Land policy

“ As we view the policy from the year 1903 and from the midst of a populous valley, in which land values have risen from one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre to a hundred or two hundred dollars in most fertile farm tracts, and to thousands in urban centres, we can but regret that these lands themselves had not been held inviolate, and can but wish that only their rentals had been devoted to the high uses to which the nation and State had consecrated these lands. ”

“ The policy originally adopted relative to the public lands has undergone essential modifications. Immediate revenue, and not their rapid settlement, was the cardinal feature of our land system. Long experience and earnest discussion have resulted in the conviction that the early development of our agricultural resources and the diffusion of an energetic population over our vast territory are objects of far greater importance to the national growth and prosperity than the proceeds of the sale of the land to the highest bidder in open market. ”

“ The conception of land classification as a business policy on the part of the Government as a landed proprietor belongs rather to this day of more intensive development. At present current public-land legislation calls for highest use, and hence official investigation of natural values and possibilities must precede disposition. ”

“ It has been the policy of the Government heretofore to distribute the public land among the people in such quantities as would enable all desiring to engage in agriculture to do so as land-owners, and not as renters. ”

“ Land Reforms — In the implementation of our established policy of giving land to the landless, the Government issued during the last four years more than 162,219 patents as compared to only 25,440 during the administration that ended December 30, 1953. ”

“ Not only would the land be brought within the means of a larger number of purchasers, but many persons possessed of greater means would be content to settle on a larger quantity of the poorer lands rather than emigrate farther west in pursuit of a smaller quantity of better lands. Such a measure would also seem to be more consistent with the policy of the existing laws--that of converting the public domain into cultivated farms owned by their occupants. ”

“ There is another advantage of Government cooperation that will inure greatly to the benefit of the settler. The Government may readily apply the policy it now uses in connection with privately owned lands within reclamation projects. It requires the owners to enter into a contract by which they agree to accept a certain maximum price for their land if sold within a given period of years. This price is based upon the value of the land before reclamation. ”

“ Shall we squander the blood of our sons and the marrow of the land in destructive wars, for the profit of the enemies of free labor, while it is a peaceful development to which we owe our power in the world? Adopt the exclusive economic policy of the planting interest! Shall our mineral wealth sleep undeveloped in the soil? Shall our water-powers run idle, and the bustle of our factories cease? Shall the immense laboring force in our increasing population be deprived of the advantage of a harmonious development of all the branches of human labor? ”

“ Now my theory and belief is, and always has been, that the public lands should be given to those who will cultivate and improve them—actual settlers who will make for themselves and their descendants a home—and not throw this munificent gift of the National domain into the hands of land-sharks and speculators. Every person taking a claim, and those now holding claims under any of the different acts of Congress, should occupy and cultivate such lands according to the spirit and intent of the laws granting them the same. ”

“ The right of all men to participate in the benefits of the soil by the State ownership thereof can be claimed from the fact that land is a natural agent, and that the value of land arises from, and is maintained by, the aggregation of population and the exercise of industry by a people. (Cheers.) The value thus imparted belongs to the people, and not to an individual or a class. That a national land system would be the best for society and good government is self-evident. ”

“ To revert to the parallel of the disposition of land made by the owner of an estate, who certainly would not place his kitchen - garden in the loveliest part of his park, do not let the Nation surrender forest or hillside, but, preserving them intact, apportion for purposes of cultivation the less beautiful, flatter, and probably more productive ground. Let the public watch how many of the schemes brought forward relate to regulation, not inclosure. ”

“ Giving up the plan of using these lands for ever as a fund either for revenue or distribution—ceasing to hug them as a great treasure—renouncing the idea of administering them with a view to regulate and control the industry and population of the states, or of keeping in subjection and dependence the states, or the people of any portion of the union, the task will be comparatively easy of striking out a plan for the final adjustment of the land question on just and equitable principles. ”

“ I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual report and before your Committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp, and cutover lands which might, if the States were willing and able to cooperate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. ”

“ Let our government instead take over all private, state, or federal unproductive lands, whether it is fertile, arid or marsh. Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agriculture Economics on federal rural lands, on page 7, shows that the federal lands, swamps and marshes are 3,000,000 acres, barren and brush land 40,000,000 acres, non-forested range land 234,000,000 acres, crop land 4,000,000 acres ”

“ The land for the people, first of all. As clear as daylight was the right of the people to the land: let the State assume possession, and manage it—its mines and minerals, its agriculture, its public grounds and parks—for the benefit of all, not for the profit of a pampered few. ”

“ The land laws need complete revision to secure proper conservation on the one hand of land that ought to be kept in public use and, on the other hand, prompt disposition of those lands which ought to be disposed in private ownership or turned over to private use by properly guarded leases. ”

“ We will adhere to and apply the strictest possible systems for protecting arable land and economizing on the use of land, and do everything in our power to keep the total amount of arable land above the red line of 120 million hectares. ”

