, and
would give, as we have seen, a fraction
less than 28 per cent., is 'the proportion
of waste land to their entire grants.
But they get no such proportion. Bail-
roads are projected.with an eye to popu¬
lation, and population does not seek the
deserts but the fertile plains and valleys.
Their shrewd projectors know the coun¬
try through which they propose to con¬
struct them, and they may be trusted to
choose their routes in the" richest sec¬
tions, where they not only get the best
lands in aid of their enterprises, but
where they can also count upon the most
rapid settlement of the country adjacent
to their lines. Besides, even for engi¬
neering reasons, th'e'y would usually fol¬
low the course of the rivers, where the
best land, and in fact the only timbered
land throughout a large section of the
western country, is always found. Thus
the Union Pacific follows the rich valley
of the Platte for hundreds of miles, and
the Kansas Pacific the valley of the
Kansas and its smcfky Hill fork, while
one line is projected down the Neosho
valley and others through-other valleys
equally rich. Even- t)he trnns-eontl-
nental lines do not get near their propor¬
tional 28 per cent, of waste land, be¬
cause in the very nature of things they
must seek the most open routes through
the mountains and the lowebteleVations;
and besides they contrive to'get various
branches subsidised near their extremi¬
ties, which branches add 'hundreds ol'
mi les to their aggregate leu gUi, an d do not
pass throulgh the mountain! at all, thus
largely inCreushigtheit proportion of fii st-
class land. There can be ho -doubt that
if all the railroad bills noWpending were
pussed, they would skim the very cream
olf the entire body of the public domain,
and create such an array of land monop¬
olies as the world has never yetfeen. If
the railroad builders have their own way
we shall not long have occasion to sing
the good old song, whose pjeasantrefrain
was that " Uncle Sam is rich enough to
give us all a farm." Poor Uncle Sam
will stand aghast with wonder to see how
cleveily he has been overreached, and
possibly in his desperation lie may feel
very like Shakspeare's poor Jew, when
he ciies, "Nay; take my life and all.
Pardon not that." Or lie may retire to
one of the few elevated peaks left him
among the Rocky mountains, and regale
his ears with the loud shrill laughter of
the locomotive as it rushes through the
valleys below, mocking his folly.
I come now to another and a most
important point, viz: the under-estima-
tion of the. value of our public lands.
A Senator from Minnesota, m speaking
7
of the low value of the lands along
the proposed line of the Northern Pacific
railroad, recently remarked that Para¬
dise itself so situated would not he worth
ten cents an acre. It is astounding tjiat
any intelligent man should hold such an
opinion for a moment in the face of the
experience of our country during the
last twenty years. Twenty' years ago
that Senator's State was as much a
wilderness as the Red River country of
Dakota is to-day, the first land having
been offered for sale within its limits on
the 22d of October, 1855, less than fifteen
years ago; yet the average price of land
included in farms in that State in 1860,
according to the census for that year,
was $10 14 an acre, only one-fifth of the
area so included and so valued beihg
improved land. And according; to a
carefully prepared statement published
in the Agricultural Report for 1867, the
increase in value during the intervening
seven years amounted to 100 per cent.,
making the average value of Minnesota
farms in 1867, $20 28 an acre. Yet ac¬
cording to that Senator's theory these
lands twenty years ago were not worth
ten cents an acre. To an owner obliged
to sell under the sheriff's hammer and
unable to obtain a day's grace, they
îpight not have been worth that amount;
hut it strikes one very forcibly that any
one who had then invested a hundred dol¬
lars at that rate would find his thousand-
acre farm, which would be worth to-day
$20,000, a magnificent return for his in¬
vestment. Two hundred times his capi¬
tal returned to him in twenty years," be¬
sides a good living off his land in the in¬
terval, and probably profits enough to
exchange his first log-cabin for a stylish
house.
It will be instructive, in this con¬
nection, to note the prices of land in the
various Western States, and I will there¬
fore read a table based upon the census
of 1860 and the volume of the agricultu¬
ral report already cited.
This table shows that the average
value of the lands included in farms,
improved and unimproved, was. as
follows:
Value
Increase,
Value
in I860.
percent, in 1867.
Arkansas
55
$14 83
Illinois
42
27 69
Indiana
27
87 62
Iowa
75
20 82
Kansas.
160
17 25
Michigan
70
38 87
Minnesota
100
20 28
Missouri
32
15 IS
Ohio
32
43 72
Wisconsin
60
24 90
Hew York
28
48 64
Pennsylvania
25
48 63
I have included the two States last
named to show how closely they are fol¬
lowed by sopae of the new States, all of
which have been carved out of the public
domain within the present century, and
some of them within a comparatively
short time past.
It will throw farther liglif on this sub¬
ject to note the progress of some of
these newer States a little more closely.
