18 Western Live-stock Management 



able for grazing only. The Homestead law has been a 

 remarkable instrument as applied to the tillable portions 

 of the United States, but with its present limitations, it 

 is not applicable to the grazing lands of the West, where 

 it requires from fifteen up to 150 acres to support a steer 

 through the grazing season. Under the Homestead Act, 

 the applicant is given 160 acres of land in return for liv- 

 ing on the same for a term of years, and putting a certain 

 portion under cultivation. All of the desirable lands 

 have been taken up and put under private ownership by 

 this method, but with the remaining untillable areas 

 where 160 acres of land will not support to exceed ten 

 head of cattle, and probably in extreme cases only one or 

 two, the homestead act is not applicable, since there is 

 no way in which the homesteader can make a living rais- 

 ing stock on the amount of land allotted him. Recently 

 the homesteads have been enlarged to 320 acres in many 

 parts of the West, but this does not make any material 

 change in the situation, since even 320 acres is far from 

 enough to support a family in the range stock business. 

 With the land now being homesteaded, the homesteader 

 does not pretend to make a living on his land, but rather 

 by employment obtained elsewhere. The desirability 

 of a homestead is now dependent more on available em- 

 ployment than on the value of the land. It was expected 

 that by developing a farm home, the applicant should 

 render the community a valuable service and in return 

 he should receive the title to his land. At present he does 

 not develop a home, and consequently renders the gov- 

 ernment no service, although he is obliged to live where 

 he should not live and to cultivate land which should 

 not be cultivated, thus undergoing bitter hardships and 

 deprivations, which do no one any good, but really much 



