already been prepared. Under its direction, the 

 materials are being collected for a comprehensive his- 

 tory of American agriculture which will serve as an 

 encyclopedia on the subject. These contributions, 

 however, represent merely the pioneer undertakings, 

 which will need to be supplemented by niuuerous 

 studies if the economic history of American agricul- 

 ture is to be properly emphasized and recorded. The 

 limits of this paper will permit only a brief consid- 

 eration of some of the more important problems which 

 await the labors of the historian. 



Some Problems which the Ecoxomic History of 



American Agriculture Offers for 



Investigation. 



1. Among these subjects, that of the public lands 

 commands primary consideration. The entire land 

 area of continental United States amounts to 1,903,- 

 289,600 acres. Of this area forty-six and two-tenths 

 per cent., or 878,798,325 acres, have been carved out 

 into farms. The remainder consists of forests and 

 mineral holdings and reserves, land occupied by 

 towns and cities, railroads' rights of way, public high- 

 ways, mountainous country, and arid and swamp 

 lands. There remain unreserved and unappropriated 

 only 290,000,000 acres, the great portion of which 

 will never be available for agricultural purposes. 



The transference of the originally vast heritage 

 from public to private ownership is of fundamental 

 significance ; its history should include a considera- 

 tion of early French, Spanish, and English land 

 grants to individuals and to colonial corporations, of 

 colonial systems of land disposal, and of the various 

 methods by which the national and state governments 

 have disposed of public lands to the settler, to the 

 " land grabber ", and to the speculator. A review of 

 the federal land policy presents the story of a long 

 and bitter contest between the east and west, cul- 

 minating in the triumph of the latter in the enactment 

 of the preemption law of 1841, and the homestead 



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