78 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



most important of public enterprises. But it was burdened 

 with the responsibility and cost of carryinof on a gigantic 

 war, and had no ready money ; it could guarantee bonds, 

 and was the owner of millions of acres of land along the 

 proposed lines of construction. The land had then no 

 money value, but certainly would have by the development 

 of the enterprise. The scheme of " land grants " to aid rail- 

 road construction through our public domain was therefore 

 inaugurated, and eventually extended, for purposes honest 

 and dishonest, to all points where a road could be con- 

 structed, and whether it was, or ever would l)e, needed. The 

 first road built received twenty-five million acres of land, 

 and other roads a much larger grant in proportion to their 

 importance. This land was in alternate sections, with sur- 

 veyed government land on each side of, and contiguous to, 

 the railroad track, which made it more valuable than govern- 

 ment land farther back. In most instances the avails of its 

 sale were sorely needed to pay construction debts, and the 

 most extraordinary efibrts were made for this purpose. The 

 railroad corporations were actually transformed into great 

 land trading and speculating companies. The East, both 

 country and city, was flooded with flaming hand-bills, circu- 

 lars and advertising cars, decked out withAYestern products, 

 setting forth the C|uality and desirableness of their lands in 

 the most preposterous tenns. Their desert lands were rep- 

 resented as the best stock-breeding sections of the Morld, 

 and the government lands of the same kind were free to all 

 comers. A few dollars invested in a band of calves would 

 increase so rapidly that in a very few years they would be 

 countless, and a mine of wealth to their owner. The com 

 and wheat lands of their prairies and river bottoms were 

 more fertile than the Garden of Eden ; would yield eighty 

 bushels per acre of the former and forty of the latter, and 

 were absolutely exhaustless. Their mountains were rich 

 with mines of gold and silver, and the sands of their moun- 

 tain streams yellow with the golden grains. From the Rio 

 Grande to Manitoba the climate was delightful ; the dry, 

 pure air of their high plateaus made them a perfect sani- 

 tarium ; and, the nearer you went to the polar circle, the 

 more agreeable it became. Copious streams flowed from all 