Thus we find that in Illinois the first
offering of Government land was made
on the second Monday in July, 1831, and
the heaviest sales during the ten years
following that date. A considerable?
amount was sold, however, between
1841 and 1861.
In Wisconsin the first offering was
made in November, 1834, and the heaviest
sales between 1844 and 1854. In Iowa
the first offering was made in November,
1838, and the heaviest sales during the
second ten years after that date. In
Kansas the first offering was made in
May, 1858, and the heaviest sales be¬
tween 1863 and 1868. It therefore ap¬
pears that the mean time during which
the farm lands of these States have ad¬
vanced from the Government price to
their average values, in 1867, as above
stated, was as follows : In Illinois a little
over thirty years, in Wisconsin about
twenty-five years, in Iowa less than
twenty years, ana in Kansas less than
ten years. And yet, as we have already
seen, these lands were worth $27 69 in
Illinois ; $24 90 in Wisconsin ; $20 82 in
Iowa ; and $17 25 in Kansas.
It will he observed that in the four
States just named, together with Min¬
nesota, the average rate of increase in
the value of lands from the date of their
sale by the Government to 1867 was up¬
wards of onç.dollar an acre per annum,
the rate in the two younger States being
considerably in excess of that amount,
while even the annual rental value of
land in, the same States ranges from
$2 50 all the way up to $7 or $8 an acre;
the lowest of these rates being double
the Government price for a title to the
land in fee simple. And yet a Senator
of the United States has the hardihood
to say, in his place in the Senate, that
lands situated now just as the greater
part of these lands was situated twenty
years ago are not worth ten cents an
acre.
I may be met here by the declaration
that railroads have given these lands
their value. That, lipwever, is a very
different thing from saying that rail¬
road subsidies have given them their
value. But to say that railroads have
done it, is to state the case incorrectly.
It is population which gives landfits
lvalue, through competition for its pos-
I session ; and railroads are but one of the
j improvements which a civilized popula¬
tion necessarily brings with it. It is
probable that had the settlers been copi-
8
pelled to depend solely upon private en¬
terprise, which builds railroads for
profit, they would, as a matter of conve¬
nience and economy, have settled more
compactly. ' In that case, we Should
have had'less land wasted in these States
by sales or donations to men who do not
use it, fewer large uncultivated tracts in
the midst of States already populous,
fewer large landholders, fewer tenants
^nd day-laborers, and proportionally
more small independent farmers, earn¬
ing their own living, with their own
hands, off their own farms. And al¬
though population mi'ght not have
pushed quite so far West, we should still
have had quite as large a population,
probably a larger one, and certainly a
more independent and prosperous one
than we have to-day in these great West¬
ern States. Besides this, the Govern¬
ment would own to-day millions of acres
more first-class land, now being held
for speculative purposes by individuals,
and would be in so much the better po¬
sition to provide future settlers with
homes. I am unable to see any special
cause for felicitation in the fact
that we have scattered ourselves
over almost our entire territory, be¬
fore our people number fourteen to
the square mile. It is not long since we
used to speak of the plains as a region
very far west—a region devoted to In¬
dians, buffaloes and solitude. As to the
Rocky mountains, they were almost a
terrh incognita,' occasionally heard of
through t^e thrilling tales of the trapper
as the haunts of the terrible grizzly bear.
Now, as we have seen, the whole region
is divided up into Territofies. Montana
boasts its cities and towns, Idaho its
150,000 annual profit on capital invested
in banking, and Utah, still more highly
civilized, its $17,000 a year paid to do¬
mestic servants. So we go, expanding
and appealing to the whole world to
come and help us to expand still more,
our grandest ambition, to judge from
the speeches of some of our members of
Congress, being to puff ourselves out big
enough to fill up the whole area of the
country. One would think, to judge
from some of those speeches quite re¬
cently delivered, that honorable gentle¬
men were fairly groaning in spirit, suf¬
fering the acute pangs of a species of
mental rheumatism, merely from brood¬
ing over the awfully desolate condition
of those leagues of land between Lake
Superior and Puget Sound, along the
line of the Northern Pacific railroad,
where no u sturdy settler" has yet
taken up his abode. There is one hon¬
orable Senator so anxious upon this sub¬
ject that I verily believe he would wil¬
lingly swallow a dose pf nitro-glycerine,
and blow himself into a million frag*
ments, if the pieces (heaven save 'em)
would only imitate the teeth which Cad¬
mus sowed, and spring up—not exactly
armed men, but " sturdy settlers," with
spades in their hands ready to dig that
road.
