20 BULLETIN 1001, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



land under the 160-acre law and were able to live on it, as did the 

 Kinkaid Act in Nebraska. The grazing homestead act will help an 

 occasional man to consolidate other holdings and make a productive 

 stock ranch. 



Under certain conditions an Indian who has not abandoned tribal 

 relations may acquire a tract of land in lieu of his rights to common 

 lands in an Indian reservation, under conditions similar to those of 

 the homestead acts [3] except that the period of occupancy is longer 

 before patent is obtained. Such areas are spoken of as Indian allot- 

 ments. (See p. 65.) Like the homestead laws, this arrangement is 

 not an unmixed blessing. 



Thus the land of the arid grazing region is held as Mexican land 

 grants; Indian reservations; railroad lands patented, lands selected 

 but not patented, or lands the railroad titles to which have been 

 sold to others; State school and institutional lands; national forests, 

 monuments, or reserves; homesteads patented or pending; Indian 

 allotments completed or pending; and Government land open for 

 entry. It is possible, in one way or another, for the stock man to 

 obtain legal control over the use of all of these lands except the 

 Government land that is open for entry. The consequence of the 

 application of these various laws is that the Government land is now 

 so distributed that it is very difficult to find areas of controllable land 

 of more than a very few sections in solid blocks, and that such blocks 

 are usually so irregular in shape that the expense of fencing them is 

 frequently prohibitive, even where watering places happen to be 

 properly located to serve them. All these lands, except Government 

 lands, have some kind of legal status that permits them to be fenced, 

 if, by so doing, public lands be not enclosed. If the fencing of the 

 privately owned lands would in any way interfere with the possi- 

 bility of any citizen's using the public lands, the fencing must be 

 arranged so as to avoid this difficulty, and frequently it is impossible 

 to do this. 



The outstanding feature of the case is that the laws governing 

 the disposal of our public lands, because they do not authorize 

 control of lands that remain in the hands of the Government, auto- 

 matically prevent owners, lessees, and permittees who have invested 

 large sums of money in their holdings and equities from fencing 

 their holdings or otherwise controlling them in the interest of a 

 more advantageous use. Nor is this all. The consequences to the 

 State and to the nation are, (1) a much lower total production 

 from the whole area, (2) a much lower standard of business organ- 

 ization than is easily possible and highly desirable, (3) a continually 

 diminishing productivity of the lands, and (4) an increasing pre- 

 cariousness in the business, to say nothing of lost taxation and lack 

 of social progress. 



