38 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



My home state — Nevada — is probably as unlike conditions 

 that exist here in point of climate, products and general condi- 

 tions that we have to deal with as regards crop production, as 

 any other part of the United States. I have traveled all over 

 that vast area, and if there is any place in that state, in the most 

 remote place; way off in a canyon, 50 or 100 miles from a 

 railroad, where there is a little spring that will produce an inch 

 of water that somebody has not got, and that somebody is not 

 using and making the most of, I don't know the place, and I 

 don't know anybody else who does. So I say, it is strange to 

 me, it is difficult to understand, how there can be great areas 

 of productive land here that are not being used. 



Now, as a preliminary, sometimes it is desirable, in grap- 

 pling a big problem like this, to get a sort of comprehensive view 

 of the land conditions throughout the nation as a whole, to sort 

 of get a line on the trend of the times, as it were — ask ourselves 

 the question, where do we stand in this nation as a whole on this 

 question? What is its present status? Perhaps a reference, 

 for a minute or two, to the history of the public lands of the 

 United States would not be amiss. 



In the early days of this government, Congress looked upon 

 the land as a resource merely to pay debts with, merely to get 

 money out of; and consequently we find that the public lands 

 were disposed of almost .exclusively, until the year 1841, on an 

 essentially cash sale system ; millions of acres were disposed of 

 to pay debts. Consequently, the government offer«d the public 

 lands at public auction, and if they were not sold at public 

 sales, they, were sold at private sale and anybody could buy all 

 he could pay for; and so we disposed of a great area in that 

 way. The government got a comparatively small amount of 

 money out of it, and there was an era of much speculation and 

 comparatively little development; the poor man with only his 

 hands didn't have a chance. They never asked the purchaser 

 what he was going to do with the land — whether he would 

 cultivate it or what he intended to do with it. 

 The First That system went on until 1841, and then public thought 



Preemption began to change and we had the first preemption law, a little 

 Law modification of the cash sale, whereby the government said, "We 



will sell this land to you, and if you will live on it and make 

 your residence on it, you will have a preference right- for a 

 limited time in which to buy it." It was a modification of 