I shall have some words of consolation
for these gentlemen who are so pining
for more settlers; but first let me call
attention to one fact bearing upon the
movement of population in its relation
to railroads. This fact is that our pop¬
ulation has observed a rtearly uniform
law of increase since 1790, that rate of
increase being about thirty-five per cent,
during each decade on tire population
we had at its commencement. And this
law of increase seems to have been about
the same before the introduction of rail¬
roads as it has been sincé that time.
But a still more curious fact is this, viz:
that Mr. Elkanali Watson's celebrated
table, predicting our population for
each decade from 1820 on to some time
in the next century*—a table which has
proved so surprisingly accurate that he
has thus far never once failed on the
number of millions—was framed in the
year 1815, long before railroads were
dreamed of. At first sight it would
seem as if their introduction should have
upset all his calculations, sending the
increase of population far in advance of
his figures. Yet observing that this has
not been the case, and observing how
very close to the truth he came in the
years 1840, 1850, and 1860, it is hard to
resist the inference that his predictions
wbre based upon scientific principles,
independent of and above railroads. Eu¬
rope would have suffered all the same
from overcrowding in any case, and
would have had the same tendency to
relieve herself by emigration; so it is
possible our progress in population
might have borne out Mr. Watson's
predictions all the saupe, even wfithout
the aid of railroads to distribute it, the
only difference being that it must
then have grown comparatively dense,
manufactures keeping pace with agri¬
culture merely from the difficulty of
transporting the products of the latter.
I come now to those words of consola¬
tion for the men who sigh because our
waste places are not filled up with suffi¬
cient rapidity, who groan to think that
they may possibily not live to see the
last square mile of prairie fenced in, and
who would undoubtedly be hapçy enough
to accept the United States in lieu of
Paradise, and consent to live here for¬
ever, if we only could boast a population
as dense as that of England or Belgium,
but who, with a singular inconsistency,
never think of going to England or Bel¬
gium to live, although there they might
find a "sturdy settler" upon almost
9
every square rood of ground. They are
like the boy with his plum cake. It is
not the cake he wants, outside or in, but
the pleasure of making it change places.
So they do not care for sparsity *or for
density of population considered in them¬
selves, but they take an intense interest
in the proeess whereby the one succeeds
the other. The entire secret of this in¬
terest may perhaps be found in the fact
that havihg secured land at sparsity
prices they would like to make it worth
density prices in the shortest possible
time. A glance at a few facts will show
us that they need have no fears of our
vacant territory remaining permanently
a wilderness. It is estimated that the
census for the present year will show a
population exceeding 42,000,000 souls.
Elkanah Watson's estimate is 42,328,432.
His estimates for the remainder of the
century are as follows: for 1880, 56,450,-
241; for 1890, 77,266,989; and for 1900,
100,235,985. Other authorities estimate
the population for 1900 as high as 107,-
000,000, and one even as high as 115,000,-
000. Let us take the medium figure,
107,000,000, and then glance back. In
1300 we numbered about five and a half
millions. It is some seventy years since
then and we have increased about thirty-
seven millions in that time. Yet, start¬
ing now, with 42,500,000, the very same
law of increase whidh has not failed
us once during the eight decades from
1790 down, will give us 107,000,000 of
people in the year 1900, ayr increase of
about 65,000,000, or 50 per cent.
more than our entire present pop¬
ulation, during tiie next thirty
years. This, let it be observed, is
nearly double the numerical increase
which has occurred during the seventy
years that have nearly elapsed since the
present century made its advent.
This fact as applied to the public land
question is absolutely startling, and
leads one to ask, are the men mad who
can vote away 50,000,000 acres to a single
railroad corporation? Let us look at it :
All the States and Territories carved out
of the public domain have been so
carved during the present century, and
consequently this whole vast region has
been settled to the point at which settle¬
ment stands to-day, coincidently with an
increase of only 35,000,000 in our popu¬
lation. Coincidently with the same in¬
crease we have seen land go up from the
Government price to an average of $20
or $30 an acre over vast regions of ter¬
ritory which at the beginning of the
century were solitudes, disturbed only
by the wild animal and the red man.
Coincidently with the same increase of
35,000,000 we have witnessed the disposal
of 438,000,000 acres of the public domain,
or, including railroad grants for land
not yet patented, 598,500,000. And now,
'with a prospective increase of 65,000,000
'during tlje next thirty years, the Govern¬
ment retains iri its possession, exclusive
of Alaska, only 626,000,000 acres of
available land, and even this âmount
will not average near so good a quality
as the 598,000,000 acres already disposed
of. Look well at these figures, and note
the fact that the amount remaining is
only 28,000,000 acres in excess of the
amount disposed of, hardly enough for
a fashionable railroad grant. And yet
our population is to be increased 65,000,-
000 within the Viext thirty years. With
such an increase I unhesitatingly predict
that there is not a State or Territory be¬
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific, in
which, by the year 1890, the average
value of the desirable farming lands will
not be as high as is the value of such
lands in Illinois to-day.
