72 
Missouri Botanical Garden 
Georce Engelmann Papers 
Another thing-: Agricultural colleges, under the liberal land grants of Congress, are 
being established in different States, under State control. This Department, as a com¬ 
mon head, can and will furnish great assistance in the farm education proposed in these 
colleges. 
Like the Bureau of Education, but recently .established to concentrate statistics and 
lead and give information and direction to educational interests in the States, this 
Department will be able to give tbe same, an x d perhaps much greater, facilities in the 
direction of agricultural education among the people. 
! PUBLIC LANDS. 
Intimately connected with this subject is the land policy of the Government, about 
w T hich I desire to make a few additi<||M remarks. In the early days of the Republic 
our public lands were regarded as ^ s<fnrce of revenue. It was expected from their 
sale to pay a large proportion of the e^enses of the Government; but in later days it 
was found that, with expense of survey and sale, these expectations were not realized, 
and a new policy was adopted, and large quantities of the public domain have been 
used in constructing railroads, endowing colleges, rewarding military services, and. 
stimulating immigration by giving homesteads to all persons who will live on and 
improve them. 
In this way this heritage of the people has largely contributed to the material devel¬ 
opment of our country. These grants have not always been wisely made, and in many 
respects have no doubt been great outrages upon the rights of the people. The future 
policy of the Government should be to so provide by legislation that our public lands 
should be preserved for actual settlers, and thereby furnish free homes to the landless. 
Concentration of large quantities in the hands of monopolists and speculators is the 
great curse of most of the Western States, and has and does impede agricultural im¬ 
provement and development. 
Of our public lands about seventy-eight million acres have been granted for schools 
and colleges, over ten millions of which have been given to agricultural colleges. Two 
hundred million acres have been appropriated and given to build railroads and other 
improvements. About seventy-three million acres have been given to our soldiers, 
their widows and children. The Government still owns about a thousand million acres. 
This vast domain as fast as it is surveyed is open to settlement under our homestead 
laws, which give every man or unmarried woman one hundred and sixty acres for the 
cost of survey and entry, upon living upon and improving the same for the time lim¬ 
ited, which is five years, except a soldier, who, under the bill passed by the House, is 
allowed to count three years of his term of service in the Army, or whatever term 
under that period he has served, as part of the five years’ residence. 
In the year 1869, about two and a half million acres were given to homestead and 
preemption settlers. In the same year about eight million acres were converted from 
wild lands into farms, making some sixty thousand farms. We now have over six 
million real-estate, owners, being one in about every six of our population, and nearly 
one-half of our whole population areengaged in the pursuit of agriculture. 
The whole landed property of E^jfcd is now owned by thirty thousand persons, 
making one in every six liundred^ma fifty of its population. One-half of its soil is 
now owned by about one hundred and fifty persons. Nineteen and a half million 
acres in Scotland are owned by twelve proprietors. In this country this extensive 
ownership of the soil, the sense of proprietorship resulting therefrom, encouraging* in¬ 
dependence of action and thought, constitute the corner-stone of our Republic. The 
multiplication of these free homes for the people, instilling into their minds the spirit 
of agriculture and mechanical progress, and education, and moral development, and 
improvement, will secure freedom, equality, and prosperity among our people, and 
perpetuity to our Government. . 
In this grand work, with such support as should be and no doubt will be given to it, 
the Agricultural Department, in the future as in the past, will be an efficient and im¬ 
portant aid to the other branches of the Government. The memorial to which I have 
alluded alleges that over three million dollars have already been expended upon the 
Department without any corresponding benefits. Having stated its great benefits in 
-the past, and what it is expected to accomplish in the future, I append to these remarks 
a statement showing the several appropriations for each year from 1839, the first one 
♦made, to and including 1870: 
1839, (first appropriation for the promotion of agriculture, from Patent Office 
fund)...:...... $1,000 
1842, (from Patent Office fund)... 1,000 
1843, (from Patent Office fund) . 2,000 
1844, (from Patent Office fund)....-. 2,000 
1845, (from Patent Office fund). 3,000 
1846, (from Patent Office fund)...- - -.. 
1847, (from Patent Office fund)..... 3,000 
