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Show CASH SALES, 1820-1840 rough, broken, swampy or poorly drained land, and naturally tried to secure productive soil and to choose areas to which emigration was actively flowing. Nor did they overlook the chances of selling land once they had improved it. Many, perhaps most, settlers wished to speculate a bit on the side and it was generally said that every man had his price for his land, regardless of the months or years he had lived on it. Pioneers might claim two or three quarter-sections, holding them until they could sell a relinquishment to others. This practice tended to scatter settlement and to retard the introduction of social facilities and the making of roads. But claim making was a major occupation on the frontier and one that paid off for some people. The career of the claims clubs did not end with the adoption of prospective preemption in 1841. It was still necessary to prevent claim jumping, to record claims and conveyances before the sale, to provide for deeding portions of 160-acre tracts improved by a neighboring settler, to act for settlers at the auction, to protect buyers of town lots, and settlers on Indian trust lands on which preemption was not permitted. They continued to flourish throughout the 1850's and perhaps were never more prevalent than in Kansas and Nebraska, during the turmoil of the Kansas Conflict. That the clubs were rarely organizations only of squatters single-mindedly planning to create farms for themselves needs no emphasis. On the frontier where land was abundant and available for purchase at $1.25 an acre, almost everyone thought that values were certain to rise and wanted to share in that rise for which their labors were partly responsible. A man with little capital might expect to devote the better part of a lifetime to bringing a farm to full production and to acquiring all the amenities rural life could provide; yet most settlers, indeed most farmers throughout the country, tried to gain or retain ownership of more land than they could use. The universal complaint of agricultural editors, European travellers, and authorities 157 on rural life was that people had more land than they had capital to use well, and that a 40- or an 80-acre tract in Ohio or Missouri, if intensively used, might bring better returns than 160 or 240 acres, cultivated extensively.35 In those localities where the auction was held before settlers had spread over the area, large acreages would not be entered at the sale and would be open to private entry thereafter. Under such circumstances the speculator could take his time in looking over the land and make such entries as appeared most promising at the minimum price. The West had for all intents and purposes frustrated the will of Congress by preventing competition at the auction and discouraging it thereafter, just as it had also long since broken down and made unenforceable the legislation against intrusions on the public domain. Early Land Sales in Iowa The first land sales in Iowa in 1838 and 1839 attracted huge crowds composed largely of an estimated 20,000 squatters anxiously waiting to acquire their land, and of capitalists eager to invest either in land or in loans to settlers. We may follow the Burlington sale in some detail for it illustrates the procedure followed at public sales for the next generation. The usual claims clubs sprang up when the sale was announced. By 1841, at least 18 had been organized, ordinarily one in each township.36 It was not difficult for the township 35 For analysis of Iowa Clubs see Allan G. Bogue, "The Iowa Claim Clubs: Symbol and Substance," Mississippi Valley Historical Review XLV (September 1958), 231 ff. 36 The Iowa Territorial Gazette and Burlington Advertiser, 1838-1839, the Davenport Iowa Sun of 1838-1840 and the Iowa News, 1838-1840, provide notices of the meetings of the clubs and of some of their activities. Most of the clubs thus noticed were in the Burlington district whose newspaper gave more attention to them than did the papers of the other cities. For this reason there is a strong likelihood of many more clubs in townships farther north. |