146 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



companies took in about 1,000,000 acres apiece of government 

 land. They had no more right to fence this land than they 

 would have had to string barbed wire around Capitol Park in 

 Washington. During this period thirty 'two cases were re' 

 ported to the General Land Office involving the fencing in of 

 4,431,000 acres of government range lands. When the officials 

 of the Land Office, who were responsible for administering 

 government land, objected to this, one of the ranchers asked, 

 "Are you Land Office men going to get out of here and leave 

 us alone, or will we have to settle this with our Sharp 45's? 10 

 The Land Office men took neither of these suggestions. 

 Instead they managed to bring the offenders into court, and 

 by 1890 they forced them to give up this illegally fenced land. 

 One historian calls these land grabs the worst in the history of 

 the United States government lands. But the cause of these 

 grabs was something more than greed. 



THE SCRAMBLE FOR WATER AND GRASS 



In the first place, so long as there was enough free range, 

 the cattlemen needed to own only the land around water for 

 their stock. And with this taking up of land around water grew 

 up a tradition regarding the use of water which was quite differ' 

 ent from that of the East. Property laws in the humid regions 

 naturally did not take into account the problems of an arid 

 region. Consequently, the law of the East was that water was 

 common property which no one could take control of for 

 himself alone. 



In the arid West, a rancher had to own his water supply. 

 With water very 'scarce, he could not take a chance that an' 

 other rancher would drive a herd to his water hole and 

 leave it dry. Consequently, the tradition grew up that a man 

 who owned both banks of a water course, owned the water 

 and could use it as he pleased. This was the old Spanish law 



10 Hibbard, op. eft., p. 477. 