Moreover, it must be remembered
that these Western lands are right in
the path of that stream of immigration
which, as if by a blind instinct of direc¬
tion, sets toward them in a current so
strong that it would seem almost as
easy to turn the Gulf stream from its
course as to divert or check it. This
fact is an element of value altogether
too important to be overlooked.
But we are told that railroads, and the
grants wherewith to build them, are ne¬
cessary conditions precedent to settle¬
ment. The settler, it is said, cannot go
hundreds of miles into the wilderness to
get upon the public land unless we build
railroads to take him there and to trans¬
port his produce to market after he gets
there; and we are furnished with inge¬
nious computations to show that wheat
cannot be hauled in wagons more than
three hundred miles, and corn not more
than one hundred, before its value is
consumed in the cost of transportation.
And what, pray, is it that hinders this
supposed settler from going where he is
supposed- to want to go? And what
is it that stands between the particular
spot he is supposed to be so desirous
of reaching and the distant market to
which he must send his wheat and corn?
What is this impassable barrier of dis¬
tance, I ask? The answer will show
that this settler's situation is indeed a
sad one; for his trouble is that between
him and his destination intervenes a belt
some hundreds of miles wide—pf what?
why, of Government land, subject to
preemption or entry under the home¬
stead law. This poor settlerlabors under
as great a hardship as the Kentucky
stock raiser, who, during a dry season in
the early days of that State, was obliged
to drive h is cattle sixty m iles to water, and
toincreasethe difficulties of his situation,
was under the additional necessity of
10
swimming them across several broad and
deep rivers in order to get them where
the water was. But no. Our settler is
not quite so badly off as jwas the Ken-
tuckian. The latter had no one to
bridge his rivers for him. whereas the
former has "a beneficent Government."
to which he can turn and ask that those
few hundreds of miles of public land
which stand in his way may be bridged
over by a railroad, built at the public
eipense. And be has a fair prospect, too,
of having his request granted, although
it might seem quite reasonable to sug¬
gest to him a simpler and* cheaper solu¬
tion of his difficulty, viz: to enter a
homestead on that portion of the public
domain which stands in his way, and to
enter it somewhere 011 the side nearest
to market and to existing railroads and
settlements. This settler, however, is
not the " actual settler. " He is a plaus¬
ible counterfeit rigged up by the subsidy
men, and by them frequently referred to
as " the sturdy settler "—a creature
mostly of the imagination, whose busi¬
ness it is to step to the front whenever
the railroad men, wanting an advocate
with a fair reputation and an honest face,
deem it prudent to keep themselves in
the background.
But we have another argument to re¬
assure those who really fear that the
withholding of railroad grants will re¬
sult in putting a stop to the progress of
settlement. That argument is found in
the history of the progress of settlement
in the past. The States of Ohio, Indi¬
ana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,
and Missouri, may certainly be regarded
as pretty successfully settled. They are
rich, populous, and prosperous; yet of
these the first two received no railroad
grants whatever, and the other five re¬
ceived only about 21,000,000 acres among
them—less than one-fifth of the amount
donated to the Pacific railroads alone. It
will hardly be denied either that Ohio,
and Indiana, without railroad grants
are, and have been, as prosperous as the
other five which received such grants.
Moreover I might show fhat railroad
grants arenot«au unfailing prescription
from the fact that Mississippi and Flor¬
ida, each received very nearly as much
land as Illinois, while Alabama received
nearly fifty percent, more, and Arkansas
nearly twice as much, yet not one of
these wil^coqtpare with the Prairie State
in prosperity or in the rapidity of settle¬
ment ; still less will they compare in'
solid prosperity with Ohio, which re¬
ceived no railroad grants at all. If
starting with a population of about five
millions and a half with the aid of emi¬
gration brought from Europe in slow
sailing vessels, until a comparatively re¬
cent date, we have.succeeded so satisfac¬
torily in settling the seven properous
Northwestern States named above, at an
expense of only 24,000,000 acres to rail:
road builders, we surely need have no
fears tpat starting now, with a popula¬
tion of 42,000,000, and the aid of an enor¬
mous emigration brought from Europein
fast sailing steamers, which have reduced
the Atlantic to a mere creek, we should
succeed in settling our remaining terri¬
tory even at a smaller expense in landed
subsidies than the 24,000,000 acres
granted in the seven great States under
consideration. Y et as we have already
seen, the men we have intrusted to
conduct legislation for us, have al¬
ready given away five times that amount
to the Pacific railroads alone; and en¬
couraged by this so-called liberality,
other railroad projectors are now asking
us to give away nearly 400,000,000 acres
more, and have actually succeeded in
getting bills introduced for that purpose.
