Land use

“ Yet a growing population increased the need for farm land, and since intensive use of the existing farm area was not attempted until the end of the 18th century, the forest had to yield still further.
3. Methods of Restriction in Forest Use.
All ordinances issued by the princes to regulate the management of their properties contain the prescription, that permission of the Landesherr is necessary for clearings, and that abandoned fields growing up to wood are to be kept as woodland; this partly for timber needs, partly for considerations of the chase. ”

“ Make better use of the other land by dividing it into smaller farms. Further, why not try a scheme of afforestation on some portion of these Crown lands, which, after all, were the lands of the people? ”

“ The use of the land in agriculture must indeed, for the time being, be of necessity exclusive; the same person who has ploughed and sown must be permitted to reap: but the land might be occupied for one season only, as among the ancient Germans ”

“ The immense price that European gardeners have to pay for land has been a most potent factor in forcing them to seek out and apply the most ingenious forcing methods. The time is upon us here in America also when we must find out the highest use of land and apply it to that use. ”

“ The tiniest bit of arable land, as I had been seeing for the last three days, is put to some use, it is tilled and planted and carefully tended, though it bear only a single fruit-tree, only a handful of grain, but here we entered a park, waste land covering many miles, wasted with 180a royal disregard for the people's needs. ”

“ Conditions here institute an incessant struggle between man and nature;596 but the rewards of victory are too great to count the cost. The construction of sea-walls, embankment of rivers, reclamation of marshes, the cutting of canals for drains and passways in a water-soaked land, the conversion of lakes into meadow, the rectification of tortuous streams for the greater economy of this silt-made soil, all together constitute the greatest geographical transformation that man has brought about on the earth's surface.597 ”

“ As one effect of the subdivision of the land, the soil, so far as nature permits, is highly cultivated, its appearance fertile, finished, beautiful, and in striking contrast with the dominating vast, bare mountain rocks and snowbeds. The many towns and cities bear abundant signs of a general prosperity, their roads, bridges, stores, residences, and public buildings betokening in the inhabitants industry and energy, and freedom to employ these qualities. ”

“ Are we as a nation to have any flower-garden at all? Can we afford it? Do we care to set aside ground for it, or will we have beet-root and cabbages only? In other words, is all the land, so far as the people are concerned, from sea to sea, to be used for corn-growing, or building over only? Are those who own estates to have their gardens, and the people to have none? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether land is the site of a town, or of a farm, or of a mine, whether corn and grass grow upon it, or the traffic of a city passes over its streets, or coal and iron mines burrow beneath it, it belongs but as a temporary possession to those who are using it. ”

“ Under such conditions, the settlers should reserve sufficient woodlands for their home needs, carefully distinguishing between the land that is best for agricultural purposes and the land that is best for forestry purposes, and thus doubling their resources. ”

“ There a hilly or mountainous interior putting obstacles in the way of landward expansion, sterile slopes, a paucity of level, arable land, an excessive or deficient rainfall withholding from agriculture the reward of tillage—some or all of these factors combined to compel the inhabitants to seek on the sea the livelihood denied by the land. ”

“ The owner of a piece of land, who had built a house or inclosed 20 or 40 acres of it, had the benefit of this universal custom, as well as the party who owned no land. Everybody used the open, uninclosed country which produced nutritious grasses as a public common or which their horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep could run and graze. ”

“ So well are we persuaded of the utility and correctness of these brief hints, that, in selecting a farm, we should regard the location more than the quality of the soil. The latter we could mend easily; while we should find it difficult to move our farm to a more favorable location. Poor land near a city or large town, or on some great thoroughfare, we should much prefer to good land far removed from market, or in an unpleasant location. ”

“ The United States has constructed an elaborate system for the disposal of its public lands to individuals, under various classifications, such as homestead, desert land, timber and stone, timber culture, coal, placer, and lode claims. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take a man from the Western States, place him on some of our farming lands and tell him, "Here are twenty acres of land, and it is all you can properly farm, unless you have more help than yourself. Now fence and cultivate it, and you can make an abundant living." ”

“ No more will there be lying idle whole sections of land to serve as hunting grounds for the large landlords. No more will land be lying unfertile; it will be cultivated, and even rocks pulverised in order to produce artificial soil. ”

“ At present, our whole land system is constructed to prevent their working. It is Nature's way alternately to gather together and to disperse abroad Our land laws are all on the side of gathering together. ”

“ To this the Forest Service replied by throwing open to agricultural settlement every acre of land, lying within the limits of the national forests, which was more suitable for agriculture than forest culture. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He did not think of taking the water out of the river in a ditch and allowing it to flow over and wet the rich soil. The white man came and turned the river out of its channel and spread the water over hundreds of square miles of the richest land on the earth. Now, where once you would have died of thirst and hunger, there are green fields and growing crops as far as you can see. ”

