20 BULLETIN 1001, U. 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. 
