TENURE AND USE OF ARID GRAZING LANDS. 55 



tenure into bodies of considerable size. Within the boundaries of the 

 large railroad land grants, in particular, this method may be of use. 

 In such areas the odd-numbered sections of each township have been 

 granted to the railroad company, resulting in a checker-board ar- 

 rangement of the privately owned lands, which is discussed on page 

 20. Such consolidation would make the administration of the public 

 lands much easier, and at the same time make possible the fencing of 

 privately owned lands in bodies large enough for profitable use. 



While such a policy would benefit all parties concerned, the areas 

 to which it could be applied represent but a small part of the whole 

 region for which a change in land policy is necessary. These land- 

 grant areas contain many millions of acres, but the total area of the 

 arid grazing region is many times more; and while the consolidation 

 would be beneficial at once to the privately owned lands, further legis- 

 lation would still be necessary for regulating the use of the public 

 lands. The only advantage gained for them would be that any new 

 laws made for the administration of the public lands would be easier 

 to apply on a few large areas than upon very numerous scattered 

 small ones — amounting, as they do now, to thousands of sections. 



It is probable that in the present state of tenure and development 

 very few of the private owners would wish to enter upon such a 

 wholesale trading operation. Their lands are the better lands, for 

 various reasons; the watering places are on their lands, and their 

 businesses are localized about those watering places. They would 

 much prefer a system by means of which they could obtain legal right 

 to use the interspersed sections along with their own land. 



Wherever all the land in a series of townships belongs to the rail- 

 road, the State, and the Federal Government in the ordinary checker- 

 board arrangement, exchanges on a township basis might be arranged, 

 though even here it would not be simple, and lessees of either State 

 or railroad lands would suffer inconveniences and have difficulties in 

 settlement of the relative values of watering places. 



Notwithstanding all such difficulties, the method would be a per- 

 fectly fair one in certain regions and is recommended for such regions. 

 The use of lieu land scrip in such transactions should be avoided. 



Transfer of the remaining 'public lands to the several States. — Many 

 efforts have been made to transfer the public lands to the States, but 

 there is little probability that such attempts will ever be successful, 

 because the people generally, both in the separate States where there 

 is some public land and in States that have none, are strongly opposed 

 to this method of disposal. 



That States can make and operate lease laws that produce better 

 results than our present Federal laws accomplish has already been 

 noted in the case of Texas. That they frequently do make laws that 

 may be temporarily beneficial but very unwise in the long run, may 



