Have the gentlemen who framed this amendment ever been onthe frontier. and known or talked with men who have been out on unsurveyed Government lands and experienced all the difficulties and troubles incident to the settlement of unsurveyed lands. and taken that into account ? Under the provisions of this amendment it is contemplated that every acre of the agricultural lands of the United States is to be entered upon by settlers before any survey whatever is made by the Government. It is absolutely impossible to locate a vast immigration upon unsurveyed lands without more or less broiling or bickering and local strife. The history of our frontier twenty years ago. when it was the habit of our people to move upon the unsurveyed lands. is a record of crime. casualties. rencennters and bloodshed because of the conflicting rights of squatters who did not know where their boundary began or where it ended. Two or three squatters often found themselves on the same quarter section. only one man could permanently locate. the others had to abandon their improvements and move on.
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immigration