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Show USE AND ABUSE OF SETTLEMENT LAWS, 1880-1904 491 enter and acquire land for them and then assign it. The assignment clause of the Act of 1891 on its face seemed intended to prevent assignment of rights but by a peculiar interpretation it was held to permit transfers. The commission's recommendations were brief: classification should be pushed; the President should be authorized to set aside grazing districts and the Secretary of Agriculture be permitted to establish controls over them and to charge moderate fees for use of the range; the right to exchange land within the forest reserves for lands outside should be withdrawn; and provision should be made for the purchase of needed privately owned land within the reserves; the Timber and Stone Act should be repealed; and the sale of timber on unreserved land should be authorized; 3 years' residence should be required before commutation; 160 acres should be the maximum to be acquired under the Desert Land Act and actual residence for 2 years with specified improvements and the production of a valuable crop on one-fourth of the area and proof of provision of an adequate supply of water should be required. In conclusion, the commission said: "The fundamental fact that characterizes the present situation is that the number of patents issued is increasing out of all proportion to the number of new homes."76 Though the correlation between the number of final entries in any western state and the number of farms shown in existence in those states was not worked out by the commission, some attention may be called for here. For example, the Census of 1900 shows that North and South Dakota-in which the Northern Pacific Railroad had a land grant 80 miles wide on the alternate section pattern which had long been on the market-had 97,954 farms, whereas 120,678 homestead, timber culture claims, and commuted homestead entries had been patented. In Wyoming, through which the Union Pacific Railroad had been built by 1869, there were 5,880 farms or ranches in 1900, many of which were established on land acquired from the Union Pacific, but 6,675 homesteads, commuted homesteads, and timber culture claims had reached the patent stage. What was the impact of the commission's Report? Congress carried out only one recommendation - the repeal of the forest lieu provision of the Act of 1897- which is treated later. Actually, repeal was accomplished before the report of the commission was transmitted to Congress, and was the result of evidence then coming out of the extensive frauds involving members of Congress, land officers, and other persons in authority who had taken advantage of loopholes in the provision. It was achieved because "the lieu land privilege displeased the west as much as it did the commission", says Miss Peffer.77 Furthermore, repeal was made palatable to major economic groups having exchanges under way, all of which the repeal measure saved.78 Otherwise, the recommendations were disregarded, at least for the moment, by a Congress whose western members were generally hostile to the report, and elsewhere it attracted little attention. Classification, as heretofore, was only to come piecemeal; commutation, timber and stone and desert land entries were to continue to be subject to great abuse; and grazing control on public lands, save within the national forests, was to be delayed for another generation. Two steps taken in 1908 prevented abuse of the settlement laws to some extent. Congress in an Act of March 28, 1908, 'Ibid., pp. xii-xxiv. 77 E. Louise Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain, Disposal and Reservation Policies (Stanford, Calif., 1951), p. 48. 78 Act of March 3, 1905, 33 Stat. 1264. |