I have said that we can succeed in set¬
tling our remaining territory without
these vast subsidies; but if I should ad¬
mit that we might possibly succeed a
little better through their aid, or that
we should even succeed as well in that
way, I should ignore the most conclu¬
sive and unanswerable of all the reasons
which unite in condemning this land-
grant policy. I knohv well that the
great States I have named, prosperous
as they are, would be still more pros¬
perous to-day, vastly more proserous, if
land grants and the sale of land to specu¬
lators in large bodies had not condemned
millions of acres of their fertile soil to
practical sterility, through the exclusion
of settlers by holding these lands for in¬
creased prices. And. here let the fact
be noted, that, although it is twenty
years since the Illinois Central railroad
received its subsidy, it had on hand on
the 1st of January, 1869, 527,690 acres,
or more than one-fifth of its entire
grant. This, too, in the populous State
of Illinois, where the ownership of laud
has already become difficult, and where,
as a consequence, a very considerable
portion of the land is cultivated bv
renters. And lest it should be said that
this land has remained uusold on ac¬
count of its quality, let me state the fur¬
ther fact that although umimproved
it was , held by the company at
the average price of $14 02 per
acre. Yet with this land and mil¬
lions of acres more in other old
States, which is still unoccupied for
the sole reason that it was passed out
of the possession of the Government to
corporations or to speculators instead of
to actual settlers, those of us who want
cheap Government land are to-day com¬
pelled to pass over these unoccupied
tracts and go hundreds of tniles beyond
11
the Mississippi to find what we want.
And we are appealed to, forsooth, to di¬
minish the inconveniences of going
there by pursuing on a vastly magnified
scale the very policy which has placed
us under the necessity of going there at
all. the policy but for which we should
still find Government' land hundreds of
miles nearer home, the phlicy of immense
railroad land grants, which would very
quickly do with all our Western "territo¬
ries what it has done on a comparatively
small scale fer the Western .Statesnearer
to us, viz: close up vast areas against
settlement until having no land farther
west to go to we should itt a few years
be compelled to buy fromthemonopolists
at their own price. And all this under,
the pretence of building railroads to
enable the settler to get at "cheap land."
In brief, this pretended policy of
"bringing cheap lands within the reach
of the settler " is really a policy to enable
the railroad companies and such settlers
as are so lucky as to be early enough on
the ground to pick out and take up all
t,lie choicest lands in the public domain
in the shortest possible time, and then
to enable the American citizen who
may want a homestead to get at the
Ltooky mountains, the sandy deserts, or
the arid plains, which his more fortunate
predecessors did not fancy. And to judge
now much of this may be effected even
in a very brief period it is only necessary
to reflect that under the operation of our
established law of increase our popula¬
tion is tb be augmented about 15,000,-
OuO in thé next ten'years, and 35,000,000
m the néxî! twenty years. This vaunted
policy is diic which regards the present
only, and whose inspiring aim, as well
as its direct effect, is to make a few men
rich—a policy to hurry on with more
than railroad speed the day which is
coming too fast already—the day when
the nation will have no more cheap lands
to sell to its citizens. And if, as its ad¬
vocates claim, it does make the wild
lands of the West more valuable, (or to
speak accurately, if it makes them dearer)
it does so only tor the benefit of the rail¬
road corporations and the feWearly occu¬
pants in order that the millions who come
after them, and who must one day oc¬
cupy and cultivate these lands, may he
compelled to buy them at exhorbnant
prices, or become renters or day laborers,
paying tribute out of the fruits of their
toil to the great landed aristocracy of
which we are now laying the foundation.
It is customary to say that the old or¬
der of things has passed away; that the
locomotive, and not the settler, now
leads the van of settlement and civiliza¬
tion. As rhetoric this has rather a
line effect, but when its true signifi-i
cauce is seen 'it means simply this, viz:'
that capital, whose far-reaching eye the
head-light of the locomotive, wil-1 aptly
typify, has discerned three great facts";
first,"that the available area of the public
domain is becoming comparatively cir¬
cumscribed; second, that population is in¬
creasing at an unprecedented rate, and
by the natural law already spoken of, is
destined to increase still more rapidly
every year; third, that these two facts
in their relation to each other foretell
an unexampled rapidity in the increase
of the value of the wild lands of the
West, making those lands worthy of its
most devoted and assiduous attentions.
"But," it will be asked, "should we
not restrict our donations to a few of the
more worthy and important projects?"
I do not know that there is very much
difference in the worthiness ef "the va¬
rious projects asking aid. There may
be some difference, but I know that
most of the arguments used in favor of
the policy would apply to one just as
well as to another. The most prominent
of these schemes, however, is the pro¬
jected Northern Pacific railroad. 1 hesi¬
tate not to say that the gift of nearly
fifty million acres to that corporation is
an enormous crime against the Amer¬
ican people. This land, though not im¬
mediately saleable—such quantities of
land cannot be sold instantaneously, any
more than Home could be built in a day—
this land, I say, is worth more than
the building of the road will cost,
and will bring more to the company.
