LAND TENURE AND LAND POLICY 675 



taken in the arid sections, and many a quarter-section of land valuable 

 for timber only was secured through the farce of homestead require- 

 ments. 



Speculation ran riot because there was no way devised for holding 

 it in check and because great tracts of land at a low price are always 

 tempting to the man with money to invest. Not many great estates 

 were formed out of this cheap land. It was nearly always the pur- 

 pose of the speculator to sell within a short time. Since the buying 

 of great holdings was largely several years in advance of settlement 

 and no small part of it in boom years such as 1835 and 1836, and again 

 just preceding 1857, the speculator was in the majority of instances 

 disappointed. He sold out for what he could get, and few fortunes 

 were made. Nevertheless, the process resulted in making the settler 

 who eventually came to till the soil pay a higher price for the land 

 than would have been necessary had it been held by the government 

 until such time as it was wanted for real use. 



The policy most open to criticism is that of granting such princi- 

 palities to railway companies. No doubt the policy encouraged rail- 

 way building, but no doubt also railways were built too rapidly. 

 They anticipated business by too long a period, were built by men who 

 had had little or no experience hi the railway world, and were destined 

 to fail. There is abundant evidence to show that railways could have 

 been built, and would have been built in all but a few cases, as soon 

 as there was much need for them, without the great gifts of land. 



One sorry effect of the great liberality of the land policies by which 

 settlement was encouraged, and almost never restrained, was the 

 almost unbelievable rapidity of settlement of the western country. 

 Population and grain production doubled throughout the great grain 

 states in periods of about twenty years, and this at a tune in the 

 development when it meant the addition to the farm area of 50 or 60 

 million acres of farm land and six or eight millions of people per decade. 

 The result was ruinously low prices and a discouraged and restless 

 farm people. 



There were no colonization plans such as have been followed in 

 various other countries. The settlement was strictly on the laissez 

 faire plan. Settlers took their chances of being able to get community 

 privileges. Whether they had schools, churches, or markets depended 

 on their own sagacity and good fortune. 



The people who settled the western country were from our eastern 

 states and in no small measure from Europe, although the newly 



