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Show 180 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT evidence of hasty liquidation. Sales began slowly almost as soon as the land was acquired, and continued to rise as conditions revived. Nine tracts were sold in the worst of the depression years. One fact that stands out from an analysis of the sales of Grigg is that many of the purchases were for small, 40-acre tracts. In the four counties Grigg sold 83 tracts of less than 50 acres, mostly quarter-quarters between 1837 and 1852.5 One would like to know whether they were bought by farmers who already had a small stake in the land and were now extending their operations, or whether they were made to settlers with limited resources who were starting on a small scale. Except for 1838 and 1843, immigration to the United States continued to expand despite the depression, indicating that the propulsive force of poorer conditions abroad was more important than economic conditions in the United States in setting the tide of immigration in motion. In 1842, 1845, and 1846 the number of immigrants arriving in the United States reached new highs and thereafter rose rapidly to 297,024 in 1849 and 369,980 in 1850. The rate of population growth in the United States was 35 percent in the forties as compared to 32 percent in the previous decade. America was headed for another period of rapid economic expansion which was to be accompanied by another and greater onslaught on the public lands s Neither Grigg nor his agents pressed their land on the market to get early sales nor did they seem to have difficulty in making collections. The modest advances they made in prices suggest that they were willing to accept lower prices for cash, whereas most agents and owners strove to get the highest possible price by offering terms of 4 and more years. The two largest sales made by Grigg were 3,589 acres in Morgan County sold for $10,808 10 Jacob Strawn, who was developing a bonanza farm, and 1,320 acres in Sangamon County sold in 1858 to John J. Mitchell for $11,880. The business was nearly closed out in Sangamon County by 1864; by then 26,992 acres had been sold for $123,387. This was no fabulous profit but probably constituted a fair interest on the original investment after the deduction of all costs. and by major changes in the manner of public land disposal. Neither the West nor the East was satisfied with the compromises it had made to assure passage of the measures providing for the management, survey, and disposal of the public lands. Congressmen from the East could not forget that their cessions had first created the public domain and that their tax money was used to acquire Louisiana, Florida, and California, but that when it came to granting lands for worthy purposes only the West received grants. Public schools, universities, roads, canals, and, beginning with 1850, railroads were being aided in western states with generous subsidies of public lands, but no such aid was forthcoming to the eastern states. At the same time, the West was contending that pioneers who were creating the new commonwealths and pushing the frontier farther west were being penalized by having to pay for land whose value they created by their labor. The West also resented the uniform price that applied to all public lands, no matter how broken, hilly, swampy, or infertile they might be or how long they had been subject to entry and rejected by landlookers. Partisans of both sections advanced many arguments in behalf of their favorite proposals. The West first demanded cheap land graduated in price by the length of time it had been in the market, and, subsequently, free land. The East wished to maintain a high-price policy to prevent the draining off of its population and to assure revenue for the government. It looked with favor on grants for internal improvement, for agricultural colleges, and for improvements in the care of the insane, if such grants would directly benefit their section. After the adoption of the Preemption Act of 1841, the first major change in public land policy which made land cheaper was the issuance of bounty land warrants to those who had served in the armed forces during |