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Show 766 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT tion, it is easy to see that the influence of these classes was large. Persons engaged in the land business wanted no restrictions placed in their way of profit, no regulations such as were suggested by the Commissioner of the Land Office at one time, no investigations of their activities. On the positive side they favored legislation that would attract immigration, provide internal improvements and encourage statehood, and they joined with pioneer settlers in booster activities that would stimulate a demand for land and a rise in its value. The third objective of using the public lands to reward veterans of past wars was pursued generously by Congress. Even if they had served only a few days, veterans of all wars through that with Mexico were given warrants they could exchange for land, first in military tracts, later anywhere there was public land open to entry. True, the maximum grant of 160 acres, which was given to officers as well as men, was small in comparison with the more generous bounties officers had received in the colonial period, but in a more democratic age the old disparities between ranks seemed less desirable. The great majority of the warrants were sold at well below the government-minimum price for land, thereby reducing the cost of land for speculators and such settlers as acquired them. Very early the public land states began to exhibit disenchantment with Federal ownership, administration, and determination of policy concerning the public lands. They recalled that they were admitted into the Union "on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects, whatever," and yet were denied ownership of the un-granted land within their boundaries, whereas Massachusetts and all others of the Original Thirteen had retained the un-granted lands within their boundaries. Furthermore, the new states had been required to make a compact that they would not tax the newly granted lands for 5 years after they were sold. To win the acceptance of such compacts the new states were offered one thirty-sixth of the public lands within their borders for schools and smaller grants for other purposes. No state was content with such a bargain. Some tried to induce the Federal government to cede its lands to them; others strove to gain larger donations and over the course of years Congress did become increasingly liberal. School donations were increased from one section in each township to two and finally to four, large grants were given for agricultural colleges, and, most important, for the construction of roads, canals, and railroads, the dredging and improvement of navigable rivers, and for irrigation. The states having found a way of gaining ownership of a portion of the public lands came forth with many proposals for internal improvements, some dubious to say the least. Most questionable was the donation of the swamplands to the states which were expected to drain them-something that strict constructionists thought the Federal government lacked the power to do. Grants for public schools, for roads, canals, and railroads could be justified, said those who always searched for specific authorization in the Constitution for any action they might favor, on the ground that they would enhance the value of the remaining lands and thereby bring to the government as great a return as if no land had been given away. By giving one half the land in alternate sections for internal improvements and raising the price of the reserved sections to the double-minimum there would be no loss. Congress, having found a nearly perfect rationalization for grants it wished to make, was willing to vote huge grants to the transcontinental railroads in 1862-71. Through the granting process Congress was experimenting with bounties, subsidies to worthy objects that could not be achieved, at least not at that time, without |