And here let nie note a fact which
L find in Mr. H. V. Poor's hook on
railroads; a most useful work, although
I regret to see that lie has devoted a
portion of its pages to the advocacy of
subsidies. The tact to which I refer
is that the Illinois Central Railroad
Company, which has sold its lands at an
average of nearly twelve dollars an acre,
counting what it has received for lands
sold and estimating the value of the land
it has on hand at its present average
price, has realized from its grant over
$30,000,1)00, a sum equal to the aggregate
capital originally investejl in the enter¬
prise, and considerably more than the
actual cost of building the road. And
this, let it be remembered, lias been out
of the comparatively modest little dona¬
tion of six sections to the mile, while the
Northern Pacific gets forty sections, and
lias the sublime impudence to ask still
more. Now let us look at this question
of the Northern Pacific in the light of a
few further facts.
Mr. Poor, from whom I have just
quoted, states the cost of the Union
Pacific railroad at $90,000,000, the length
being 1,053 miles. Suppose the length
of the Northern Pacific to be 1,000 miles,
and the cost, at the same rate, should be
12
a little less than $137,000,000. It is
well known, however, that this road will
cost far less in proportion to its lengtli
than did the Union pacific, f lie country
through which it is to run' being far
more favorable to cheapness of con¬
struction.
Now mark another fact. The lands
sold by the Union Pacific railroad
last summer in the Platte Valley
averaged over $5 an acre, according to
the statement of Mr. Ames, its presi¬
dent, in a letter addressed, if I rightly
recollect, to the shareholders of the road
and published in the Stockholder some¬
time in' September last. Now, in view
of the rapid prospective increase in our
population, and especially in view of
the fact that the Northern Pacific
railroad lies right in the line of that
stream of immigration which of late
years has set in so strongly from
the Scandinavian peninsula and other
portions of Northern Europe, is it
at all extravagant to suppose that the
land along that line will be worth as
much? And supposing the amount of
available land to be only as high as the
proportion of available lands estimated
for the whole public domain undisposed
of, exclusive of Alaska, viz: seventy-two
per cent., the company would even then
have about 35,000,000 acres of good land,
which, at$5 an acre after the completion
of the road, would bring $175,000,000, or
about $38,000,000 more than the esti¬
mated cost of building it. I do not as¬
sume that it could all be instantly dis¬
posed of at the price named, but as the
Illinois Central sold its land at an
average of nearly $12 an acre, and as our
population during the next twenty years
will receive a numerical increase nearly
twice as great as it has received during
the twenty years which have elapsed
since that road received its grant, I
think that I am rather below the mark
than otherwise in saying that this land,
lying along the Northern Pacific rail¬
road, will ultimately sell at a rate quite
equivalent to $5 an acte cash down on the
completion of the road. Now, what if the
Government itself should build this road,
or contract to have it done, paying for it
the amount estimated above as its
probable cost? When the work was
completed it would own the road, which
ought to be worth the money it cost, and
besides this, it would own all the lands
alpag it. That is, it would get a rail¬
road and save 47,000,000 acres of land by
investing the sum required to build the
road, which sum the lands, if sold at
their real market value, would much
more than pay back, besides leaving the
road as so much additional clear profit.
And if the nation is to make land valua¬
ble by building railroads over it at its
I own expense, why, let me ask, shpuld not
| the nation, rather than a few individuals,
composing a corporation, get the benefit
of the increased value?
Observe, "Wain not proposing that the
Government ytould build the road. It
would undoubtedly be done in due time,
and perhaps piuite' soon enough for all
necessary purposes by private enterprise
without subsidies; but if the choice were
between the building of the road by the
Government for itself and the donation
of this vast tract of territory to create
a colossal railroad and land monopoly,
I could not hesitate a moment to say. let
the Government by all means build the
road, and charge tolls for the running of
trains thereon by. private companies,
opening it to general competition.
So iniquitous do I deem this vast
grant, that as the company has not
• yet complied with all the conditions
appended to it, I hold that the first duty
of Congress is to repeal the bill which
confers it. But will it be believed that
instead Of this there is really some pros¬
pect of the passage of a bill which will
make the iniquity vastly greater than it
is now? The bill just passed by the
Senate gives the company, as a Senator
has well expressed.it, '"a roving com¬
mission" to pick out the' best lands
which they can find anywhere within ten
miles of the limits of the immense belt
already granted to them along the entire
routef rom Lake Sqperior to Puget sound,
to an amount equivalent to any land
which may have been settled upon within
their present boundaries. This, how¬
ever, is not the worst feature of the bill,
for it permits the company to make the
junction between their main stem and
the branch heretofore authorized as far
east as they please, thus putting it in
their power to build two roads tor the
greater portion of the distance if they
are so disposed, and enabling them to
swell their land grant in this manner
to sixty or seventy millions of acres. I
can not believe, however, that this enor¬
mity will be consummated, for it has not
yet passed the ordeal of the House of
Representatives, where we are warranted
in hoping there will be found sufficient
virtue and patriotism and regard for the
will of the people to secure its defeat.
