36 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Congress, and it waited as seldom as it dared. So 

 far as growth was concerned, the part of Congress 

 was usually to confirm rather than to initiate change. 



"The Commissioner," to quote Milton Conover, 

 author of the admirable monograph on the General 

 Land Office published by the Institute for Govern- 

 ment Research, "is at once an executive officer, a 

 collector of revenue, an auditor, a legislator, a prose- 

 cutor and a judge." "Upon him," says Sato the 

 Japanese investigator of American land problems, 

 "rests the responsibility of the faithful execution of 

 the settlement laws. From him springs directly the 

 title to land. Upon him depends the economic safety 

 of the pioneer settler who struggles to create a home. 

 He must fight the lawless land grabbers. He must 

 keep a watchful eye upon the condition of railroad 

 corporations to which land grants have been made. 

 Public interest requires him to avoid introduction 

 into the United States of English landlordism and 

 other forms of land monopoly." 



Many eminent men have been Public Land 

 Commissioners. 



For years, land legislation clogged the machin- 

 ery of Congress at every session. The accumula- 

 tions of federal land laws became enormous and the 

 totals complicated in the extreme. To review the 

 laws, treaties, proclamations and regulations in pur- 

 suit, say, of decisions and bearings upon some given 

 case, one might have to search through thirty-five 

 volumes of United States Statutes at Large, fifty 



