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Show 386 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT for their rate structure and their land policies finally passed into limbo.118 Summary of Grants The two preceding tables are useful for the amount and percentage of their land which individual states received for various purposes and the total amount of grants of land for railroads whether given to the states or direct to railroad corporations. (See also App. C.) Western people wanted free lands and railroads about equally and did not recognize 118 Congressional committees accepted some of the specious arguments of the Association of American Railroads that tended to minimize the importance of the land grants. It is also apparent that the committees having jurisdiction over the two Acts of 1940 and 1945 had little testimony presented to them in support of the plan for requiring the railroads to surrender their unsold lands, though both the Departments did so testify through their representatives. The best summaries of events leading to and the arguments for and against the surrender of the concessions are Charles S. Morgan, "Problems in the Appraisal of the Railroad Land Grants," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXIII (December 1946), 443-54, and David M. Ellis, "Railroad Land Grant Rates, 1850-1945," Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, XXI (August 1945), 207-222. Ellis appraises the literature on the question as of the date of his article. that grants for railroads greatly limited the area which would be open to homestead. They cared little whether the lands went directly to the railroads or through the states to companies. State grants had been quickly turned over to railroad companies and the states had made no effort to profit from them. Making grants directly to the railroads sometimes hastened construction. The acreage here given to the states for railroads or directly to the railroads is only the actual amount received. A good many million additional acres were reserved for the railroads for years, were subject to their jurisdiction and not open to settlement, but were ultimately restored to public entry. These withdrawn and reserved lands are not included in the table nor can their acreage be exactly determined. In addition to this total of lands granted was the 5 percent of the net proceeds from land sales which was given to 24 states and 3 percent which was given to six states. Altogether $20,113,986 was received by the public land states, from the first allotment to Ohio under its Enabling Act of 1802 down to 1966. States profiting most were those early admitted when all or more of their land was open to unrestricted purchasing and before the free lands available under the Homestead Act became a major route to ownership. |