“ We have arid lands in the West, cut-over lands in the Northwest, Lake States, and South, and also swamp lands in the Middle West and South, which can be made available through the proper development. Much of this land can be made suitable for farm homes if properly handled. But it will require that each type of land be dealt with in its own particular fashion. The arid land will require water ”

“ The farm itself really consists of a combination of Artificial Objects and Natural Resources—that is to say, of Wealth and also of Land—two radically different things as matter of Economic discrimination. Its site is a Natural Resource, its untilled soil is a Natural Resource, the space which it and its surrounding atmosphere occupy are Natural Resources. All those characteristics are in the Land category. ”

“ There are millions of acres of arid land to be irrigated by national enterprise and offered for settlement to industrious families. There are great areas of swamp land to be drained which would support a busy, happy population. There are forests to be conserved and renewed in a way that would change the whole face of the situation for the farmer and the fruit-grower in great sections of our country. ”

“ Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves notice. The vacant public lands are for the most part desert-like, and their utilization can come about only through irrigation.
This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will transform it into beautiful gardens and farms. ”

“ In considering the land situation as it exists, it is true that the ownership of land or, rather, the access to land, is of primary importance. The question arises, Is there enough land in the United States for all citizens who desire to become cultivators? ”

“ Of this vast empire 31,373,000 acres or about one-third of the whole is agricultural land, while of this 18,157,000 acres or a little less than one-fifth of the entire area is irrigable land, so classified not only because it will, if provided with water, raise profitable crops, but also because, in my opinion, water can with proper management be provided for it. ”

“ Until the middle of the sixteenth century, laws were made in the attempt to put a stop to the conversion of arable land to pasture under any conditions, and required that land which had been under cultivation should be plowed in the future. ”

“ Sir Oliver Lodge recently presided at an important meeting held in Birmingham to consider the question, and it was agreed that, now that 164 the mineral wealth of the locality had been exhausted, it was only right that the surface of the land should be altered for good by a system of tree-planting, the land itself being rendered useless for mining, agriculture, and habitation. ”

“ 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. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. ”

“ Thus it happened that a man would have several non-contiguous strips. The fact was, that in the common field system the land was held, not by the individual, but by the community; and this is further shown by the practice of throwing the whole field open, when the crops were got in, and using it as common pasture for half the year. The period when the land is thrown open always has reference to the crop the field or meadow is devoted to during the close time. ”

“ I am going to advise my brethren, the farmers, if they have more land than they can fence, to sell, rent, or throw it out to the commons, and secure one acre at least, and from that to ten, or as much as they can actually enclose as it should be, and then cultivate it in good style. Do not haul off the straw to burn, but save it all, and all the manure you can produce. ”

“ From three hundred to five hundred acres is the most that we can water from one dam and canal in that district of country, while lower down, the same labor would encircle a field of six or eight thousand acres of better land ”

“ For instance, we rode by a vast green plain, skirting a lake and river, which is now useless almost for pasture, and which a little draining will convert into thousands of acres of rich productive land. ”

“ When your forests are cut and hauled away, and sold to somebody else you have then, and we will give you a perennial forest, a crop every year of great value too. But we ought to be able to take care of our land and we will. ”

“ More land will be reclaimed, more rocks blasted and buried; irrigating canals and cultivation will be carried higher up the sides of the mountains; and more costly means of 62cultivation applied than are possible under either the peasant-proprietor system, or the large estate system. ”

“ So far as they are available for agriculture, and to whatever extent they may be reclaimed under the national irrigation law, the remaining public lands should be held rigidly for the home builder, the settler who lives on his land, and for no one else. ”

“ You will see to it that the water, wood, and forage of the reserves are conserved and wisely used for the benefit of the home builder first of all, upon whom depends the best permanent use of lands and resources alike. ”

“ In many regions where poor and hilly lands prevail, the town or county could well afford to purchase forest land, expecting thereby to add to the value of the property and to make the forests a source of revenue. ”

“ If not drained, will it bring constant disappointment? Fences, lanes and the necessity for them, the amount and location of inferior land as pasture land, the kind of weeds about the farm, as [61] well as the amount, kind and location of timber, should be considered.
Fig. 4. Too many buildings for eighty acres of land.
Land devoted to market-gardening should be near the market town where the perishable products are to be sold. Vegetables should reach the market early in their season in a fresh and presentable condition and cheaply, if satisfactory profits are desired. ”

“ IDLE LANDS A great deal of land lies idle that might be productive of food— not only arid, swamp, and cut-over lands, mentioned in later paragraphs, and land held for speculation, but also vacant lots and unused back yards in cities and villages, and waste or unused portions of cultivated farms. It is largely from city and village lots that the School Garden Army obtained its remarkable results. It is astonishing how many farmers buy instead of raising their vegetables for the table, as well as feed for their stock. ”