OCR Text |
Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 419 of "reconstruction" for political ends or the frauds associated with the gilded age, as all part of the letdown from the moral crusade against slavery and the fight for the preservation of the Union. Others, more realistic, knew that the abuse of the land legislation for selfish purposes, by people at every level, was not new. American history had been punctured with scandals relating to the public lands: the Yazoo frauds, the land speculations of officers of the pet banks, the many defaults of western land officers, the dismissal of Governor Reeder of Kansas for using his office to locate the territorial capital where he had land investments, the grab of the Kansas Indian reservations, and many other instances which A. M. Sakolski took pleasure in detailing in his Great American Land Bubble. The chief difference between these scandals and the misuse and gradual breakdown of the land system after the Civil War was that it was no longer people of influence who were responsible. Instead, many ordinary people (one hesitates to say all westerners) were showing a willingness to perjure themselves when testifying on land matters.59 Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Region Landseekers were approaching the 100th meridian beyond which rainfall averaged less than 20 inches, grain crops were uncertain, and grazing homesteads of large 691 am aware that George Washington and many other Federalists were much troubled about the extensive squatting upon public lands in the 1780's and later, contrary to Federal law, which they regarded as serious crimes. There may be only a matter of degree between the violation of the anti-intrusion laws the West regarded as bad law, and the action of settlers in 1880 in perjuring themselves in the oath they took that they were not entering the land for others, but I feel the latter wrong was much the greater. The strict moralist could not bring himself to do the latter but it was easy for him to resist a law that all frontiersmen thought bad. size seemed to be required instead of the usual 160-acre homestead of the humid area. Commissioner Burdett had seen the need for larger units when, in 1875, he recommended the revival of unlimited sales in the semi-arid regions to enable livestock interests to legally acquire the acreage necessary for their operations.60 One hundred and sixty, 320, even 480 acres-the most that could be acquired in unoffered areas-might be quite insufficient for grazing homesteads. Burdett's suggestion had gotten nowhere for he did not sense the strength of public suspicion that enlargement of the land unit would only serve to accelerate the "monopolization" of the public lands. A land system that was well suited to the area east of the 99th meridian, at least for farming purposes, was too inflexible in regions where cropping was inadvisable and only grazing could succeed. Burdett and Major John W. Powell, whose geological survey of the Colorado River Basin had brought him fame, were anxious to adjust the system to the best uses of the arid lands and thus reduce the premium on fraud. Powell and the National Academy of Sciences also wanted to bring together in one unit in the Department of the Interior the four western geological and topographical surveys then partly under the War Department and partly under Interior. At this point Powell, who had completed a detailed investigation of the functioning of the public land system, presented to J. A. Williamson and through him to Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of Rutherford B. Hayes, his famous "Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States." Powell's report is important because for the first time a man of considerable scientific attainment, whose major geological and topographical work had been centered in the Interior Basin, particularly Utah and the watershed 60 GLO Annual Report, 1875, pp. 6-9. |