Homestead law

“ Laying aside for the moment the effect of the settlement, it is, we think, erroneous to regard the entryman's interest prior to actual possession as being nothing more than a color of title. From the making of his entry the homesteader has the right of possession as against trespassers and all others except the United States; he has also an inchoate title, subject to be defeated only by failure on his part to comply with the requirements of the homestead law as to settlement and cultivation. ”

“ Any party will be entitled to initiate a homestead claim to a tract of said lands who is over 21 years of age or the head of a family; who is a citizen of the United States or has declared his intention to become such; who has not exhausted his homestead right either by perfecting a homestead entry for 160 acres of land under any law, excepting what is known as the commuted provision of the homestead law contained in section 2301 of the United States Revised Statutes, or by making or commuting a homestead entry since March 2, 1889 ”

“ In 1885 the defendant applied at the local land office to make a homestead entry of the tract, and the application was denied, the circumstances being such that it could not be allowed. In 1888, while the selection of 1883 was pending, he settled upon the tract with the purpose of acquiring the title by compliance with the homestead law, and continuously thereafter resided upon the tract, occupied, improved, and cultivated it, all the time asserting a claim under that law. ”

“ The consideration was ample, and the only question is as to the validity of the contract to convey. The theory of the homestead law is that the homestead shall be for the exclusive benefit of the homesteader. ”

“ The remainder was located with military warrants, college or Indian scrip, or applied in satisfaction of grants to railroads or for other public uses. The entries under the homestead law during the last year covered 961,545 acres more than those during the preceding year. Surveys have been vigorously prosecuted to the full extent of the means applicable to the purpose. The quantity of land in market will amply supply the present demand. The claim of the settler under the homestead or the preemption laws is not, however, limited to lands subject to sale at private entry. ”

“ So, in the present case, the secretary of the interior came to the conclusion, from the evidence returned by the register, that Johnson must be considered, not as a bona fide homestead claimant, acting in good faith, but as one seeking, by a seeming compliance with the forms of law, to obtain a tract of land for his son-in-law, who had previously exhausted his homestead privileges, observing that the element of good faith is the essential foundation of all valid claims under the homestead law. ”

“ Answer.—The homestead law contemplates immediate settlement by the claimant upon the land; and section 2,297 of the Revised Statutes declares that if at any time after he has filed his entry affidavit it is shown, to the satisfaction of the receiver of the land office, that the claimant has actually changed his residence, “or abandoned the land for more than six months,” at any time, the land shall revert to the government. ”

“ Congress was aware that by this act it was making grants of land far beyond the line of the government surveys, in regions occupied and to be occupied largely by settlers awaiting the advent of the surveyor to prefer their claims. By § 6 the homestead law was extended to the even sections after survey, and expressly withheld from the odd sections before and after survey, and yet in § 3 land 'occupied by homestead settlers' was excepted from the grant. Congress knew that unsurveyed land could not be 'entered' as homesteads; it had in terms prohibited homestead 'entry' on these lands ”

“ In accordance with the provisions of the homestead law, 718,930 homesteads, containing 96,495,414 acres, were established in forty-two years, and besides this principal act, Congress has passed several minor ones of a like nature, that is, acts designed to benefit the actual settler who improves the land. ”

“ Our land laws have served a noble purpose in the past and have become the models for other governments. The homestead law has been a notable instrument for good. To establish a family permanently upon a quarter section of land, or of course upon a less quantity if it is irrigated land, is the best use to which it can be put. ”

“ The law allows but one homestead privilege: a settler relinquishing or abandoning his claim can not thereafter make a second homestead entry. If a settler has settled on land and filed his preëmption declaration for the same, he may change his filing into a homestead, if he continues in good faith to comply with the preëmption laws until the change is effected ”

“ When he’s found out, as he is occasionally, it always appears that he has been careful to keep within the letter of the law. Well, as Leslie says, we’ll get our title clear, and then the wind will be out of Mr. Horton’s sails. I’ve been afraid to make a move, or to do anything except curl down and study the homestead laws all this time. If I had come to an open rupture with him he might have gone down to the land office and told some story of his own invention to the agent that would injure me greatly, for land agents are only too ready to believe evil of land claimants, it seems to me. ”

“ But there was design on the magnificent timber from the very start, and the proposition to throw the reservation open for settlement under the farcical Homestead Act quoted, was merely a ruse to cloak the real motives of those interested, who figured wisely that few honest claimants would attempt to comply with the prohibitive conditions of the law, and go there with the idea of making a home in every sense of the word. ”

“ A short time before the National Homestead Act for aiding citizens to acquire homesteads went into operation, some of the state legislatures had passed homestead and exemption laws designed to protect homesteads or a certain amount of property against loss to the owners in case they should become insolvent debtors, and by the close of the century the legislature of nearly every state in the Union had passed a law of this nature. ”

“ In case of the death of a person after having entered a homestead the failure of the widow, children, or devisee of the deceased to fulfill the demands of the letter of the law as to residence on the lands will not necessarily subject the entry to forfeiture on the ground of abandonment. If the land is cultivated in good faith, the law will be considered as having been substantially complied with. ”

“ Well, as you remember, that law states pretty plainly the purpose of the Homestead Act. It is to provide, out of the public lands, for any citizen not otherwise provided, with one hundred and sixty acres as a farm to cultivate or a homestead on which to live. ”

