Speech #600042308

In short. the fact is that most of these lands can be made homes for the people. They are high and healthy and with an abundance of pure water and other conditions that invite settlement and development. The State. in advertising her resources and inviting immigration from overcrowded sections of the country. has pointed to her vast public domain as available for homestead entry and development. We have looked forward to the time when these lands should become the subject of private ownership and go upon the tax books of the counties in which they lie and contribute their share toward bearing the public burdens and maintaining the school systems of the State. It is not denied that the public domain should be adminIstered in the interest of all the people. but the policy established by tile homestead law under which the people of the immediate locality and the State in which the lands lie are made to realize the immediate. and the general public the indirect but not less substantial. benefit is so deeply embedded In the minds of the people of the States where tile conditions exist that they are extremely slow to realize that a great benefit may be secured to them and their children by the appropriation of these lands to a different purpose.