OCR Text |
Show AN INCONGRUOUS LAND SYSTEM 449 mand in the eighties. Elsewhere the supply of public land was being exhausted and the threat of restricting the quantity individuals might enter produced a scramble to secure land before limitations were imposed. Pine and redwood timberland in California, Douglas-fir in Washington and Oregon, the remaining stands of white pine in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the best of the remaining lands suitable for grazing or possibly wheat raising in Dakota Territory, Kansas, and Nebraska attracted pre-emptioners; in many areas they were the only ones who could buy land. Sales which had dropped during the years 1875-79 to the lowest point since the 1820's, averaging less than a million acres in the 5-year period, more than quadrupled, averaging 4,192,351 acres for the years 1880 to 1888. During these years the General Land Office compiled totals of the sales of "land subject to private entry," that is, offered land open to unrestricted entry, separate from the totals of preemption sales, which were made on land not open to "private entry," being "unoffered" land. The table for the United States illustrates how the scramble for both offered and unoffered land was proceeding in the eighties. The location by states of the private and preemption entries for these last years of great activity is helpful in showing where attention was concentrated. Sales of Offered and Unoffered Federal Land* (Acres) Year Offered Unoffered or Preemption Sales Total Public Preemptions on Land Sales Indian Land 1880___________________________________________________________________ 1881_____________ 668,598 721,146 1,587,617 765,221 1882_____________ 1,924,496 1,351,380 3,611,530 310,386 1883_____________ 2,453,024 2,285,710 5,547,610 399,235 1884_____________ 1,750,316 3,206,095 6,317,847 697,129 1885_____________ 476,121 2,311,296 3,912,450 881,850 1886_____________ 631,981 2,279,218 3,773,498 1,132,596 1887_____________ 1,523,546 3,172,411 5,587,910 746,637 1889_____________ 156,476 2,902,028 3,684,549 117,342 a Compiled from GLO Reports. The total public land sales include offered and unoffered sales, timber and stone entries, desert land entries, and smaller miscellaneous entries. This was the last period of large purchases of land. Land reform elements, which are discussed below, finally succeeded in moving Congress to provide that "no public lands of the United States, except those in the State of Missouri shall be subject to private entry."30 Many of these large purchases of timber-land were made to meet future needs of lumbermen or for resale to lumbermen. This is clear from the journals of the lumber trade which recorded sales made by the 30 Ibid., p. 845. original purchasers to actual operators. Corroborative evidence is to be found in a report of the United States Bureau of Corporations for 1913 which analyzed sales of Louisiana timberlands during the 1880's totaling a million acres. Here one finds that the Long Bell Lumber Company, whose total holdings eventually reached more than a million acres, acquired 203,-000 acres in the Calcasieu Valley of Louisiana, all of which was bought from 19 other individuals and groups who had entered the lands between 1880 and 1888. Numer- |