Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-05-23
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The Oakland Times says: The Times
surely does not over. estimate the impor.
tance to California of rural, agricultural
immigration. Our great cities are increas-
stock. raisers, fruit-growers. Immense
tracts of land are held by individual own
ers. As rule they are producing income
by use as stock ranges or wheat fields, but
they are not fostering and supporting
population. These great estates will finally
subdivide and melt into small tracts to be
titled by small land owners, and on each
will be reared it's family. But the pride
and profit of great possessions will defer
this progress as long as possible. There is
a fascination in owning land. 1t makes
man prince among his fellows. Write as
you please about the disadvantages of an
agricultural community, its lack of great
aggregate wealth, it furnishes examples OF
the greatest aggregate happiness and con-
tent. 1t is the recruiting ground OF
city populations. As the fresh and pure
air of the fields is caught in the
city currents and weakened of its life
promoting properties, and finally dis
charged from the tall stacks and chimneys
poor and corrupted by its contact with
crowded population, 80 the round. limbed
people of the country, flush with health,
are drawn into the drafts of city fascina-
ton, in the second generation to be dis
charged, pale of cheek and habby OF mus
Gle, to renew in the free air and green
fields the stout qualities lost by the tax of
city life and occupations. Nine-tenths of
the professional men of cities plan to get
some country land, for nature pushes
them that way, and there is longing to
get at one with the primordial conditions
mind. The dream of the city professional
becomes the passion of the city laborer.
If he have only the corner of lot it will
be planted with something useful, and
tended with fondness which yearns for
acres on which to coax the fallow into
crops.
As our large individual estates are slow
to disintegrate, the coming immigration
depends for the chance for homes upon
other source of land supply. Where must
we look for that source? But little Gov.
eminent land is now available, and the
only hope for getting small tracts for set
Element lies in the subdivision of the rail-
road land grants. 1t is useless now to dis.
cuss the policy of these direct grants to
railways. In its day we were opposed to
it, but the honestly earned grants have
vested in fee and by Government patents
to the corporations which had the address
by urgency or corruption to secure them.
The vital question now ia, what will they
do with these lands To hold them un.
cultivated is to keep them as valueless as
so many acres of water, and, worse than
that, it is TO supply cons amt source and
Just source of irritation for the intiamma-
ton of public opinion. To part with them
to broaden the boundaries of individual es-
tates already too large for the common
good Is to violate the spirit of the trustee
ship, damage the State, repress It's popula-
ton, and substitute lesser evil for a
greater. It is their duty to themselves
and the State to put their lands in suitable
tracts, within the reach of small buyers
who come to settle on them with families,
to raise crops for transportation and chill
dren to travel. Indeed, we can demon
strase to any railroad company that it is
more to its profit to give its lands in quar-
ter and Lalf section tracts to actual settlers
than to either hold them or sell them in
great blocks to graziers or spectators. We
don't know the tillsble acreage of the rail-
way grants in California, but put it at five
millions, that is 7,Sl2 sections. If each
acre grows l2-centals of wheat to ship, or
that weight of varied produce, each section
will yield 3S4 tons, or total every year of
2,999, sos tons. Then, if the average be
only one family per section, population of
SO. 060 would be supported on the lands.
But the average will be near one family to
each quarter section, or population of
l56, 240.
Is it wise policy which holds lands in
large bodies, unsettled and unproductive,
that are capable of furnishing nearly three
millions of tons of produce for export, and
maintaining besides population equal to
nearly one.fourth the present population
of the State? This is an intensely and
purely practical matter. Corporations are
governed by the same selfishness which
backs US ali in the prosecution of our BUSH
ness. Our present object is to convince
the people, and the corporations, too, that
the most utterly sordld and selfish view
that can be taken of their responsibility
and duty to themselves requires that their
lands should be opened to small buyers at
rates that will draw them here and give
them a living chance when they come. We
discuss the new and intensely interesting
line of problems projected into political
economy by the development of the railway
system with freedom intrenched in abso-
lutte independence of the political aspect,
and defiant of the improper and snort
sighted purposes which too often control
the corporations in the management of
their business, and in that spirit we chal-
lenge examination of the facts here pre-.
sented.