Before so vast a tract of the people's
land is given away time should be taken
to ascertain what the people themselves
think of it. The haste of the com¬
pany to secure action during the present
session of Congress is the haste of the
burglar eager to get away with his booty
before the inmates of the house wake up.
"But," ;t is asked, "shall we leave
the Union Pacific railroad a monopoly of
the trans-continental travel and trahie?"
it is a poor compliment to the good sense
m
of the American people that such an ar¬
gument should have been advanced in
the United States Senate. Its utter in¬
adequacy pains the logical sense even as
a discord in music jars upon a sensitive
and cultivated ear. It is setting a mole
hill against a mountain, to put the pos¬
sible temporary inconvenience of a few
merchants and travelers against the
squandering of the future homes of mil¬
lions of citizens. Would a man stop to
drive a pig out of his orchard when his
house had taken fire and the timely ap¬
plication of a few buckets of water might
save it? Besides, who can fail to see
that every ton of freight delayed on the
Union Pacific, through ah excess of bus¬
iness, will be equal to a bounty of 1,000
acres of land as an inducement to capi¬
talists to construct a rival road? Let us,
then, save the homes of our people and
wait until Commerce shall offer her own
bounty for the construction of railroads,
which she will quickly do whenever she
needs them badly enough to make it
worth her while. Or If we give a bounty,
let us give it in the form of a specified
amount of money, to be paid out of the
proceeds of the piiblio lands as sold by
theiGovernment to actual settlers, and
to actual settlers only. The land grant
is, of all subsidies, the most demorali¬
zing, and is chosen as the easiest form
in which to take property from the peo¬
ple without their 'suspecting the real
value of what they are giving away.
But railroad' grants, although by far
the most formidable, are not the only
form in which the public lands are
squandered. There ate I know not how
many devices to get large tracts of land
into single hands—its purchase under
bogus preemption titles, the sale of In¬
dian lands, and, in close prospect, the
subsidizing of ocean steamship, ocean
telegraph, and irrigation companies—all
these combining to the one result of di¬
viding up and partitioning off to corpo¬
rations and individuals1 all the best
lands in our new Territories almost by
the time they have a population large
enough to secure admission to the
Union, and1 leaving the millions who are
to come after them to make such terms
as they can with the various classes of
monopolists.
In contemplating this result we must
remember that vast as is the pecuniary
value of the wild lands we are now part¬
ing with so lightly, they have a social
and political value, which is Infinitely
greater. It may almost be said that we
owe our republican system of Govern¬
ment itself to the American wilderness.
It was this which afforded a refuge from
peVsecution to the English Puritan and
the French Huguenot, and gave them
civil and religious freedom. It was this
which, afforded shelter for the germ of
liberty, and permitted it to develop into
a strong and hardy tree, capable of re¬
sisting the force of the fiercest tempest.
It was this which nurtured that sturdy
spirit of independence which found ex¬
pression in the great Declaration of 1776,
and supplied the infant republic with
enough stout arms to make that declara¬
tion good.
For what was this spirit which ani¬
mated'the-colonists as one man, but the
natural and necessary outgrowth of that
practical personal independence of which
every man was in the habitual enjoy¬
ment? And to what did each man owe
this real and practical independence,
but to the free scope which the wilder¬
ness gave him to earn a livelihood
without a "by your leave" to any
one? He had but. to fence in a por¬
tion of God's earth, build him a cabin
upon it, cultivate it, and be practically
and really free. ■ So also has it been
during our past history as a nation. It
is the abundance of our wild lands, not
less than onr free institutions, which
has attracted immigration to our shores,
which has afforded cheap homes for the
people, which has promoted our un¬
paralleled material growth, and, above
all, which has kept alive that spirit of
manly independence, which is the best
assurance of true freedom. And where
is it that we find this spirit fail¬
ing? Where is it that we chiefly find
dependence and servility, but among the
landless poor of our great cities farthest
away from our public domain? On the
frontier, if we can now be said to have
one, even poverty is comparatively in¬
dependent. Our wild lands, then, have
a value that cannot be expressed in dol¬
lars and cents. Reserved as homes for
the masses, they are a guarantee for
physical comfort, intelligence, self-re¬
spect, and true manly and womanly
character in millions of our people, and
through these tilings they are a guaran¬
tee for the permanence of our republi¬
can institutions. On the other hand, if
turned over to the ownership of vast
monopolies, they will constitute the
greatest danger to our freedom as a na¬
tion. Whenever they are brought un¬
der cultivation, they'must be cultivated
in small portions by individuals; but
whether those individuals shall be a free
yeomanry, owning the land they culti¬
vate; a dependent tenantry, paying
tithes of all they produce; or agricul¬
tural laborers, working for such wages
as they can obtain, depends upon the
course we now pursue. Every time the
land, now recklessly given away, or sold
for a mere song, in large tracts, is sub¬
divided, the parts will be sold at a higher
price.
