The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-10-18
THE LAND QUESTION.


Use and Occupancy Should Be the Only
Legal Title to Land-Tax the Rascals
Out.
Those who have read the accounts of
the race for the Cherokee lands with
out arriving at the conclusion that
there is land question in this country
are very dull of comprehension. The
suffering and privations endured by
more than one hundred thousand peo-
pie for chance to secure a piece of the
earth on which to live, to say nothing
of the many lives lost, were simply
heart rending. OF the millions of
landless people in this country there
was no one person more entitled to a
portion of that vacant land than an
other. Yet as matter of fact. COM
paratively few of them secured tracts
which were worth going after and a
great many thousands got nothing at
all. True, it was opened for settle
ment on the ''free-for-all' plan, but in
free-for-all race the lame horse
or the horse which had been
half-starved has but little show
of winning prize. In this
race for homes the men of greatest en-
durance, the most cunning or brutal,
or the one with the fastest horse had
the first choice. The second choice
fell to the next strongest, and so on
until we reach the poor devils who
needed most and got the least. There
were doubtless few exceptions to this
order of things-just enough to estab-
lish the rule. The custom of dealing
out land in this unjust manner is old,
but even its age does not make it re-
spectacle. 1t is scarcely one step in
advance of the old heathenish custom
of giving everything to the oldest child
in the family. It would have been
more humane if the government had
given all the land to those test able to
get along without it, for then the
weak, cripples and poverty-stricken
families would not have been encour-
aged to waste their time and energy in
fruitless and unequal contest.
There is probably enough land in the
United States for twenty times its pop
ulation, and if each person had been
permitted to occupy his just proportion
there would never have been such
disgraceful scene as that witnessed in
the settlement of the Indian territory.
A very small part of the land is being
used by the men who assume to own it.
The unused land is being held for spec
ulative purposes, while millions of
Gods people are going without it, or
paying those with fraudulent titles for
the privilege of using it. Many of
NH d. 80,
okee strip did so for the sole purpose
of getting onto piece Of land not for
a home, but to hold until some other
person will pay them good price for
it. They do not expect to do anything
toward making it valuable, but when
the community has made it valuable by
the building of towns and the improve
ment of farms, they will appropriate
share of this increased wealth which
they have never earned. The papers
report many instances where claims
were sold for $1,000 and So. 600 each on
the very day they were taken. The
day before the race the land practically
had no value, except a prospective
value. It acquired it's value by the in
crease of population and improvements.
Every man who settled around it
helped to create that value. The man
who received the thousand dollars for
it and came home, got that which 9TH
ers had earned, or created, and which
rightly belonged to others.
We are not finding any fault with the
speculator, for he was only doing in
Rome what Romans do. He was only
doing what every body else around him
was doing, or trying to do, and what
the government and society invites and
encourages him to do.
Our land laws and our whole land
system are at fault, and what seems
most strange is that a majority of the
people appear to be satisfied with it.
Clay Center Dispatch.