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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 433 in public ownership (531). This was in line with Major Powell's views but even in 1883 was wrong. The height of homesteading was still to be reached in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory and though the rate of failure was to be higher and the average size of farms increasingly large (well beyond the 160-acre unit), the Homestead Act was still to be important in enabling men of limited resources to establish farms in the region beyond the 100th meridian.89 Donaldson summarized all the charges brought by Williamson and his successor in the Land Office about fraudulent practices under the Preemption, Timber Culture, Desert Land, and Timber and Stone Acts and demanded their repeal, along with the cash sales laws, and the Swamp Land Indemnity Act. He favored redemption of scrip and warrants, swift completion of the surveys and patenting of the private land claims that had been hanging on now in some instances for a hundred years, and ending the system of contract surveying. Lapsed, unused, and unearned railroad land grants and their exemption from taxes until the railroad companies paid the cost of surveying them were the subject of excited agrarian demands but Donaldson was unmoved by their appeals. He was vague in his recommendations for the classification of the lands, amendments to the homestead law to assure that lands would only go to farmers and ranchers, and proposals for the consolidation of the mineral land laws. There was reason and justice in most of the recommendations Donaldson made, though he had not sufficiently considered substitutes for the laws he thought ought to be repealed and his rough and at times inaccurate arguments for change earned little support. His hostility to the new immigrants coming to the United States 89 Lee, "Kansas and the Homestead Act, 1862- 1905," Chap, x, xl, xii, and xiii are particularly useful. from southern Europe led him to write under the heading "The Public Lands Virtually Reserved for Foreigners" that preferential rights had been given to people of alien birth in the selection of public land since the adoption of the Preemption Act of 1841, that more than one-third of all foreigners coming to America took up public land, and that many could sign the entry papers only with an X. The "appalling length and queerness of almost unpronounceable names" distressed him. He argued that the lands should be reserved for citizens, and citizens of Nordic background at that. He demanded to know why we should give a land bounty to the Italians who were coming in such large numbers, 80,000 in 1882, 90,000 in 1883.90 Donaldson's xenophobia was shared by many people at the time but that he distorted the facts on this subject raises doubts about his accuracy on other questions where his prejudices were involved. Powell, Williamson, and Donaldson each made the error of declaring that to all intents and purposes the arable lands were gone and of advocating that other procedures than the 160-acre Homestead and Preemption Acts should be devised to divide up the "pasturage" lands among people who would best utilize them. The West could not concede that the arable lands were exhausted and the success of 200,000 homesteaders in carrying their claims to title in the 1880's supports this position. 90 Donaldson, pp. 535-36. Historical Statistics, p. 57, shows 32,159 Italians entering in 1882 and 31,792 in 1883. It would be interesting to know if a baker's dozen of newly arrived Italian immigrants managed to file on public lands. Almost simultaneously with Donaldson's outburst against Italian immigrants and their right to acquire public lands the Nation said, "There are probably not ten persons in the United States who would think of putting any restriction upon the settlement of our unoccupied lands by foreigners, always excepting the Chinese." Vol. 37 (Oct. 11, 1883), 306. |
