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Show 508 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT but there was no indication in the speeches that homesteading in the West was accompanied by many failures. The West was not ready to concede that its lands did not offer a real bounty to settlers but instead turned on the government for hounding "poor" applicants trying to get title.27 Also, it preferred to ignore the thousands of cases of fraudulent entries-50,000 of which were either pending or received in 1912. In his typically sardonic manner, Walter Webb, the historian of The Great Plains, had this to say about the Act of 1912:28 This act seemed to grow out of the realization that on the remaining land the average family could not hold out for five years. The point of starvation was reached short of that, and consequently it would be humane to shorten the reqviired time of residence to three years. Early Optimism The Enlarged Homestead Act was in operation but a short time before efforts were made to provide for stock raising homesteads of 640, 1,280, or even 2,560 acres. Leadership in the move was taken by Frank W. Mondell of Wyoming, the state which was to show the most sustained opposition to leasing. Mondell favored a unit of at least 1,280 acres but was willing to agree to the 640-acre unit, though he doubted that it was sufficiently large to make viable grazing homesteads. In this period of ferment Will C. Barnes, a former cattle rancher in Arizona and in 1913 Inspector of Grazing in the Forest Service, brought out his Western Grazing Grounds and Forest Ranges. A History of the Live-Stock Industry as Conducted on the Open Ranges of the Arid West, with Particular Reference to the Use Now Being made of the Ranges in the National Forests.29 27 Cong. Record, 62d Cong., 2d sess., pp. 1011-26, 3685-91. 28 Walter P. Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, 1931), p. 423. 29 Chicago, 1913. Barnes had been influenced by Pinchot, was a supporter of the grazing policies of the Forest Service, but kept his feet on the ground and was one of the most knowing men in livestock management and grazing problems. He was frequently to be quoted in the debates leading to the adoption of the Act of 1916 and in discussions thereafter respecting its usefulness. He tells of two successive waves of settlers coming into the Great Plains in Kansas and Nebraska, first seeking out the valley land, then moving up into the benches back from the bottom land and having fair crops in their first years. Then drought struck; settlers with meager resources had to abandon their improvements. In the early eighties there was another cycle of years with more rainfall when the second wave of settlers advanced into the Plains. They "were better prepared to meet the vicissitudes of desert farming and had sufficient means to meet a few bad years," they held out longer than the earlier group had been able to do. The third wave of settlers came with the adoption of the Act of 1909 which brought in the new type of settler sometimes called the "kafer corn-er." Again, favorable weather conditions enabled these homesteaders to flourish for a time, the desert was made to bloom with new and exotic grasses and grains introduced by the experts of the Department of Agriculture from the arid parts of other continents. Barnes' conclusion is that there had been no general failure of homesteaders on the 320-acre units. "Here and there failures have occurred, due to spotted rainfall, and a total disregard of the true scientific principles underlying the dry-farming theory. Generally speaking, however, all over this dry-farming region the principle has worked out in a highly successful manner, and unquestionably the dry farmer is here to stay, and must be reckoned with in the |