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Show DRY FARMING AND STOCK RAISING HOMESTEADS, 1904-1934 507 Act. It warned that experience had shown that 320-acre units of semi-arid land had proved generally inadequate "except under the most favorable circumstances and expert management." Many hundreds of dry land homesteads were reported to have been abandoned; in one block of land the Land Classification Board found that 247 out of 250 claims had been abandoned.25 In 1912 Congress reduced from 5 to 3 the number of years homesteaders had to be on their claims between actual settlement and final entry with proof of having completed requirements. The homesteader was allowed to be away from his land 5 months in each of the 3 years, presumably in the winter months when he might take a job elsewhere. The change was occasioned by the growing alarm in the West at the emigration of many Americans to the Canadian prairie provinces where much better land than homesteaders could acquire in the United States was available as free 160-acre homesteads at the conclusion of 3 years of residence.26 William E. Borah, a doughty champion of western rights, presented the issue in the Senate. He declared that 125,000 Americans had left the United States for Canada in 1911 and anticipated that between 130,000 and 140,000 would leave in 1912. For a country which had long been on the receiving end of immigation, and still was, for that mat- 25 "Farm Lands Available for Settlement," Farmers' Bulletin No. 1271, U.S. Department of Agriculture (1922) , p. 28. One would like to know the reaction in the dry land area to this 1922 bulletin. " Chester Martin in " 'Dominions Lands' Policy," which is Part II of Arthur S. Morton and Martin, History of Prairie Settlement (W. A. Machintoch and W. L. G. Jones [eds.], Canadian Frontiers of Settlement, Vol. II [Toronto, 1938]) , shows the similarities and differences in the land systems of Canada and the United States, the borrowing of and profiting from American experience. Most of the abuses of the American homestead system resulting in extensive speculator-owned land (in mortmain, the author calls it) developed in as aggravated form in the Canadian prairie provinces. See esp. pp. 381 ff., and 409. ter, these were startling statistics and though Borah was later corrected by Gal-linger who showed that the emigration for 1911 was only 90,768, they made a profound impression upon western leaders who felt the loss the most seriously. Borah in the Senate and Edward Taylor in the House, enlarging upon the concern of western members at this loss of population, criticizied the "spying" of investigating agents trying to determine whether homestead applications were bona fide or were made for other parties, the long delay in delivering patents after the settler had fulfilled all obligations, the need to employ attorneys to defend their claims, the officious and arbitrary conduct of Land Office and Forest Service officers and the many ranger sites that one Congressman thought should have been reserved for homestead applicants. An Oregon Congressman pointed out that the Department of the Interior was asking for ever increasing appropriations for agents to investigate claims, or as he put it, "to harass the poor homesteaders," while the number of land entries was declining. Before the complainants were through a listener in the Congress would have thought the officers had no friends or defenders. Canada's land policy was held up as more generous and less arbitrary; titles were said to be delivered quickly when requirements were completed. Yet, when the two homestead measures were compared in tabular form it appeared there was very little difference except that Canada required 3 years of residence and allowed the applicant to be away 6 month in each of his 3 years. The unrestrained attack ended with Congress adopting virtually the same provisions, allowing a total of 5 months' absence each of the 3 years. In the discussion, members of Congress conceded that the lands open to homestead in the United States were semi-arid, in contrast to the more humid lands in Canada, |