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Show SUMMARY 769 created in 1812, and the Senate and House Committees on Public Lands, though it must be said that Congress annoyed the land officials especially in the early period by continually asking for detailed statistics of lands surveyed, offered, and sold, or of collections. Essential as the information was in planning for legislation, assembling it as Congress asked, in detailed form by states and territories required that the too few clerks, already far behind in their regular work, be assigned to the task. The hope of catching up with the delivery of patents, acting upon contested entries, posting tract books and fulfilling other heavy record keeping obligations was thus further deferred. By its requests for reports Congress would blithely pile up obligations for the Land Office, but it was unresponsive when it came to voting appropriations for additional clerks and raising salaries to levels prevailing in other government agencies, so as to secure a more technically competent staff. It is tedious to read over the reports of the Commissioners of the General Land Office who for years placed as their first recommendation the need for expanding the staff and increasing salaries when there were so many other reforms that were badly needed. Yet the Commissioners were right, for better administration-and that meant abler personnel-was the first necessity. Meantime the business of wholesale purchasing of public lands, subdividing them, laying out towns, and retailing lots and small farm tracts became one of the biggest businesses of the country and one on which many of its fortunes were founded. As population grew in the older areas and people swarmed to the new, the demand for land sent prices upward, revealing marvelous opportunities for profit by anticipating future land needs. Land speculation had been one of the early factors behind the establishment of the Colonies. Few of the founders from John Winthrop to George Washington had failed to ac- cumulate land as an investment and few of them thought of a possible conflict of interest between their investments and the legislation or administrative practices they favored that made them possible. As the way was opened for the granting of land for canals, roads, and railroads few people saw anything wrong in favoring legislation that would enhance the value of their lands along the routes of proposed projects. Stephen A. Douglas, John Wentworth, Daniel Webster, and Samuel C. Pomeroy were just four of the members of Congress who supported legislation that promised them high returns on investments they had previously made. Those who had less capital and less political influence could anticipate the coming of settlers to their areas by buying an extra quarter-section, or at least by trying to control it through a claims association. People from high and low ranks indulged in land speculation. Not only did western settlers try to accumulate in proper and legal ways more land than they had the capital and physical energy to develop, but they were also ready to misuse the settlement laws and take advantage of their loopholes, of the dishonesty of local officers, and the cupidity of investigating agents. In some areas they were led to this type of conduct by the fact that the quantity of land they could legally obtain from the Federal government was not a large enough economic unit; in some instances they were bogus settlers acquiring land for large cattle companies or speculators. The second of the early objectives was never discarded. Business interests in the newly developing western states were constantly trying to draw settlers to their communities and to prevent any action that might retard immigration, settlement, and development. Before 1902 many westerners had held that all public lands should be reserved for homesteaders and that none should be sold. In 1889 they had brought |