State Agricultural Society. 83 



acquiring lands cheaply in this State. Years ago, before Americans 

 possessed this El Dorado,, the Spaniard obtained grants of all the lands 

 fanned by the sea breezes, where, the lord of vast tracts, he lived lazily, 

 surrounded by herds and dependents. When his possessions were after- 

 wards confirmed to him or to speculators who fleeced him, these great 

 grants remained, and many remain, in very few hands, held at large 

 rates per acre, and forbidding close settlement and improvement. To 

 supplement this system came fraudulent land grants, absorbing whole 

 counties, and often confirmed. California would be millions of dollars 

 richer to-da}' had not the Mexican system of colonization been practiced 

 in it,' provided the valleys and hillsides subjected to Mexican grants had 

 not been open to the second curse of our land sj^stem — that of private 

 entry. By this latter device millions of acres of public lands, such lands 

 as in Iowa and Minnesota sustain hundreds of thousands of farmers, 

 became the property of a few holders. I do not cavil at the speculators 

 who took advantage of ill-judged laws to add mile on mile to individual 

 possessions, and who now hold their cheaply acquired counties at high 

 prices per acre. I only lament the system that gave the opening for 

 such speculation, and try to suggest a remedy. In some of the valleys 

 of this State a rider with fleet horses ma}' ride all day on one man's 

 land, acquired tor scrip or greenbacks at depreciated rates. Not a fence 

 or plowed field will interrupt that race against time. All is virgin, but 

 desolate. From neighboring mountains a copious crystal stream rushes 

 down, that could be carried over all these broad tracts, and redeem to 

 fertility the barren square miles lying useless in the sun. But no 

 industry is at work. The speculator awaits a rise. He does not improve, 

 he speculates. -To a settler the sight might not be forbidding could he 

 purchase at near the price that the government fixes for its lands. But 

 he turns away where fifteen or twenty dollars per acre are charged and 

 goes back to bleak Minnesota, where the Winters nmy be cold, but land 

 is cheap. Agents looking for land for colonies are thus repelled. Is it 

 any wonder that our State does not increase in population? 



This absorption of vast tracts of valuable lands in a few hands is 

 contrary to the spirit of our hind laws and the genius of our institutions. 

 It is effected under color of a law that offers to any purchaser the 

 chance to buy waste lands which, alter reasonable opportunity for pre- 

 emption and offer at public auction, are not taken. But the laws design 

 that settlers shall have ample opportunity first, and that lands shall not 

 go to private entry until the country is developed about them and they 

 are still refused. This was the principle of the great preemption Act of 

 September, eighteen hundred and forty-one, which has disseminated 

 blessings throughout the country. Our legislators at that period were 

 actuated by a noble spirit of liberality both to aliens and natives, not 

 forgetting the rights of women. That Act has done more toward the 

 promotion of settlements in the vast regions of the northwest, and in 

 the development of their agricultural resources and interests, than all 

 other causes combined. Thousands and thousands of indigent families 

 have been enabled under it to obtain comfortable homes, and by means 

 of these settlements our western wilds have been subdued into civiliza- 

 tion and covered b} r the farms of a prosperous and happy people. But 

 in most of the fertile valleys of this State we have been totally deprived 

 of its benefits by a hasty system of surveys and offering of land. These 

 lands are as effectually locked up to the indigent emigrant as are the 

 deer parks and rabbit pastures of the English lord. 



One remedy for this condition of things is partial, but less satisfactory 



