260 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



a township of land in 1824; and in 1843 a square mile was 

 voted to one Lowe for " his gallantry and peril in the rescue of 

 an American brig from the hands of pirates." A very few grants 

 were made to educational and charitable institutions. Thus Jef- 

 ferson College, Mississippi, and the deaf and dumb asylums of 

 Kentucky and Connecticut were each endowed with a township. 

 Congress has always shown a singular moderation in making 

 special grants, perhaps because its general gifts were so magnifi- 

 cent. Of the ten million acres given away, down to 1840, the 

 greater part was in reward for services in the Revolutionary War 

 and the War of 18 12. For services in the Mexican W r ar, the 

 government appropriated about sixty millions of acres. Another 

 form of gift is the so-called "donations." From 1842 to 1854, 

 acts were passed granting quarter sections of land to actual 

 settlers who would reside on dangerous frontiers. About three 

 millions of acres have been claimed under these conditions. 

 The homestead acts of 1862 introduced a new principle into the 

 public-land system : it provided not only for the reservation of 

 land for actual settlers, but it proposed to give the land to all 

 heads of families, citizens of the United States or intending to 

 become such. The effect of the act has been threefold. Under 

 its provisions and those of the similar timber-culture act of 1873, 

 immigration has been stimulated, the revenue from the lands has 

 been comparatively little, and ninety millions of acres have passed 

 from the public domain into private hands. In some respects the 

 rapid settlement of the West, which has been greatly favored by 

 the generous policy of the government, has undoubtedly conduced 

 to the welfare of the country, and has made possible our elaborate 

 systems of transportation and distribution on a large scale. It is, 

 nevertheless, a question whether the present generation, as well 

 as posterity, might not have been equally prosperous if the gov- 

 ernment had made the conditions of acquirement more rigorous. 

 To ascribe the depletion of our reserves of land to the bounty 

 and homestead acts is unjust : the United States has given to the 

 states almost as much as to individuals. Most of the original six- 

 teen states (including Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee) were 

 in possession of unoccupied lands in 1802. The new states, as 



