Speech #440008462

This act provided that they could obtain these lands in small bodies by homestead settlements. and that they should not be crowded out by having public sales and then preemption rights under which the whole body of these lands might fall at a very cheap price into the hands of large holders. sometimes called speculators. and others. and thus deprive the poor and weak populations of these States of the benefit of the homestead laws. That was the philosophy upon which this act passed. and I remember it struck me at the time. as it evidently did a majority of both Houses of Congress. as being a most beneficent and humane measure. Now. it is pyoposed to repeal it. and to turn what there is left of the public lands in these States over to the common effect of the statutes prevailing in other States about the disposition of public lands. under which. as we all know. much injury has been done to the States of the great West. as they have been very properly called. by speculators getting hold of large tracts of land. to say nothing of grants to corporations of large tracts. who hold them in one form or another much longer. it may be. than the statute intended they should. in restraining immigration aid stopping the filling up of good lauds with settlers. This law as it stands simply does not open to sale at a dollar and a quarter an acre these fertile lands and these lands covered with timber Which are worth. really. by and by. a great deal more. as timber is growing scarcer and scarcer in this country. to purchasers who. buying at public sale. can buy in unlimited quantities. locate bountyland warrants upon thein. and all the thousand ways that are known to northern andwestern people of. as they say. out West. "scooping" -I believe that is the expressionlarge bodies of land. and then holding them for a rise. for speculative purposes. That sort of thing does not do the community in which the lands axe any sort of good. it does not do the public any good. because the actual amount of rovene derived from these public sales is of course very small.