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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 411 time, for a rise in price. Claims sold at $50 to $100 over the government price and, if the practice continued, Beadle warned, the amount of speculatively owned land in the vicinity of the growing towns might become as large and as serious a deterrent to growth as were the entries of speculators on offered land elsewhere in the West.47 In Minnesota, only 8 percent of the land had been offered before 1862 and, consequently, speculative monopolization was substantially less than in Iowa and Wisconsin; thus the state was certain to attract settlers when the Homestead Act went into operation. For 6 years Minnesota led all the states and territories in the number of homestead entries and in 1865 provided 44 percent of the total entries for the country. Fifty-nine percent of the entries made between 1863 and 1870 were carried to final entry by 1875; 64 percent of the entries made between 1863 and 1875 were carried to final entry by 1880; and 62 percent of those made between 1863 and 1880 were carried to final entry by 1885. The variation in success may be attributed to Indian troubles, weather, crop and economic conditions.48 Original and Final Homestead Entries and Farms in Minnesota8 Total Original Entries Since 1863 and Acreage Total Final Entries Since 1863 Total Land Sales Since 1863 Total Farms Year Number Acres Acres 1850 1,605 157 1860 6,489,442 18,181 1870 1880 25,663 62,379 3,158,726 7,295,215 3,860 27,818 9,021,085 10,068,309 46,500 154,008 a It is unfortunate that we do not have statistics of the amount of land sales by the railroads and the State of Minnesota whose combined holdings were more than 20 million acres or one-fifth of the state. Compiled from Donaldson, Public Domain. Notwithstanding the active homesteading we must conclude that a larger number of farms was developed in Minnesota to 1880 through preemption and from sales of land than had been acquired originally by speculators with cash, scrip, and warrants, or by railroads. Elsewhere, i.e., in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri, we can be fairly sure that most homestead entries were made by people anxious to get land for farming. Since most of the public land had already been offered and was open to unlimited purchase with scrip, warrants, or cash, there was no reason for persons to enter timber-land under the Homestead Act, under which it would have taken 5 years to obtain patent or at least 6 months to commute.49 47 Land Office Report, 1871, p. 115. 48 Donaldson, The Public Domain, pp. 351-55, and 1016, gives the number of entries and acreage by states from 1863 to 1882; the acreage of entries may be found in the annual reports of the Land Office thereafter. 49 All public land suitable for farming, in Michigan and indeed all in the lower peninsula, had been offered for sale by 1854, as Dallas Jones has shown in "The Survey and Sale of the Public Lands in Michigan, 1815-1862" (Master's thesis, Cornell University, 1952), maps on pp. 40 and 41 and text on pp. 31 ff. Elsewhere in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, and New Mexico it was the practice of (Cont. on p. 412) |
