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Show AN INCONGRUOUS LAND SYSTEM 439 agricultural college scrip included pine lands in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, good agricultural land east of the 98th meridan in Kansas, and San Joaquin Valley land in California. Dozens of others, speculators, ranchers, and lumbermen acquired from a few thou- sand acres to 40,000 acres with the scrip. The rush of people to acquire timber and prairie land at the low prices the scrip permitted and the failure of the General Land Office to keep closely in touch with the local offices as entries were being made led to the million-acre limitation being ex- The 10 Largest Holdings of Land Acquired with Agricultural College Scrip Name Location Acreage Chapman, William S_______________________California-Cornell, Ezra______________________________Wisconsin. Dodge, Satterlee & Mason___________________Michigan.. Friedlander, Isaac__________________________California. Hansell, B., Trustee________________________Michigan.. Harper, Rice, (Jay Cooke et al)______________Minnesota. Howe, Calvin_____________________________Minnesota. Lawrence, Amos A_________________________Kansas___ Miller & Lux_____________________________California. Palms & Driggs___________________________Michigan.. 210,000 499,000 85,000 192,000 65,000 45,000 89,000 62,000 79,000 103,000 Compiled from records in the National Archives. ceeded in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and California, which Congress later sanctioned.12 Estate builders, ranchers, lumbermen and dealers in timberlands, and speculators who entered great areas with the agricultural college scrip also used land warrants, of which there were still many outstanding, and other forms of scrip and cash to increase their holdings.13 Some forms of scrip like the Valentine, Sioux, and Porter-field were especially valuable, for they could be used to enter land that was not subject to cash entry and the Valentine 121 have treated the management of the scrip by various states and land entries made with it in my Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University (Ithaca, 1943) . See also Thomas Le Due, "State Disposal of the Agricultural College Land Scrip," Agricultural History, XXVIII (1954), 99 ff. 13 The use of soldier's additional homestead scrip became another favorite method used by dealers in timberlands to gain ownership of choice public lands not open to unrestricted entry. Attention is given to this form of scrip in Chapter XV on homesteading. Scrip could be used to enter choice land that it was almost impossible to acquire in any other way. Another post-Civil War innovation that, like the Valentine Scrip, made possible substantial entries of especially desirable unoffered land controlling access to water or having a heavy stand of timber, was the use of certificates of deposit. Legislation of 1862 had permitted surveys to be made at the request of settlers and at their expense. After 1871 the amount they deposited in advance for the survey became acceptable in partial payment for a preemption entry. An Act of March 3, 1879, made these certificates of deposit negotiable and acceptable in payment for any land that was subject to entry under the homestead and preemption laws. Over the course of the 17 years from 1861 to 1879 a total of $368,625 had been paid in for surveys which the government might not have made for years to come. Many of the surveys thus requested were in hilly or partly mountainous coun- |