84 Transactions ov the 



the longer delayed. Congress should pass a law dedicating all the 

 remaining lands of California to homestead and preemption entry only. 

 This would save all lands not yet absorbed, and prevent the future 

 offering of lands. But the effective remedy is in the hands of the Legis- 

 lature, and I suggest it with deference. A heav} r land tax. rigidly 

 enforced, would make unimproved lands held for speculation cheaper, 

 and tend to break up the great tracts that now exclude settlement. 

 This is not agrarian or unjust. The theory of all property taxes is that 

 they are assessed upon the actual value of the property. If the land- 

 holder will not sell his unimproved lands for less than a certain price 

 per acre, that price should be assessed as the value of the land. The 

 remedy is gentle; the evil to be corrected is enormous. What greater 

 curse can the State suffer than to have diverted from it the tides of 

 population that would make its valleys rejoice and its waste places to 

 blossom as the rose? ~No one can doubt that our population to-day 

 would reach one million if every foot of land in the State at its birth 

 had been Government land, and sold to actual settlers only at one dollar 

 and twenty-five cents per acre. 



Such Congressional legislation as I have suggested has already been 

 adopted by the House of Representatives; and a bill became a law at 

 the session just closed, which provides that lands subject to private 

 entry, withdrawn for railroad purposes and subsequently restored, shall 

 not by such restoration beeome again subject to private entry, but shall 

 be open to homestead and preemption only. 



The importance of these considerations to the prosperity of the State 

 will be seen by one simple statement: out of about twenty millions 

 acres of public lands disposed of in this Stale, exclusive of grants in 

 aid of railroads, only a little over two millions have been sold to actual 

 settlers or conferred on them under the Homestead Act. Scarcely more 

 than a tenth of the lands patented by the Government within our bor- 

 ders during the twenty years of our State existence has gone to actual 

 settlers. Nine tenths are held by large owners or have been peddled 

 out at ruinous prices to those who would buy. Ami not right, then, in 

 saying that a principal reason for the slow growth in our population is 

 the difficulty of obtaining cheap lands in this State? 



There are other difficulties in our anomalous land system which this 

 inay not be the place to dwell upon. The Sierras behind you are feath- 

 ered with magnificent pines and oaks. From them largely you draw the 

 lumber for your fences, for your dwellings, perhaps the fuel that warms 

 you in Winter. Yet not a tree' can be lawfully cut down on Govern- 

 ment lands, and there is no way in which the title can be obtained to 

 the lands from the Government. In those frost3 r altitudes settlement 

 and preemption are impossible. The great industries pursued there, 

 resembling those of the piney woods of Maine, should be legalized by 

 legislation, and some cheap method devised by which title to the lands 

 may be obtained. The miner, working by the side of the lumberman, 

 has now an opportunity to make his claim his home, and will I trust 

 cease to be nomadic and become settled and contented, adding to the 

 stability and prosperity of the State. 



While much may be achieved b}~ legislation in repairing the errors of 

 the past, and laying the foundation of a future prosperity, there are 

 errors of practice of the present beyond its reach. Our business men 

 are learning a rude lesson from the new contact with eastern compe- 

 tition. They are discovering the necessity of economy and retrench- 

 ment. Have not our farmers that lesson to learn also? Have they not 



