New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-09-22
NrW VrSTFRN EMPIRES.

Oklahoma Is blooming" again. The Presi-
dents proclamation offering for settlement the
largo areas lately ceded by Indian tribes will
renew to-day the strange spectacle which
marked the boomers progress when the Terri
tory was originally opened. This Is the first
Of series of public land accretions from Indian
possessions provided for by the last Congress.
It Is notable chiefly for the supposed value OF
the soil. Oklahoma viii grow corn, and it Is
contention Of the Southwest that "a man Is
long way from home when the oorn-tassel Is
out of sight" In Minnesota, both Dakotas and
Montana, the great wheat region, no observ&-
ton more wholly offensive than this can pos
sibly be made 1t contains, however, largo
element Of truth. Where corn will grow it may
fairly be said, as general proposition, that
nothing absolutely essential to human life Is
withheld by the earth. The corn area Is the
land of long, temperate summers and it is prob
ably true that their advantages are nowhere
more certain and inspiring than in the region
Just redeemed from savagery. These lands are
part Of four different reservations, and con-
sttute a corner of Oklahoma which has hitherto
been forbidden to the enteprising boomer He
will enter upon it now in sufficient strength to
occupy the available acreage twice over. The
wrsngling and litigation which attended the
settlement of the Territory in 1889 may be
looked for again.
To the citizen Of the East II will be de-
cided effort Of the imagination to picture the
scenes now being enacted along the ten-mile
line that bounds the entrance TO these lands.
Thirty thousand people Of every age, color, ma
tionality and degree, afoot on horseback, in the
time prairie-schooner and In every other
vehicle that poverty can force into uso or in
genuiy devise, spectators, adventurous gam
blers and sober farmers and mechanics, men
with money and men IN abiect want, women
too, good and bad, and children galore, stand
practically toeing mark and waiting until the
central standard time shall indicate the hour
Of ~ to rush pell-mell, helter-skelter into
a region that not one in hundred knows the
first thing about The destination Of all ia the
neighborhood of two county-seats which the
Government has laid out, and each citizen is
entitled to enter upon and take up 1G0 acres, as
they are laid out upon land-offlce map. The
opportunity afforded in this situation for riot
and bloodshed is easily perceived. There are
no Government ushers, on the theatre plan, to
show arrivals to their seats or even to identify
the land they want with that shown upon the
map. Each boomer must Judge for himself
whether the farm he alights upon is the one
he is after His claim is established by his
presence, and the man who first comes and stays
is the man whose title is good This may not
be an ideal method of settling the public do
main, but it appears to be the only one con-
sistent with the doctrine Of equal rights:
Tho Harrison Administration will be distin-
guishe1 in history for the changes that have
occurred and are yet to occur in the political
conditions Of the public domain during its ex-
istence. President Harrison has summoned into
the ssterhood of States six new commonwealths
North Dakota, South Dakota Washington,
Montana Idaho and Wyoming, whose combined
area is one and half times as great as that of
the original thirteen States. In Oklahoma no
has organized Territory four times as large as
the State of New-Jersey. lie has brought under
the operation of the land laws for the benefit of
settlers a portion of the Sioux country three
times greater than Massachusetts, and will soon
recover in the same way an area Of the Crow
lands in Montana as large rs Connecticut. These
vast regions are now filing with a population
which for thrift Orderliness courage and Ameri-
can enterprise he's no superior in the East It's
influence will be felt heavily in the next census
The reapportionment that will follow that
enumeration will carry the balance of political
power far away from the States that now exer-
else so controlling voice in public affairs.
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