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Show 504 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT regarded the work being done in the Department of Agriculture where an Office of Dry Land Agriculture had been set up in 1906. This office had established 11 stations in the Great Plains to study and experiment in a practical way with the best methods of tillage, rotation and crop sequence, and drought resistant grasses and grains. One of its major achievements had been its earlier introduction of durum wheat which was adapted to dry land farming. The Bureau of Plant Industry, under which the Office of Dry Land Agriculture functioned, in 1906 had issued a timely warning that the recent cycle of somewhat wetter years did not mean a permanent change in the climate of the higher plains and that the dryer years would return as they had in the past, optimistic land agents to the contrary notwithstanding. The Bureau also warned that attempts to colonize large numbers of people who were only acquainted with humid agriculture east of the 100th meridian-and they constituted most of the immigrants going west -would surely lead to disaster. Designation of the land that might prove suitable for dry land agriculture might better have been the responsibility of the Department to which Congress had previously appropriated considerable funds for studies that surely would have enabled it to avoid some of the errors made under the Act of 1909.16 The Enlarged Homestead Act Homestead entries on the public lands offer clear evidence of the tremendous influence of the Homestead Act on the settlement of the West. The number of entries rose steadily from 8,223 in 1863 to 39,768 in 1871, a total which was not to be exceeded until 1879. The Panic of 1873, the swift letdown in railroad 16 Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1906, p. 46; 1907, pp. 190, 450-68; 1908, p. 65; and 79/2, pp. 124,213. building, in immigration, and in the flow of capital west caused entries to decline to 18,675 in 1877. Then the tide turned and entries climbed steadily with some ups and downs until 1881 when they reached 61,638. Then followed droughts, terrible winters in the high plains, and the Panic of 1893. Entries fell to 37,602 in 1891 and 33,250 in 1897. As economic conditions improved, entries moved up to 98,829 for 14,033,245 acres in 1902 and to the second highest peak in 1910, the first year of the Enlarged Homestead Act, when 98,598 entries were filed, for 18,326,715 acres. In this first year of the operation of the Enlarged Homestead Act, 30,331 entries under both Homestead Acts were filed in Montana, 20,955 in Colorado, and 13,541 in New Mexico. Three states which were not initially included in the Enlarged Act also had large entries: South Dakota, 23,918, North Dakota 13,123, and Idaho 9,287. The attractions of the larger unit induced Idaho and California in 1910, North Dakota in 1912, and South Dakota in 1915 to ask to be included among the states enjoying the larger bounty.17 Success of settlers on the 320-acre dry farming tracts was spotty. In Wyoming the rush of settlers to take up the enlarged homesteads was followed by drought years that produced a contraction of land in cultivation and in 1911 and 1912 a sharp decline in the number of homestead entries, but they regained high levels in succeeding years. So anxious was Wyoming to attract population and to develop what in that state would be counted as small farms that it created a Board of Immigration in 1911 and voted $40,000 to bring to the attention of people elsewhere the remarkable possibilities the state offered. "Acts of Feb. 19, 1909, June 17, 1910, June 13, 1912, March 3 and 4, 1915, 35 Stat., Part 1, p. 639; 36 Stat., Part 1, p. 532; 37 Stat., Part 1, p. 132; 38 Stat., Part 1, pp. 953, 1163. |