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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 381 to achieve because of the Supreme Court dictum that the grants belonged to the railroads once they were made. A series of measures succeeded in bringing about the forfeiture of several grants, one or two with the approval of the railroads. In 1890 after long agitation a general forfeiture act was adopted providing that unearned grants of projected railroads should be forfeited to the United States. The measure satisfied few of the agrarians who were most anxious to have the huge Northern Pacific grant forfeited, or at least that portion along the Cascade branch which was built after 1879. The forfeiture act did cause relinquishment of some 2 million acres along the branch of the railroad down the Columbia from Wallula to Portland, which had not been built. (The Northern Pacific had acquired another line, already built, that joined these two points.) Aside from this forfeited segment the Act of 1890 "was virtually an official confirmation" of the Northern Pacific grant, as David Ellis has said. Opponents of forfeiture had seen that the pressure for action was irresistible and had given way, in effect accepting the lesser evil in order to prevent the greater.109 It was the land grants that persuaded capitalists to invest in securities of the railroads and enabled the railroads to advance far beyond the zone of settlement, to be the true pioneers in opening up new areas to growth. That some were built too far in advance of need must be conceded, especially in the light of their subsequent bankruptcy.110 The strenuous immigration promotion campaigns undertaken by the land grant railroads were felt all over Europe and in the older 109 Ellis, "Forfeiture of Railroad Land Grants," pp. 52-55. 110 For recent theoretical studies of the premature building of railroads in the United States see Robert W. Fogel, The Union Pacific Railroad. A Case in Premature Enterprise (Baltimore, 1960) and id., Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (Baltimore, 1964); and Albert Fishlow, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). states. The results are to be seen in the rapid settlement of the West which, it had been earlier thought, would take one or two centuries. By 1890, the Superintendent of the Census could say: "The Frontier is gone." The rush of new states into the Union in 1876, 1889, 1890, 1896, 1907, 1911, and 1912, the vast outpouring of the new West in wheat, other grains, and animal products all were made possible by the railroads, and they in turn by the land grants. Later generations were to question the wisdom of the policy but few could have foreseen the subsequent problems in advance. Land Grant Rates Railroad land grants to states and later to corporations were given solely to aid in construction and had to be earned by the building of the roads. There were no mineral reservations in the grants before 1862. Certain limits were placed in the measures, for clearly Congress had no thought of tying up land indefinitely for enterprises existing only on paper. The Chicago and Mobile Act of 1850 provided that if the railroad was not completed in 10 years the unsold portion of the grant was to be forfeited and the States of Illinois, Alabama, and Mississippi were required to pay to the United States any amount they had received from portions they had sold, but all titles they had given on such sales were not to be disturbed. In all later grants to states it was specified that if the railroads were not completed in 10 years the unsold portion of the lands should revert to the government.111 All railroad lines aided by land grants of the fifties were to transport "property or troops of the United States" free of charge and were to carry United States mail at prices set by Congress. Beginning with the Union Pacific Act of 1862 Congress provided for the reservation of minerals in the granted lands but modified 111 9 Stat. 466. |