The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1907-10-09
LAND LAW

LAND LAW REVISION.
Among the subjects discussed by
President Roosevelt in HE speech at
Keckuk, Iowa, was the desirability of
revising u public land laws. His
remarks, which indicate his purpose
to again present the matter to con-
gress, were in part to this effect:
The q object In all our land laws
should always be to favor the actual
settler, the actual home maker, who
comes to dwell on the land and there
to bring up his children to inherit it
after him. The government should
part with its title to the land only to
the actual home maker-not to the
profit maker, who does not care to
make q home. The land should be
sold outright only in quantities sufi-
cient for decent homes-not in huge
areas to be held for speculative pur-
poses or used as ranches, where
those who do the actual work are
merely ten ants or hired hands. No
temporary prosperity of any class Of
men in the slightest degree atones
for failure on our part to shape the
laws so that they may work for the
permanent good of the home makers.
Now, In many states where the rain
fall is light, it is a simple absurdity
to expect any ma to live, still less to
bring up q family, on 160 acres.
Where we are able to introduce irri-
cation, the homestead can be very
much less in size-can for instance,
be forty acres: and there is nothing
that congress has done for the past
six years more important than the
en- actment of the national irrigation
law. But where irrigation is not ap.
plicable and the land can only be
used for grazing, it may be that you
cannot run more than one steer to ten
acres, and it is not recess airy to be
much Of a matthew a:ician in order to
see that where such is the case a home
stead of 100 acres will not go far to.
ward the support of a family. In
consequence of this fact homesteaders
do not take up the lands in the tracts
in question. They are left open for
anybody to Craze upon that wishes to.
The result is that the men who use
them moderately and not with a view
to eXhausting their resources are at
the mercy of those who care nothing
for the future and simply intend to
skin the land in the present.
The custom has grown up of fencing
great tracts of government land with
out warrant of law. The men who
fenced this land were sometimes rich
men, who, by fencing it., kept out &C
tual settlers and thereby worked evil
to the country. But in many cases,
whether they were large men or small
men, their object was not to keep out
actual settlers, but to protect them
selves and their own industry by pre-.
venting overgrazing of the rnnge on
the part of reckless stock owners who
had no place in the permanent devel.
opment of the country and who were
Indifferent to everything except the
profits of the moment. To permit the
continuance of this illegal fencing in.
evitably tended to very grave abuses.
and the government has therefore
forced the fencers to take down their
fences. In doing this we have no,
only obeyed and enforced the law, but
we have corrected many diagram,
abuses.
All | want to do is to find out what
will be to the benefit of the country al
a whole. 1t may be that we can secure
their interests by permitting all home
steaders in the dry country to enclose
individually or a certain number Q
them together, big tracts OF range TO
summer use, the tracts being proper
toned to the number of neighborin,
homesteaders who wish to run thei
cattle upon it. 1t may be that part
of the range will only be valuable TO
companies that a lease it and pu
large herds on it: for the way properl
to develop a region is to put it t
those uses to which it is best adapted
The amount to be paid for the leasin
privilege 10 to me q matter of con
parative Indifference. The govern
ment does not wish to make none
out of the range, but simply to prt
vide for the necessary SUPERVISE
that will prevent it's being eaten o.
or exhausted; that is, that will secu'
it undamaged as an asset for the ne
generation, for the children Of Il
present home makers.
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