“ While there was plenty of land for every man or woman who wanted a home on the soil, it made little difference if single landlords or companies got possession of millions of acres, if a hundred men in one western river valley owned 17,000,000 acres; but when the good land for small homesteads was all gone, then was raised the real issue. At the opening of the twentieth century the nation, which a hundred years before had land and natural resources apparently without limit, was compelled to enact law after law conserving its forests and minerals. ”

“ This noxious seed brings noxious fruits to light. It must be the highest task of all governments to carry out land reform—the great problem that decides the destiny of a world—by all possible legislative measures. ”

“ The land law system which was designed to meet the needs of the fertile and well-watered regions of the Middle West has largely broken down when applied to the dryer regions of the Great Plains, the mountains, and much of the Pacific slope, where a farm of 160 acres is inadequate for self-support. ”

“ What more absurd disposition of our timber land could have been made than the laws under which it has passed to private hands? The Homestead and Preemption acts, framed for prairies, requiring the settler to live on and cultivate the soil, have been extended to our forests, and to comply with their terms, thousands of men have withdrawn from vocations by which they were increasing the wealth of the Nation, and with blankets and provisions strapped on their backs and axe and compass in hand have worked their weary way through the pathless forests to vacant Government lands, on which they filed. ”

“ The arid plains of the Great West have the richest of known soils, if a little human sweat mixed with water in sufficient quantity could be kneaded into it. Government as the lord paramount of its domain, should force the growing of trees and should prevent the destruction of timber wherever the same is necessary to keep up or improve the land. It has parted with the title to the soil, but still retains the power to use it for its own support. ”

“ In the United States, rapid progress is due more to the bounteous supply of free, fertile lands than to any other single cause. Broad, fertile valleys are more pertinent as the foundation {146} of nation-building than men are accustomed to believe; and now that nearly all the public domain has been apportioned among the citizens, intense desire for land remains unabated, and its method of treatment through landlord and tenant is rapidly becoming a troublesome question. ”

“ Then would the resumption of land as common property in nowise interfere with the proper use and improvement of land.
What is necessary for the use of land is not its private ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not necessary to say to a man, “this land is yours,” in order to induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only necessary to say to him, “whatever your labor or capital produces on this land shall be yours.” Give a man security that he may reap, and he will sow; assure him of the possession of the house he wants to build, and he will build it. ”

“ These moneys are restored to the government by the water users and all possibility of initial tenantry is prevented by the stipulation that tracts exceeding a certain size, between 'forty and one hundred and sixty acres, must be subdivided and sold to persons who will use them to obtain a livelihood before water will be placed on the land.
It has been well said that the safeguard of a nation is a large population of working farmers, owning the land they use, and as a means for the partial accomplishment of this desirable condition, the work of the Reclamation Service deserves commendation. ”

“ Given institutional and ecological variations, a universal approach to land reform is impossible. Each country should work out its own programme of land reform to assist the land-poor and to provide a base for coordinated resource conservation. ”

“ Considering that the productive properties of the soil are the prime materials of all products, the prime source of all means of production, and of all desirable things that cost no labour;
The Congress thinks that the economical development of modern society will create the social necessity of converting arable land into the common property of society, and of letting the soil on behalf of the state to agricultural companies under conditions analagous to those stated in regard to mines and railways. ”

“ Now, with the change in management, it's time to take inventory. The Federal Government owns some 730 million acres-about one-third of the total land area of the United States. The Department of Interior has jurisdiction over most of that, including our national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness lands, wetlands, and coastal barriers. Not included in those 730 million acres are our offshore coastal waters, the Outer Continental Shelf, which is also Interior's responsibility. ”

“ Article 44 For the purpose of securing a rational exploitation of the soil and to establish equity in social relationships, the law imposes obligations and constraints on private ownership of land, fixes limitations to the extension thereof according to region and agricultural zone, encourages and imposes land reclamation, the transformation of large estates and the reorganization of productive units, assists small and medium-sized holdings. The law makes provisions in favour of mountainous areas. ”

“ Added to this outlay, large sums have been expended in boring wells, building reservoirs and establishing water stations on cattle and sheep ranges. Buying land from landowners controlling large tracts, obtained by devious means in the early stages of the country's development, is still another heavy national expense. This land, when allotted to small farm settlers, is leased. Leasing the land, instead of granting the freehold, does not augur for a rapid increase in the rural population. ”

“ The necessary permanence of control over the products of toil makes an essentially permanent control of land necessary to the common welfare. For this reason the progress of civilization everywhere demands more distinct boundaries of landed property, and this in the interest of the whole community, which shares in the progress. The more intensive and far-seeing the methods of farming become, the greater the necessity for fixed boundaries. This necessity is recognized in all provisions for exact surveys, complete records of transfers in ownership; and finally for government guaranty of title. ”

“ The Amending Land Act increased this power, and I was assured that many thousand farmers had got certificates entitling them to selection, and instead of using them to obtain new farms, sold them to squatters, some of whom had accumulated a number which entitled them to claim wide districts of fertile land properly belonging to intending settlers. ”