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Show 336 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT states.45 The newer states generally received only 90,000 acres, a quantity that might net them perhaps $100,000. This sum hardly seems sufficient to get under way an agricultural college that could accomplish much in improving farm techniques and bringing to the farmers the best of modern science. Results were to come slowly from the new institutions, yet well before the end of the century their influence was being felt.46 Administration of State Lands By granting land to the states for education, internal improvements, and public buildings, Congress made it necessary for 29 states (30 counting Alaska) to set up their own administrative agencies to select the unlocated tracts, to manage, appraise, lease or sell these and the place grants (such as section 16 and later 36 and others), to protect them from timber thieves, to make collections if land was sold on credit, to eject squatters, determine boundary disputes, and even to survey where the original lines were defective. Also the legislatures had to define policies, determine prices or terms of leasing, provide protection against corrupt use of authority in leasing, selling and making collections. In addition the courts and administrative officers had to interpret the state laws as the Federal courts and administrative officers were interpreting Federal laws. In short, by 45 Arkansas and Florida sold their scrip in 1872 and 1873 for 90 cents an acre in contrast to the 50 and 55.8 cents Kentucky and Ohio received in 1866 or the 42 cents Rhode Island received in 1865. New York did better than most of the older states, averaging 67 cents an acre. For the sale of the scrip by the states see Paul W. Gates, The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y., 1943), pp. 27 ff.; Thomas LeDuc, "State Disposal of the Agricultural College Land Scrip," in Vernon Carstensen (ed.), The Public Lands, Studies in the History of the Public Domain (Madison, 1963), pp. 395 ff. 46 Allan Nevins, The Stale Universities and Democracy (Urbana, 111., 1962), and id., The Origins of the Land-Grant Colleges and State Universities (Washington, 1962). sharing the lands with the states, the Federal government was making it necessary for the states to duplicate to a considerable degree its legislation and administrative machinery. The states were always pleased to assume this responsibility for it brought land policies closer to the people and enabled them to modify those policies and make them more in harmony with local attitudes. European immigrants arriving in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota in 1867 had little or no understanding of the complexities of American national, state, and local governments and were likely to be confused by the fact that all three divisions had land for sale and that construction companies, railroads, and land companies were extensively advertising their holdings and claiming that their lands were superior to any the United States had for sale. Also confusing was the fact that an immigrant preemptor of a tract of government land found his property taxable on the next assessment after he had made his purchase, whereas a buyer from a land grant railroad might not have to pay a tax for 10 or 15 years or even longer. If the immigrant wished to make certain of his title and went to the county offices to investigate he might find that his land, bought from the state, was claimed by a railroad, a river improvement company, a county, or that the United States had not yet conveyed its title to the land. All this and more happened as a result of the diffusion of land management through three government divisions and additional quasi government agencies. State land policy oscillated between two extremes. On the one hand the states sought to gain from the lands as much revenue as possible to advance the object for which they were given; on the other hand the state wanted to get the lands into private ownership and development as speedily as possible by selling at low prices on long credit. Legislatures and administrative officers were strongly oriented toward the latter policy at the outset and, in a period of laxness in government when ethical standards were not |
