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Show 396 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT against officers trying to protect government property. Yet, in the light of all this past abuse of the public land laws, Congress did not provide any adequate way of assuring that the homestead law would not be subject to many of the same types of misuse. The homestead law, with its promise of free land to all who would reside upon and make a farm on 160 acres of surveyed public lands, was superimposed upon a public land system with which it was incongruous in many ways. That incongruity was further exaggerated when additional land grants and donations to the states were made with high minimum prices prescribed by law. This, however, was nothing new. Repeatedly, Congress had made major changes in its land laws without considering how they would harmonize with existing measures. (The most marked illustration is the dispute that developed over the priority of swamp and railroad grants.) At the very time Congress was adopting the homestead law it was granting away between 15 million and 20 million acres by the Pacific Railroad Act and within 9 years' time was to increase the total quantity of grants to railroads to 127 million acres. Since it was expected that these railroad land grants would provide a considerable part, or perhaps all, of the cost of constructing the roads, Congress in effect was requiring that the settlers who bought railroad lands should pay for the cost of construction. Furthermore, Congress on March 6, 1868, raised the minimum price of government-reserved sections to $2.50 an acre and permitted homesteaders to enter only 80 acres of them. This quantity might be sufficient for a successful farm in Ohio but was woefully insufficient in central or western Nebraska. Thus 127 million acres within 50 miles of railroads were closed to home-steading and perhaps half as much was limited to entries too small for economic use. Another factor limiting the amount of land subject to homesteading was the Federal grants to new states. For example, when Nebraska was admitted in 1867, two sections in each township were given it for public schools in the expectation that the state would endeavor to gain as high a price from selling or renting as the market permitted. The school sections were not subject to homesteading. In addition, 728,000 acres were given Nebraska for internal improvements, public buildings, and miscellaneous purposes; these also were to be sold, not given to settlers. Over 72 million acres were granted to states which entered the Union after 1862 and earlier grants of some of the older states were increased. A total of 140 million acres were in the hands of states for management and sale after 1862. By congressional or state fiat some of these lands were only available to farm makers at relatively high prices, $10 per acre being the minimum for the states entering in 1889-90. The accompanying table of sales shows the return some of the state lands brought. State Land Sales* State Net Amount of Land Sold to 1935 Average Price Per Acre Idaho (to 1918) Kansas 838,140 3,064,547 $16.90 3.22 Minnesota 2,306,600 6.53 Montana 1,587,488 15.50 North Dakota South Dakota Utah___________ 1,686,436 873,960 3,448,876 16.73 35.22 2.44 a Gates, "The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System," American Historical Review, 41 (July 1936), 659. Kansas lost many thousands of acres of school land to which it was entitled under its Act of Admission because of the way |
