46 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



and inexpensively established and maintained? Few, 

 if any, phases of pioneer life in the West were more 

 pathetic than those brought about by this Act of 1879. 

 Because of it, the early homesteader, when in need of 

 medical aid, food, fuel, etc., or when he had produce 

 to market, was forced to drive through rain, snow, 

 heat and cold, twenty miles over a wilderness with no 

 roads, save trails leading through canyons, along 

 bluffs, across streams, frequently unbridged. If not 

 for the purpose of enhancing the value and expediting 

 the sale of the Land Grant lands, why was this law 

 enacted? As to the value of these lands, this was 

 measured by the price of land scrip, then a drug on 

 the market, at from forty to sixty cents an acre 

 $64 to $96 per homestead. 



On the other hand, labor (organized) for more 

 than two decades, has been the most conspicuous sub- 

 ject before Congress. Most of this legislation has 

 been detrimental to agriculture. It has increased the 

 wage, raised the tariff, adding cost to every manufac- 

 tured article purchased, whether domestic or imported. 

 It prevented the farmers or farming community from 

 offering any encouragement to the right sort of im- 

 migrant. Had our present Immigration Law been in 

 force when the Railroad Land Grant lands were placed 

 on the market, one-half of the transcontinental lines 

 would not have been built, and Kansas, Nebraska, the 

 Dakotas and Wyoming would have been largely a 

 wilderness, still occupied by the buffalo and Indians. 

 These railway companies placed before the best rural 

 peoples of Europe what America had to offer to the 

 industrious people of the world, no odds how poor, 



