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Show WHOSE PUBLIC LANDS? 27 public land sales and to be increased $1,000 annually during the next 10 years. Such a modest request, calling for only $15,000 for each state and territory at the outset and only $25,000 for each in 10 years time, was in sharp contrast to the entire net proceeds from land sales which MorrilPs previous bills had attempted to obtain for education. At the outset only $705,000 would be required annually and in 10 years the amount would be only $1,200,000, whereas cash receipts of the General Land Office in 1890 were $7,780,000.65 Fifteen thousand dollars seems small, even petty today, when it would scarcely pay the salary of one professor, but it was not small in 1890. In that year, in fact, it was 50 percent more than the entire amount spent on agriculture at Cornell University, the New York State A & M institution. The representatives of the land grant institutions could well feel that they had won a major victory in this second Morrill Act. One may hazard the guess that the sum authorized by it was greater than all A & M institutions were expending on agricultural education in 1890 and greater than the total income all the institutions had received from the endowment derived from proceeds of the grants of 1862. Capitalized at 6 percent interest, the $705,000 was the equivalent of the return on an endowment of $11,745,000 and when the full sum of $25,000 was reached in 10 years, the annual payment would be the return on an endowment of $19,992,000. At the same time, western opponents of MorrilPs efforts to enable the older states to draw specific benefits from the public lands could well feel that by giving way on this small allotment to satisfy the man who had pressed them so hard and had won a major victory against them in 1862, they might forestall something much more unacceptable. Furthermore, the agricultural lobby was assuming strong proportions and some compromise seemed wise. One opponent of the 65 GLO Annual Report, 1890, p. 8. Morrill Act said of the many representatives of the Agricultural Colleges who came to Washington in 1890 to lobby: They have haunted the corridors of this Capital; they have stood sentinel at the door of the Committee on Education; they have even interrupted the solemn deliberations of that body by imprudent and impudent communications. They have buzzed in your ears, sir, and in yours, and in the ears of every member of the House. It has been an organized, strong, combined lobby for the benefit of the agricultural colleges of the country. He found their lobbyists far more upsetting to the decorum of the Congress and more objectionable than any other pressure group of the time. The lobby's activities and the desire to appease Morrill and settle for little led the Senate to approve the second Morrill Act without division and the House to vote 135 to 39 for it. It was signed into law on August 30, 1890.6fi For the fifth time Congress had been persuaded to authorize drafts upon the public lands or the proceeds therefrom for the benefit of non-public-land states as well as for public land states, but it was the last victory to be gained. Furthermore, the total benefit the non-public-land states obtained from the Deposit and Distribution Acts, the land grants of 1862, the Hatch Act, and the second Morrill Act was a mere bagatelle compared with the 181 million acres given to the new states for various purposes and the 94 million acres given to western railroads to aid in their construction.67 Yet the West would not permit the East to forget that the Original States had retained all their public lands within their final borders. On the other hand eastern representatives tended to insist, 66 Cong. Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., June 23 and Aug. 19, 1890, pp. 6372 and 8839; 26 Stat. 418. 67 The total acreage granted to the public land states exclusive of Alaska was 197,555,625 by 1932. Alaska may ultimately receive 100 million additional acres. GLO Annual Report, 1932, p. 50. I arrived at the former figure by deducting the amount of land scrip granted the non-public-land states from the total grants to all the states. |