74 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

 I. From 1776 to 1833. The Conquest of the Great Forest 



The shifting of the frontier. The War of Independence 

 marks an era in our agricultural as well as in our political his- 

 tory. Shortly after this event a series of epoch-making changes 

 began in agriculture. In the first place, the frontier moved 

 rapidly westward into the great interior valley. The life of the 

 pioneers on our frontier, wherever that frontier may happen to 

 have been, has always retained certain of the essential features 

 which it possessed in the colonial era. 



The public-land policy. The next great epoch-making event 

 was the establishment of the public-land policy of the federal 

 government. At the close of the Revolution the land was all 

 regarded as the property of the various states. By a series of 

 acts the greater part of the unoccupied or unsold lands were 

 ceded to the central government, which then began to devise 

 plans for their sale to private individuals. No other policy than 

 that of turning the public domain as rapidly as possible into 

 private property for individual farmers ever seems to have been 

 seriously considered. At first the policy was to sell the lands for 

 the benefit of the national Treasury and the extinction of the 

 national debt. By a series of changes the financial motive was 

 abandoned altogether, and a policy was adopted which aimed to 

 put the land in the hands of actual settlers without any direct 

 profit to the national Treasury whatever. 1 



Transition from a financial to a social policy. This change 

 in the land policy came about gradually, however, and covered 

 more than three quarters of a century. Between 1783 and 

 1800 the public land was sold only in large tracts, 640 acres 

 being the smallest. During the next twenty years (1801-1820) 



1 A very full account of this policy will be found in an article by A. B. Hart 

 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. I. 



