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Show DRY FARMING AND STOCK RAISING HOMESTEADS, 1904-1934 519 30, 1918, only 7,500,000 acres had been classified and 734 applications accepted. Some 19 percent of the requests for designation of lands suitable for "stock raising" were denied, which may be an indication of what caused the delay.53 An ominous warning was made by O. E. Baker, one of the world's leading population experts and an authority on crop yields. In 1918 after 45,000 applications for stock raising homesteads had been approved, Baker said: "In the opinion of those best informed most of these grazing homesteads which afford promise of supporting a family have been applied for."54 Nevertheless applications continued to be made. In 1917 Congress had been told that 60,000 or 70,000 people were anxiously waiting for the privilege of filing their applications. By 1921 the total number of filings reached these figures and by that date 105,960,264 acres had been classified as suitable for stock raising homesteads. The peak of homesteading under the Stock Raising Homestead Act was reached in 1921 when 25,653 filings were made but they continued to average from five to seven thousand annually until the adoption of the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934. Range Damage Accumulates Representatives of both the sheepmen and cattlemen's associations were certain that the breakup of the range into small stock raising homesteads would damage its carrying capacity. In 1918, in view of the country's need for an increased supply of meat, they urged that the act be suspended for the duration of the war.55 Drought had struck parts of the range states, some homesteaders had had to leave their claims and stockmen were compelled to remove their 53 Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1918, p. 553. M Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1918, p. 438. 65 Breeder's Gazette, 73 (Jan. 31, 1918), 207. cattle and sheep elsewhere.56 Other reports from the West revealed that men with inadequate capital were trying to establish homesteads, erecting crude shacks, breaking a little land and even sowing some wheat, as the only farming they could do since they had not the capital to buy livestock, and taking jobs in nearby communities while they stuck it out on their unproductive claims. The promise of 640 acres of land wore thin with many such people but still was sufficient to keep them on the land until they could gain title and sell to some rancher.57 Clay Tallman, Commissioner of the General Land Office, was aware of the gloomy predictions stockmen had made concerning the drastic effect the Act of 1916 would have on the public rangelands and he could hardly have been unaware of the unfavorable stories coming out of the West in 1920. Yet that same year he wrote:58 We have now reached the point where the wonderful benefits or dire consequences which were predicted to be the results of this legislation must begin to be apparent. Our records show that up to date more than 36,000 stock-raising homesteads have been allowed; the Geological Service reports that a total of 82,000 petitions for designation have been received; that 67,000 have been acted on and a total area designated of more than 74,000,000 acres (including . . . original entries to which additional stock-raising entries have been applied for). This means that in the very near future the allowed entries will be more than doubled; it means that we will have tried out this act to the extent of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 acres, enough to afford a basis of judgment as to whether this measure is a solution of the graz-ing-land problem or a calamity. As we have frequently predicted, it will be neither but, on the whole, beneficial. Five years later the picture had changed completely. Secretary of the Interior Hu- M Peffer, op. cit., p. 166. 67 Breeder's Gazette for 1919 through 1923 has numerous items bearing on the failure of the 640-acre act, the early ones being perhaps an indication of wishful feeling. ^GLO Annual Report, 1920, pp. 37-38. |
