New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-06-24

STOP SOUANDERING THE PUBLIC LAND
The sooner this Immigrant business for rail-
roads is now stopped the better. The other
day the Senate wrangled, for weary hours,
over a proposition to give a solid block of
public lands, fifty miles wide and two to
three hundred miles long, TO cOmpara-
lively useless local railroads-One of them
running throughout almost its entire length
within ten or twelve miles of the other.
Senate that can do this can do anything. We
appeal to the House to watch for and put its foot
squarely on this bill. For the rest, we ask
that the only remaining great through railroad
to the Pacific be generously treated, and that
there this giving away of the public lands to
corporations be brought to peremptory stop.
We do not care to argue the question with
which the Senate dawdled away the day,
about the legal claim of the Central Branch
Kansas Pacific Railway to Government
bonds beyond the amount already issued. We
do not believe it has such a claim, either legal
OF equitable and the Senate, more than once
| OF twice, has formally the same opinion
But if it has we are utterly and unalterably
opposed to so costly mode of extinguishing
it. Let every tub stand on its own bottom.
Let the railroad enforce its claim to the bonds.
| If it can make the claim good it will get
Them We can better afford to pay the bonds
thrice over than consent to the threatened
alternative.
For it is nothing less than the overthrow of
the whole judicious system on which grants
of lands for public improvements have hith-
erto been made, that is threatened. We have
consistently and most heartily favored the
great grants hitherto literally awarded. We
believe that every one of them has added
as much to the available area of
our public lands as it has taken away. 1t is
a case where giving has not impoverished -
where the half that remained was better than
the original whole. The railroads built by this
means have opened vast regions to travel and
trade, have made settlements possible,
and brought the market to the pio-
neers door. Every acre OF public land
within hundred miles of the Union Pacific,
between Omaha and PrOmOntOry, was doubled
in value to the Government by the wise gift
that made the railroad possible But the
whole system depends for its virtue, for its
very essence, upon rigid reservation of the al
ternate sections. Abandon that, and you
convert it from beneficent civilizer, dot
IlUR lU6 DlUllIO WIFI anu CONIlhS
the plains with waving grain, to a monstTOus
incubus, monopoly of land in spectators
hands, wall that will turn aside settlements
more effectually than ever the Chinese wall
repealed the advancing Tartars. That thing
the Senate has consented to do in the
case of a local road of insignificant import
ance. We pray the House to stop this bill =
but above all, we pray House and Senate
to put a peremptory ban upon the baneful
principle it promises to introduce. If we can
not preserve alternate sections for actual set
tiers, let us preserve all. Better be without
railroads for the accommodation of settlers
than without settlers within twenty-five miles
of the railroads. We can afford to dispense
with these local roads for the present; we can
not afford to dispense with the lands for our
pioneers. The policy of the Senate is fatal -
we entreat the House to resist it at the outset.