History of public land law development

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654 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT coast and in the intermountain region." Government construction of irrigation works with an 80-acre maximum on irrigation homesteads and the excess-lands feature appearing in his measure of 1902 (it may also have been in the bill of 1901) might help "to disintegrate the monopolistic holdings... ."50 Supporters of the Newlands bill with all its possibilities for the economic development of the 11 western states had an easy time putting it through Congress in 1902. No long and bitter battle such as had preceded the adoption of the Preemption and Homestead Acts proved necessary. Some opponents had exhausted themselves in the previous Congress, but a more important factor was the report by Frank W. Mondell of Wyoming, who had been Assistant Commissioner of the General Land Office under President McKinley. His report was more restrained concerning the amount of land that could be irrigated than some of the earlier reports. In one place Mondell mentioned from 35 million to 70 million acres and in another, quoted the director of the Geological Survey as maintaining that in 38 years the government could aid in irrigating 20 million acres and private capital could irrigate 40 million acres. Mondell showed the impossibility of the states undertaking any extensive irrigation program, emphasized that the Federal program would be self-liquidating and that costs would come from income from the lands, not as appropriations from the Treasury, argued that expansion of the area in cultivation would do no more harm than had the agricultural development of the Great Plains but would materially aid the national growth, and he upheld the constitutionality of the measure.51 One opposition argument that was advanced with considerable foresight was that in developing great reclamation projects and placing homesteaders on the irrigated land, for which they would have to make payments over many years, Congress would be creating a class of debtors and would be subject to a constant clamor from them for relief as it had been before 1820 when public land was sold on credit.52 W. P. Hepburn of Iowa called the measure "the most insolent and impudent larceny that I have ever seen embodied in a legislative proposition involving filching from the common fund," a "give away of an empire. . . ." Other Representatives of New York, Pennsylvania, and Iowa fulminated against it but to little avail. Americans had heard and read so much about the new frontier of opportunity that reclamation of the arid lands was expected to open up that they wanted no delay and brooked no opposition. The measure passed the House by an overwhelming vote of 146-55 with generous support from all sections, although eastern and middle western Republicans cast 41 negative votes. There was no division in the Senate.53 Reclamation Act of 1902 The Newlands bill deserves to rank with the Homestead Act of 1862 with which it was frequently compared, as one of the most significant measures in shaping the development of the West.54 As adopted, 60 Cong. Record, 56th Cong., 2d sess., Jan. 9, 15, 30, 1901, pp. 784, 1056, 1701; 57th Cong., 1st sess., App., pp. 253-65. 61 House Reports, 57th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 6, No. 1468 (Serial No. 4404), pp. 1-17. 52 Ibid., pp. 14-15. Gilbert M. Tucker (ed.), Country Gentleman, expressed his fear of irrigation development once the government decided to subsidize it in Irrigation Schemes of the West (Albany, 1901), which originally appeared in the Annual Report of the New York State Agricultural Society for 1900. 63 Cong. Record, 57th Cong., 1st sess., June 13, 1902, pp. 6742, 6762, 6778; House Reports, 57th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 6, No. 1468 (Serial No. 4404), pp. 14-15. 64 Arthur B. Darling, The Public Papers of Francis G. Newlands (2 vols., Boston, 1932), passim.