This cat’s-paw of organized land plunder is securing for his principals a large, a very large, percentage of all the public lands passing under private ownership. It would be safe to say that one holding out of every four passes into speculative hands. Judged by conditions, past and existing, in the two Dakotas, this estimate might be doubled, and yet fall within the facts. On this point see the report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for 1905. The land companies immediately list their newly acquired lands, and by an ingenious system of “booms,” carefully nursed and let loose at the proper time, they advance the price of their lands to a point sometimes double or treble the original market value of the raw prairies. This is wholly, or almost wholly, a paper increase in value. Roads, schools, markets remain as before save for the change wrought by the actual settlers.
This is, in essence, the same thing as the watering of railroad or other stocks, and it is done for the same purpose—that the “ins”—the land speculators—may fatten on the “outs”—the farmers. And if the land valuations now obtaining in the fringe of settlement bordering the public domain be from 25 to 75 per cent water, how about its effect on the land values in older sections—say in Iowa, or Ohio, or Illinois?
Obviously the price will be enhanced. And the immediate, discernible effect of that is to render it more difficult for the landless man to become an owner. I have seen land go from $25 an acre to $60 and over, in Iowa and other States in the East. The land utility is the same as in years gone by. It will raise no more—sometimes less than former years. But every dollar added to the price has increased the rental, and decreased the possibilities of a laboring man becoming owner of his own farm.
Someone will say that this is untrue; that the returns from an acre of land are today greater than in former years. What I mean is that an acre of land cropped for ten or fifteen or twenty years is no more valuable today as a producer of grain or live stock than it was then. The added value of the crop is due to better markets, better implements, better knowledge of agriculture. In other words it is a net gain due to labor and intelligence, and as such should go to labor. Instead of that it is consumed in rent. With every advance in the values of Western lands and the consequent narrowing of the opportunities afforded the landless man of the Eastern and Central States, the values, or rather the prices, of these older lands advance.
And if the speculator is able at this time to force the price of land up by leaps and bounds—if he can take raw prairie and, without adding to its value by so much as one furrow of breaking or one bushel of ripened grain, can make it double his money for him, how will it be when the last of the tillable public lands are taken? How will it be when the only desirable vacant lands are held for speculative purposes? How will it be when there is no alternative between paying some farmer for a part of his holding or paying some land company its price, based upon monopolistic values?
Today, in the West, favored by cheap land—$25 to $30 an acre—I am giving $1.30 as rental for every $1.00 I receive as tenant. Here it still is possible for a man to start single handed and win a farm, but the crops remain about the same, the prices are slowly bettering, the cost of the bare necessities of living is lowering, the price of land is rapidly advancing, the rental is going up, and my wages as a tenant are becoming relatively less. I can still say, “Unless you give me a living chance, I will go to the free lands and make my own home.” I still can pay for a home for myself here. But I know that a decade hence conditions will have changed. There will be no ‘farther West’ in the sense in which we know it today. The increased land values will shut out a great body of men from becoming land owners, or they will achieve their aim only at the expense of a life-time of grinding toil. The basis of a landed aristocracy on the one hand, and of a landless tenant class on the other will have been laid. And you do not live so far to the Eastward, nor are you so deeply buried in the great cities that the thrill of that new birth of despotism shall not reach you, and be a portent of danger to your independence as a citizen and as a man.
Repeal the land laws! Let the settlement of the public domain cease until we know its capabilities. Better to deprive a few worthy men and women of the advantage afforded by the laws than to throw away the birthright of unborn millions. We do not know very much as yet about the ability of the West to sustain population, but this we do know, that no general land law can apply to this great semi-arid region and give anything like equal justice. Investigate carefully the areas desired for settlement. Make the unit of the homestead variable, according to the amount needed to support a family. In irrigated sections but a few acres will suffice. In even the drier districts it may well be questioned whether more than 160 acres should be granted any one settler. We cover altogether too much ground. Our Western farming has borne bitter harvestings of the weed called “land hunger.” We need to concentrate.
And whatever laws may be enacted, they should be of such a character as will stop speculation in lands intended for the people. Let the lands be sold, and no title pass until after a reasonably long term of years, and after actual continuous residence and actual valuable improvements have shown beyond question that home making was the primary object of the settler.
But the urgent present need is for repeal of the various laws that permit this land plunder. We can settle details of future administration later on. We cannot later on return to the people their stolen lands.
