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Show 44 (> HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT count or to file their entries outside the South.22 Repeal of Southern Homestead Repeal of the Act of 1866 was kept before Congress until it was achieved in 1876. The strongest and most articulate opposition to repeal came from the land reformers, now led by William S. Holman of Indiana. Their objective was to extend the restrictions of the Southern Homestead Act to all public lands, thereby bringing to an end the right of unlimited purchase of public lands and achieving the reform for which Greeley and Julian had long worked. They were ultimately to win, but for the time being they went down to defeat. Congress was more influenced by the recommendations of Commissioners Bur-dett and Williamson and Senators James L. Alcorn of Mississippi and Powell Clayton of Arkansas, who advocated repeal and classification and appraisal of all timber lands in the South as well as elsewhere, and their public sale at not less than $2.50 an acre or at their appraised value, if higher. Alcorn and Clayton maintained that timber stealing was widespread because land could be purchased only in small tracts and that many a homestead had been established to gain the right to cut off the tim- aGLO Annual Report, 1875, pp. 9-19. In addition to repeal of the Act of 1866 Burdett urged that fir and pine lands should not be subject to preemption or homestead entry but should be classified, appraised and offered at sale at no less than their appraised value. He doubted the value of the preemption law for settlers, thought it was being too commonly used for the benefit of speculators, and recommended that it be consolidated with the homestead law. As for the land beyond the 100th meridian which was not suitable for irrigation he considered a leasing policy but discarded it in place of granting the same unlimited right of purchase which had existed in states farther east, at the $1.25 price. He seems to have been quite unaware of the strong anti-monopoly feeling in the western states that would never have permitted reviving the right of unlimited purchase. ber and was then abandoned. Hooking of timber from the public lands had long been widely practiced even by the most reputable lumbermen. Shocked at the stories of timber stealing from public lands in the South, Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior, ordered prosecution of all guilty parties and seizure of their logs in 1877. Politics forced a compromise, but some of the large purchases made in 1880 and later were the result of this short period of prosecution of timber thieves.23 The charges of Alcorn and Clayton, the clear evidence of the loss of millions of feet of timber from the public lands, the growing interest of commercial lumbermen outside the South in investments in that region, and southern detestation of the Act of 1866 led to its repeal in 1876. Apprasial of lands and a special act for the sale of timberlands was not adopted at this time though the following year the Timber and Stone Act provided for the sale of timberlands for personal use in tracts not over 160 acres at $2.50 an acre. This measure was not made applicable to the South, however, until 1892.24 The lineup of votes in both Houses on the measure to repeal the Southern Homestead Act provides an instructive sectional division. Southern Representatives and Senators were almost solidly in favor of repeal, while in the House Representatives 23 Speaking of one of the largest sawmills in the South, owned by a highly successful lumberman who had been getting his logs from public lands on the Pearl River, Nollie Hickman says "the passing of the timber lands into private ownership forced the company to turn elsewhere for supplies of raw materials." Hickman has summarized information in government documents concerning the degree to which loggers and sawmill owners had pilfered from public lands and gives the value of the logs of 10 operators who are named. Mississippi Harvest, Lumbering in the Longleaf Pine Belt, 1840-1915 (University of Mississippi, 1962) , pp. 49, 53, 68 ff. ¦!4 GLO Annual Report, 1874, pp. 6, 9; 1875, p. 9; 1876, p. 20. |