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Show 448 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT evidence of private individuals getting such a price at that time except for the heaviest and best located stands-but if Williamson meant that the land might soon be worth that figure he was not far wrong. Timber-land values had skyrocketed in the past and were again to do so in the eighties when scarcity and depletion talk abounded. It was appreciated that quick fortunes had been made and professional speculators in timberlands were looking for the main chance in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the sixties and seventies, in the southern states in the eighties, and in California, Oregon,- and Washington throughout the years after the Civil War. Most of the investors were also owners of mills and distributing yards, had already invested in stumpage and knew something about cruising timbered tracts. They would have preferred not to invest in timberlands that might not be suitable for cutting for more than 10 years for the costs and the risks were high-interest, taxes, danger of fire, blow downs, and timber hookers. The surveyors' notes which many landlookers had depended on in the past were too general to enable buyers to select lands from them. Investment in timber-land planned for a decade or so called for careful estimates, and equally careful entries so as not to include too much barren or poorly timbered land, or land difficult of access. But when entries were being rapidly made and the lands that appeared to be most promising were being taken off the market investors had to move speedily. In 1887 and 1888, when the southern timberlands were being swept into private ownership at a rapid rate, southerners expressed the fear that they were being purchased for speculation only and questioned the wisdom of opening them to absentee ownership. The large sales, which reached their peak in 1888. (1,223,772), had not been followed by any considerable development of the southern lumber industrv. Purchases of 5,000 or more Acres of Southern Timberlands, 1880-1890a By Northern Individuals and Groups By Southern Individuals and Groups _________Acres_________ Louisiana________ 1,370,332 261,932 Mississippi_______ 889,359 134,270 Alabama______1.. 121,093 463,242 Arkansas_________ 114,334 163,946 Florida__________ 64,243 125,172 Total__________ 2,559.361 1,168,562 •< Gates, "Federal Land Policies in the South," 319-323. Northern timber barons were still operating their northern mills and holding their southern lands for speculation or for later development.28 Alarmed southern leaders feared that the resources of the southern states were being locked up by these large purchases and would not be utilized until the white pine of the North as well as its spruce, red pine, and other cheaper woods should become exhausted. They succeeded in pushing through Congress on May 14, 1888, a measure suspending all further sales of land at private entry in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama until action was taken on more far-reaching legislation then under consideration or until the end of the session. Only homestead entries were to be permitted. Nine weeks later a joint resolution was enacted adding Florida and Louisiana to the three in which sales at private entry were suspended.29 Scramble to Secure Land It was not only the longleaf pine and cypress lands of the South that were in de- 28 Northwestern Lumberman, May 28, 1887, p. 1, quoting a Louisiana paper; Nollie Hickman, Mississippi Harvest, p. 62. 28 25 Stat. 622, 626. There were 14,398,148 unsold and unappropriated acres in the five states in 1890, as follows: Alabama, 1,105,060; Arkansas, 4,902,329; Florida, 5,624,426; Louisiana, 1,358,853; and Mississippi, 1,407,480. |