THE NATION'S INTERESTS ARE FIRST
The policy of the government of disposing of the public lands to individuals has of course been of great benefit to the latter; but we should not lose sight of the fact that the national well-being is the first consideration. As the Commissioner of the General Land Office said in a recent report (1916), "Every acre of public land disposed of under this line of legislation is AN INVESTMENT, the profits to be found in the general development of the welfare of the nation at large."
SAFEGUARDING THE INTERESTS OF INDIVIDUALS
It has been no simple matter to administer our public lands, and mistakes have been made. Sometimes the interests of individuals have not been sufficiently safeguarded. Many settlers have suffered serious loss, and many promising communities have failed, through the taking of homesteads in regions of little rainfall, as in western Kansas and Nebraska. The government now seeks to protect homesteaders against such errors by distinguishing carefully between lands suitable for ordinary agriculture and those suitable only for dry-farming and stock-raising, by informing prospective settlers in regard to the facts, and by allowing larger entries in lands of the latter classes. Another mistake was made in allowing many of the first claimants to stock- raising lands so to locate their claims as to acquire the exclusive use of the only available water supply for miles around, thus making useless other large tracts. This might have been avoided by a little foresight.
ABUSE OF LAND LAWS
On the other hand, the land laws have sometimes been abused. Large quantities of public land have fallen into the hands of speculators whose purpose is not to develop its resources, but to make a profit from the increased value of the land due to the efforts of others. Immense areas of land have thus been withheld from production, or have been made to produce to a limited extent only, to the great loss of the nation.
RAILROAD LANDS
In the days of transcontinental railroad building, large tracts of land were given to the railroad companies by the government, with the expectation that they would dispose of it at reasonable prices to settlers attracted by the new transportation facilities, and would use the proceeds in railway development. In fact, however, large quantities of this land have been held in an unproductive state for speculative purposes.
An illustration of this is the case of the Oregon and California Railroad land grant, made by Congress in 1869 and 1870, and comprising more than 4,200,000 acres, most of which bore a heavy growth of valuable timber. "This railroad grant … contained a special provision to the effect that the railroad company should sell the land it received to actual settlers only, in quantities not greater than one-quarter section to one purchaser and at a price not exceeding $2.50 an acre. By this precaution it was intended that in aiding the construction of the railroad an immediate impetus should also be given to the settlement and development of the country through which the road was to be constructed."
After selling some of the lands according to the terms of the agreement, the railroad company ceased to live up to these terms and sold large bodies of the land to lumber interests, thus putting a stop to the development of the region in the way intended by the government. The government brought action against the railroad company, the outcome of which is that the government has bought back from the company at $2.50 an acre all of the lands of the grant which remained unsold, amounting to about 2,300,000 acres and valued at from $30,000,000 to $50,000,000.