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 
