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Show CASH SALES, 1840-1862 179 1835-37 sampling suggests that a very substantial part of the 38 million acres sold had been bought for speculation by large and small investors. Many of these speculators who had invested with borrowed money found themselves unable to carry their purchases as interest and costs of supervision accumulated and the lands became taxable 5 years after purchase. The liquidation of these insecurely financed estates was proceeding while Federal land sales remained small. (The wiser speculators had taken care to select the better lands and they naturally attracted purchasers.) Sometimes during these trying years prices obtained at these forced sales were lower than the government minimum. Sales statistics for the bleak years following 1839 are not, therefore, an adequate index of either westward migration or the progress being made in western development because they represent only a part of the land going into farms. Farmers owning their land continued to improve it, investing their labor in the hope that prices of agricultural com- Land Sales of John Grigg1 Year Tracts Acre: 1837 1 80 1838 1839 1 80 1840 4 240 1841 2 200 1842 1 160 1843 1 48 1844 1 80 1845 5 240 1846 5 320 1847 4 240 1848 11 720 1849 13 1,154 1850 33 2,596 1851 36 3,309 Price S4.00 5.00 2.00 4.40 3.00 3.56 3.00 2.66 3.00 3.00 2.91 3.35 2.98 3.35 THE ^ WISCONSIN CENTRAL RAILROAD LANDS.1 CHARLES L. COLBY, Irimd Commtaioner, MILWAUKEE. W1S. Cover of an example of railroad brochures which were widely distributed to encourage westward migration. modities would improve and give them a good profit.4 The land sales of John Grigg, the Philadelphia publisher who in 1835 and 1836 acquired some 115,000 acres of land in central Illinois, are instructive. Grigg was not troubled by lack of funds to carry his investment, and in four of the counties in which he had centered half of his land entries, there is no " Compiled from deed records in Sangamon, Christian, Logan and McLean Counties, Illinois. 4 E. M. Huntington, GLO Commissioner, brought out this point in explaining the drastic decline in land sales in a letter to Walter Forward, Secretary of the Treasury, Nov. 30, 1841, Letters from Executive Officers, Vol. II, 1841, Treasury Annex I. |