1
i
Every decade will make ownership |
more difficult and increase the relative
number of tenants and of day laborers.
Every decade will thus make the
masses of our people more and more
dependent on the few, and promote the
growth of poverty, ignorance, and ser¬
vility.
Xo w, in view of such momentous results
depending upon the manner in which we
use this public land, what do the pitiful
sums its sale yields to the national
treasury amount to? And of what com¬
parative account are the benefits arising
from the construction of any number of
railroads a few years earlier than they
would be constructed by private enter¬
prise? These lands are an immense
power into whatever hands they fall—for
oppression and enslavement if they fall
into the hands of the few; for the gen¬
eral amelioration of the condition of
the people and their elevation in the
scale of virtue, refinement, and intelli¬
gence if they fall into the hands of the
many. Which result is it that we want?
And if the latter, how can we most secure¬
ly provide for its realization? Is it not by
keeping these lands in our own posses¬
sion until they are wanted for actual
cultivation? It is cultivation alone
which will tnake them fruitful—make
them contributors to the stock of na¬
tional wealth. There is nothing gained
by the mere transfer of them from
the Government to another owner
who will let them lie equally idle.
The only thing brought about 'is that
when the actual cultivator wants them
he must pay an exorbitant price to those
on whom we now literally throw them
away. What, then, is our obvious
policy? Clearly it is to part with them
only to actual settlers, and to let no man
have more than he can cultivate with his
own hands and with the help of his
children. The time is coming when we,
or our children will need these lands,
and we cannot afford to commit tire
egregious blunder of giving away in our
collective capacity as a nation, or selling
for a mere song, the very lands which
we, or our children, will soon be com¬
pelled to buy again at a high price from
treat landlords of our own creation,
uch folly is without a parallel. Let it
be remembered that our available terri¬
tory is only large enough to give a frac¬
tion over fifteen acres apiece to our
present population, and hardly ten acres
apiece to the 65,000,000 who are to be
added to our present population during
the next thirty years. Then we can
judge better as to the amounts we can
afford to dispose of to single individuals
or to corporations. Unpopular as it
may be, I do not hesitate to declare that
we are too liberal in giving away as a
homestead, or selling at the nôminal
price of $1 25 an acre, 160 acres to a
single person. It is doing for some much
more than we shall be able to do for
others, who will need the land quite as
much or even more than thev do. It is
time for us to revise our ideas upon this
question of the disposal of the public
domain and accommodate them to our
altered circumstances. There will soon
be far less occasion to be anxious about
settlers for our land than about land for
our settlers. We must begin to under¬
stand that when a settler takes a home¬
stead in our public territory, it is he
who is our beneficiary and not we who
are the recipients of a favor at his hands.
E\tery day the competition for these lands
is increasing and rendering the con¬
stantly diminishing remainder more
valuable. It is because capital perceives
this, that it now stands before us with
jaws wide extended, ready to swallow up
almost the,;wjiol& desirable portion of
the public domain aha. single gulp. It
is time now for the country to speak
out and defeat the aims of the monopo¬
lists. Every county and State conven¬
tion, of either political party, should
pu| the plank, "Xo More Land Grants"
in its platform, and write it in letters
big enough to be read all the way from
Washington. It is time we should un¬
derstand that our wild lands are not a
nuisance to be abated in the shortest
possible time. The wilderness is the
poor, man's friend, his refuge from the
exactions of that. capital which would
now pursuade liim ibis worthless, and
kindly take it from him jn tracts
embracing millions of acres. Let
then the poor men of the country,
the masses of the populous East, and, of
all the older States, the laborer, the me¬
chanic and the small fanner, whose sons
will yet want homes in the West—these
classes,"comprising millions of our people
where others comprise thousands only,
and who possess the poweii to control
legislation on this subject, if they so will
—let them resolve to keep theae Western
-lands, in which even the poorest among
them is a joint inheritor, until they want
them, guarding them jealously, and
parting with them only in small tracts,
as they are needed, by other men like
themselves, who want them to live upon
and to cultivate with the labor of their
own hands.
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