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Show CASH SALES, 1840-1862 187 15-20 years, at 50 cents if unsold for 20-25 years, at 25 cents if unsold for 25-30 years and at 12Vi cents (one bit) if unsold for 30 years. The life of the measure was not limited and it seemed to authorize continued repricing of land as it passed each 5-year milestone and remained unsold. The measure differed from earlier versions, however, in that the reductions were to go into effect at once, instead of being gradually introduced. Occupants and settlers could preempt the land on which they were established. If they had been on the land for some time and did not purchase it before it was entitled to a further reduction they could file a declaratory statement and have 11 months in which to make their payments. Each buyer was required to make an affidavit that the land was intended for his own use for actual settlement and cultivation, or for the use of an adjoining farm or plantation owned or occupied by him, and that he had not acquired more than 320 acres under the act. The 320-acre limitation is an indication of the strength of feeling in the West that the public lands should not be alienated in large tracts to capitalists for speculation. Such limitations appeared in all the preemption legislation and later in the Homestead, Timber Culture, and Timber and Stone Acts, as well as the Graduation Act, but not until 1888-91, except in the South, was Congress prepared to limit land entries in any effective way. The limitation in the Graduation Act was not adequately safeguarded. In fact, the act was so loosely drafted, so certain to be subject to gross abuse unless the officials could enforce the condition that the land acquired under graduation be used for actual settlement and cultivation, that Horace Greeley declared "any shrewd monopolist can drive a coach and six through it."21 The act contained no reference to the time within which settlement should take place, no regulation requiring proof of settlement, and no eligibility restrictions on entering parties. Though it was designed "to Graduate and Reduce the Price of the Public Lands long on the market to actual Settlers and Cultivators" it was in no way restricted to the landless or to the poorer class.22 The weaknesses and inadequacies of the act quickly became apparent. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, John Wilson, who had not been friendly to the measure to begin with, declared on November 30, 1854, less than 4 months after its adoption, that it was inherently defective, and had "been productive of much fraud and perjury, and proved seriously injurious to the actual settlers on the public domain."23 News of the large amounts of cheap land available spread quickly and there followed one of the greatest land rushes in American history to get the "bit" (12!/$ cent) land. More than 150,000 people had filed their applications and paid for these lands by 1857 and thousands more did so during the next few years.24 Hordes of people thronged the land offices even before the officers had received instructions concerning the methods of making entry, the fees to be charged, and the forms to be filled out. The register of the Palmyra, Missouri, office wrote the Commissioner on October 11 that over a thousand persons were waiting to make entries and that applications were being received and filed in order but that the entries could not be completed because the instructions had not arrived. Similarly, the register of the St. Louis office wrote on November 2, 1854, that the crush of people in the office eager to make entries was so severe as to make it almost impossible to do any business. They slept on the stairs to be the first in the morning to be received, broke open the doors, and made such a clamor that he had to announce in the local paper that he could only take a certain number daily and urged many to go home and wait for a more favorable oppor- 11 New York Weekly Tribune, Aug. 8, 1854. " Crandall, op. cit., p. 24: 10 Stat. 574. **H. Ex. Doc., 33d Cong., 2d sess., Vol. I, No. I, Part 1 (Serial No. 777), p. 81. M S. Ex. Doc., 35th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. II, No. 11, Part 1 (Serial No. 919), p. 97. |