I want to stop it here and now. and I should be glad if we could devise any means which would compel the great landholders of the West to break up theirgreat farms and holdings and sell them out to individual citizens in amounts of one hundred and sixty acre3. Undoubtedly tlheyhave now secured a legal title to their lands. and that can not be done so long as they shall find it profitable to hold them and farm them in these largeamounts. Ifwe preventthem from importing contract labor. as we have prevented the people holding the land in California from importing cheap Chinese labor. we shall within a few years compel the division of those great farms and great holdings in the West. I believe that to be for the best interests of the country. When there comes a time of depression upon labor in the East. as there is today. the Eastern mechanic and laborer ought to find an abundance of public land in the West upon -which he can settle under the homestead act. but it is a fact well known to the Senate and the country that nearly all the available and desirable public lands have been seized under one form of law or another until today nearly all the public lands which have been surveyed are covered over by preemption claims. or by desertlandact claims. or by treeculture claims. and there is little or nothing left for the actual. bona fide settler from the East who would go out and take up the public lands. if this bill will do anything to break up that system of farming let us have it and make it as stringent as possible.
Keywords matched
contract labor