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Show 278 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT i ¦{ 1 ( c t *-" / j a * r • 2 s ** I*' | I T E 1 4 1 i si l2 \5 vwi ^l Pried Per Acre of 160-Acre Land Warrants, 1847-1862 ation lands bought at prices of \2lA cents to $1 an acre, depending on the time the land had been on the market. Warrants of 1855, which were acceptable for preemption, were almost as good as land office money, except that where a quarter-section contained less than 160 acres a full warrant had to be used. Lowest quotations always applied to the 120-acre warrants and highest to the 40- and 160-acre warrants. In seven of the years between 1848 and 1860 lands entered with warrants exceeded those entered with cash, and in three of the years in which cash sales were larger, the sales of low priced graduation lands pushed them up, not sales of $1.25 land.82 Naturally, government income from land sales shrank sharply during these years when warrants constituted the principal land office money, but until 1858 this was not a serious matter. In 1836, income from public lands had constituted 48 percent of the government's entire income; by 1853, receipts from land sales had declined to 2 percent of the total government income. There was an upsurge in 1854, 1855, and 1856 when the income from land sales was 11, 17, and 12 percent respectively but it fell back to 2 percent in 1861 and to a minuscule three-tenths of 1 percent in 1862.83 Bitterness Toward Bounty There was a good deal of bitter feeling about the bounty land acts in the public land states, especially in Iowa, Wisconsin, 82 Paul W. Gates, "Charts of Public Land Sales and Entries," Journal of Economic History, XXIV (March 1964), 22 ff. 83 Calculated from data in Historical Statistics, p. 712. |