History of public land law development

page 480

480 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Settlement Proceeds Despite Abuses That mineral and timberlands and lands enjoying access to water in the semi-arid regions were being acquired through fraudulent use of the settlement laws seems sufficiently documented but what of the lands east of the 102d meridian where grain was being raised? Were the Commissioners of the Land Office correct in assuming, as they did, that the settlement laws were so widely abused as not to justify the continuation of any of them but the Homestead Act? It is striking that the Commissioners and the members of the Land Commission of 1879 appear to have been more concerned with failures than they were with successes. One of the best ways to determine success of the homestead law is to ascertain what proportion of the entries were carried to final entry and patent, always bearing in mind that all but ex-soldiers had to spend at least 5 years on their tracts before they could gain title, and for many the gap was longer because droughts forced them to leave the land for a year. Why did not the Commissioners point with some pride to the great number of farms that were being created, as the censuses of 1870, 1880, and 1890 revealed and, more directly, to the number of final homesteads and final entries of timber culture claims? Even if one were to concede that all the preemption entries and commuted homesteads were intended for quick resale or were made for the benefit of third parties, and no such view is correct, there still were almost as many final homesteads and final timber culture claims as there were preemptions and commuted homesteads in the 10 years between 1881 and 1891. A total of 251,389 for he records that he mortgaged it for $200, presumably $200 above the cost to him of $200, and with that in hand "started for the land of Emerson, Longfellow and Hawthorne, believing that I was in truth reversing all the laws of development, breasting the current of progress, stemming the tide of emigration." A Son of the Middle Border (New York, 1919), pp. 301-317. persons carried their original homestead and timber culture applications to final entry in these years as compared with 254,609 people who either bought land through the preemption law or commuted their homestead to a cash entry. But it is not correct to assume that none of these latter entries were made for the purpose for which the laws were framed, that is to enable settlers to acquire land for farms. The western critics of Sparks, particularly those in Kansas and Nebraska, were so angry with him for the statements he made as to the high proportion of fraudulent entries in their states and to his order suspending patents that they could scarcely confine themselves to parliamentary language. Some of their protests were absolutely silly, as when one Representative from Nebraska said that the administration of the laws could be trusted to the people and no spies in the form of investigating agents were necessary.52 But when another Representative, in answer to the charge that 90 percent of the preemption entries were fraudulent, pointed to the many thousands of settlers moving upon the lands, creating farms, developing new counties, and cited census data in proof, there was no reply.53 The West was growing mightily, notwithstanding all the fraud 52 Cong. Record, 49th Cong., 1st sess., June 15, 1886, pp. 5735-36. 53 Cong. Record, 49th Cong., 1st sess., June 15, 1866, p. 5737. Bishop W. Perkins, Representative from Kansas, had good reason to point out that despite all the fraudulent entries settlement of the West was proceeding at a rapid pace. Like James Laird of Nebraska whose furious diatribe against Sparks was attributed to the fact that the Commissioner had suspended entries in which he or his brother were interested, Perkins was not made happy by the charge that "the men who are clamoring against the order of Commissioner Sparks are largely those who manage the loan-office business in the west, who have traded upon these dishonest pre-emptions, who have made loans upon them." Perkins ran a loan office business in Kansas where much fraud was charged. Ibid., p. 5739.