Land use right

“ The land decree provides that all property rights in land, minerals, oil, gas, peat, medicinal springs, waters, timber and other natural resources be abolished and the land given to the use of the entire laboring population, without open or secret compensation to former owners. The right to use this land belongs to those who till it by their own labor, and is not restricted by sex, religion, nationality, or foreign citizenship. ”

“ Is the infatuated resistance of the legal owners of millions of acres of reclaimable land, which they either cannot or will not make use of themselves, nor permit others to improve or cultivate on fair terms, to be still all-powerful? ”

“ 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. ”

“ It first bettered conditions by allowing free access to land, and then worsened them by allowing a few to make the land their private property; this appropriation of the land carries with it the power to hold it out of use, thus depriving all men of their equal right to the use of the earth, the source of supply for all men’s wants. ”

“ The best use of the public grazing lands requires the careful examination and classification of these lands in order to give each settler land enough to support his family and no more. While this work is being done, and until the lands are settled, the Government should take control of the open range, under reasonable regulations suited to local needs, following the general policy already in successful operation on the forest reserves. ”

“ The use of land necessary for the undertakings specified is to be distinguished from mere licenses to travel over, graze cattle on, or otherwise use or occupy land without investment for construction or improvements. ”

“ For as labor cannot produce without the use of land, the denial of the equal right to the use of land is necessarily the denial of the right of labor to its own produce. ”

“ Those unacquainted with the industrial institutions of the far west, involving the use of lands and waters, may without careful thought suppose that the long recognized principles of the common law are sufficient to prevent the severance of land and water rights ”

“ Certain of our land laws, however beneficent their purposes, have been twisted into an improper use, so that there have grown up abuses under them by which they tend to create a class of men who, under one color and another, obtain large tracts of soil for speculative purposes, or to rent out to others ”

“ It amounted in truth to little more than a restricted and qualified right to alienate portions of the land to its inhabitants for building or cultivation, and to use the remainder for commons, for pasture lands, or as a source of revenue, or for other purposes. ”

“ Shortly after the adoption of the conservation law, the deputy chairman of the State Committee for Construction, Architecture, and Systematization published an article in which he stated that mere administrative regulations by the committee and the Superior Council of Agriculture could not ensure the proper use of land, particularly on the collective farms. ”

“ The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It419 is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. ”

“ It is a beneficent incident of the ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a new State, finds a profit in the increasing value of land as the new State grows up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands presents a different problem. Here it is not enough to regulate the flow of streams. The object of the Government is to dispose of the land to settlers who will build homes upon it. ”

“ 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 equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world and others no right. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Riparian rights inhere in the owner of the soil and are part and parcel of the land itself, and are vested and valuable rights which no more may be destroyed or impaired than any other part of a freehold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An English farmer looks not merely to the present year’s crop. He considers what will be the condition of the land when that crop is off; and what it will be fit for the next year. He studies to use his land so as not to abuse it. On the contrary, his aim is to get crop after crop, while still the land shall be growing better and better. If he should content himself with raising from the soil a large crop this year, and then leave it neglected and exhausted, he would starve. ”

“ The argument against such laws has no reason for being, because the owner of the land is only a steward of the soil that was entrusted to him by the past generations; he is the depository of lands as he is a depository of capital, and thus, as it has a social origin, territorial property must have a social application, in attending to collective interest ”

“ Commons originally were those lands which had not been brought into cultivation by the spade and the plough, over which, all who used the spade and the plough had certain rights in common. When the rights of the people over the soil were more limited by the law, there was attached to every portion of arable land a certain portion of waste, over which these common rights extended ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That object cannot be achieved unless such of the public lands as are suitable for settlement are conserved for the actual home-maker. Such lands should pass from the possession of the Government directly and only into the hands of the settler who lives on the land. ”

“ Of course you know that if land is allowed to go unfenced for twenty years—or for a longer or shorter period according to different states—that the land becomes public property, or at least the public has a right-of-way over it and it can not be closed off. ”

“ I maintain, with other writers upon this land question, that land is common property, the property of the whole people, and that it cannot be alienated from the people without producing the most fearful consequences. No man is free who is debarred in his right, to so much of the soil of his country as is necessary to support him in his right to life, for without the inherent right to unrestrained access to the soil he cannot support life, except in primitive society where land is plentiful, population sparse, and industry undiversified. ”

“ It will require three months, I judge, for a man to select a good claim (a quarter section, being 160 acres) , and fence and plough a part of it and to erect thereon a cabin. There is never a want of land to preempt in a new country. The settler can always get an original claim, or buy out the claim of another very cheap, near some other settlers. The liberal policy of our government in regard to the disposal of public lands is peculiarly beneficial to the settler. ”

“ The statute limited the power to establish forest reservations to the purpose of improving and protecting the forest, securing favourable conditions of water flows, and furnishing a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States. Lands found, upon due examination, to be more valuable for other purposes than for forest uses might be eliminated from any reservation, and all mineral lands within the reservations were left open to private appropriation under the mineral laws. ”

“ Again, what nation but England would tolerate so long a system of land law, so bristling with antiquated technicalities, so tedious, and so expensive, as almost to amount to a prohibition of the transfer of land in small quantities ”

“ This law makes a gift of 160 acres to each settler and home-builder who will occupy, improve, and cultivate his claim for a period of five years. Of all our public land laws this has, on the whole, been the most beneficent and productive of the best results. Under its provisions hundreds of thousands of poor and industrious men and women have carved out happy homes for themselves and their children, relieved the pressure of labor in our large cities and great industrial centers, and rapidly laid the foundation for and built up great States in the middle and far West. ”

“ But if the state is at liberty to treat the possessors of land as public functionaries, it is only going one step further to say, that it is at liberty to discard them. The claim of the landowners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the state. The principle of property gives them no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the state to deprive them of. ”

“ The value of the land for agricultural uses is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. It has been often proposed that the State should declare the remaining forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth, but I believe the motive of the suggestion has originated rather in poetical than in economical views of the subject. ”

“ From time to time it has been necessary to make changes in the land laws, as when the discovery of mineral lands, reserved by congress called for the substitution of lieu lands, but there has been no diminution in quantity or value. ”

“ Taking the above unity as a basis, and observing the distinction which must be made between grazing land, or that which is proper for raising stock, and farming land, without the facility of irrigation, this law grants to the contractor or contractors for the establishment of a new settlement, for each hundred families which he may introduce and establish in the state, five sitios of grazing land, and five labors at least, the one-half of which shall be without the facility of irrigation ”