“ The more homes the broader the foundation of the nation and the more secure.
Everything that is possible should be done to keep this from being a nation of tenants. The men who cultivate the earth should own it. Something has already been done in our country in that direction, and probably in every State there is a homestead exemption. This exemption has thus far done no harm to the creditor class. When we imprisoned people for debt, debts were as insecure, to say the least, as now. By the homestead laws, a home of a certain value or of a certain extent, is exempt from forced levy or sale ”

“ A moment more and, the numb fit of terror passed, I was dancing down the corral path, saying jubilantly to myself: “Oh, ho, Mr. Horton! But it isn’t left alone! The homestead isn’t left alone. I’m here, I’m here!”
Jessie was half crazed with pain, no wonder that she had forgotten, but why should it have escaped my mind, until almost too late, that, under the homestead laws, the laws by which we hoped to obtain a title to this beautiful valley [Pg 56] ranch, the house must not be left untenanted for a single night, until the deed to it was in the claimant’s possession. ”

“ With this understanding of the circumstances in which the provision was incorporated into the Act of 1903 extending the homestead laws to Alaska, we think the meaning and purpose of the provision are manifest. It is in form a proviso and says 'no more than one hundred and sixty acres shall be entered in any single body' by means of soldiers' additional homestead rights. A purpose to prevent the use of these rights in entering a large acreage in a single body hardly could be more plainly expressed. ”

“ This property must be designated as a "homestead" on the margin of the recorded title, and it must be occupied by the owner. "A woman occupying her own property as the home of the family has the right to designate it as a homestead. The husband has the legal right to live with her and enjoy the homestead he has settled upon her." (!) He has, however, the sole right to determine the residence of the family, as in every other State, and by removing from a property the homestead right is destroyed. If the husband abandon the wife and acquire a homestead elsewhere, she has a right only in that. ”

“ Nothing herein contained must be taken as intimating that the Act of June 21, 1906, has any application to the acquisition of homestead rights under the general homestead laws by persons of the Indian race who have acquired or seek to acquire such rights as citizens rather than as Indian wards of the United States. ”

“ The homestead laws were the next to receive attention. By the Act of May 14, 1898, c. 299, 30 Stat. 409, they were extended to that district with the restrictions (a) that 'no homestead' should exceed eighty acres in extent, and (b) that 'no entry' should extend more than eighty rods along the shore of any navigable water, and along such shore a space of at least eighty rods should be reserved from entry between all such claims. ”

“ The influx of homesteaders increased—single men, for the most part, and poor—men who labored six months of the year elsewhere and lived the remaining six months in rude log huts on their claims down on the Skookum. And when the requirements of the homestead laws had been complied with and a patent to their quarter-section obtained from the Land Office in Washington, the homesteaders were ready to sell and move on to other and greener pastures. ”

“ Proceeding to the law in the case, the Chief Justice held that when the Carnegie Company employed watchmen to guard its works, "it mattered not to the rioters, nor to the public, who they were, nor whence they came. It was an act of unlawful violence to prevent their landing on the property of the company. That unlawful violence amounted at least to a riot upon the part of all concerned in it. If life was taken in pursuance of a purpose to resist the landing of the men by violence, the offense was murder, and perhaps treason." ”

“ Carnegie in his famous article in the Forum, the Homestead strike might have been avoided. At the same time, it declared that there was "no excuse for the scenes of disorder and terrorism for which the strikers were themselves responsible," and that "laboring men should learn the lesson that they cannot better their condition by violating the law or resisting lawful authority." The committee doubted the power of Congress to mend matters by legislation, and advised arbitration as the only middle ground on which employer and employe could meet without depreciating the rights of either. ”

“ I deny this, for witness after witness for the prosecution went upon the stand and swore to the contrary. What is the purpose of this move by the prosecution? It is simply a trick; a pure trick of the law to show that there was a cessation of firing which would permit the people of Homestead to withdraw. There was no cessation, but these Pinks poured out a continuous fire upon these defenseless people on the hillside from port-holes cut in the barges. Self-defense is a cardinal principle not depending upon the law of the state, but upon God. It does not depend upon man. ”

“ A mere mob, collected upon the impulse of the moment, without any definite object beyond the gratification of its sudden passions does not commit treason, although it destroys property and attacks human life.206 But when a large number of men arm and organize themselves by divisions and companies, appoint officers and engage in a common purpose to defy the law, to resist its officers, and to deprive any portion of their fellow citizens of the rights to which they are entitled under the constitution and laws, it is a levying of war against the state, and the offense is treason ”

“ Even from far-away Texas came the news that artillery would be shipped to Homestead to help the cause of labor. To many rough fellows, heroic in their way and easily misled by circumstances, it appeared more likely than not, that the killing of those two barge-loads of Pinkerton guards was but the first step in a conflict of national extent, which would wind up in the coming of an industrial millennium. Hardly a man among them imagined that the law would seek atonement for the death of Mr. Frick's hired invaders. ”

“ The owner may, from time to time, change the limits of the homestead by changing the metes and bounds, as well as the record of the plat and description, or vacate it, but such changes shall not prejudice conveyances or liens made or created previously thereto, and no such change of the entire homestead, made without the concurrence of the husband or wife, shall affect his or her rights, or those of the children. ”