264 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Yet so vast is the area of the country that the government 

 might repeat its sales and gratuities, acre for acre, without ex- 

 hausting its reserves of land in the West alone. In spite of the 

 fact that the states had in the beginning, or have retained, five 

 hundred million acres, and that the United States has parted with 

 six hundred and eighty million acres, the public domain still com- 

 prises upwards of a thousand million acres. The real significance 

 of the present alarm about the disappearance of the public lands, 

 lies in the fact that the greater part of the unsold lands are either 

 reserved for the Indians or are unfit for ordinary tillage. Upon 

 the best vacant lands, amounting to about a hundred and fifty 

 millions of acres, the Indians are now seated. The area can be 

 reduced by judicious and costly treaties ; but it amounts only to 

 about five hundred acres per head, and if the occupants should 

 take up land in severalty, they could not be dispossessed without 

 such injustice as would rouse the nation. Experts in the Land 

 Office assure us that, making all deductions and allowances, the 

 remaining lands are worth upwards of a thousand millions of dol- 

 lars. There is no evidence in the past policy of the government 

 for believing that we shall actually net one-tenth of that amount. 

 The greater part of the region is officially classified as "' Desert 

 Lands," and is for sale in tracts of six hundred and forty acres, 

 at a dollar and a quarter an acre. Nothing but the temporary in- 

 crease of pre-emption enables the Land Office at present to pay 

 its running expenses out of income. The golden time is past ; 

 our agricultural land is gone ; our timber lands are fast going ; 

 our coal and mineral lands will be snapped up as fast as they 

 prove valuable. There is no great national reserve left in the 

 public lands, unless there should be a change of policy. Should 

 disaster overtake us, we must depend, like other nations, on the 

 wealth of the people, and not on that of the government. 



It is, of course, true that the lands are still in existence, and 

 have been made many times more valuable by the labor of the 

 occupants. It is further true that large quantities of land are for 

 sale by the railroads and other grantees. There is no immediate 

 danger of a land famine. There is abundant cause for criti- 

 cism of the system adopted by the United States, but it should 



