The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-02


 the industrial and home making employ ments m which they must employ the bulk of their activities. Our country of fers unparalleled opportunities for do- mestic and social advancement, for social and economic leadership in the world. Our greatest national asset is to be found In the children. They need to be trained TO high ideals of everyday living, and to high efficiency in their respective voca- tions; we can not afford to have them trained otherwise, and the nation should help the states to achieve this end.
 Now, men of Iowa. l want to say just a word on a matter that concerns not the states of the Mississippi valley itself, but the states west of them, the states of the great plains and the Rocky noun tains. Unfortunately, I am not able on this present trip to visit those states. or l should speak to their own people on the point to which now intend to allude; but after all anything that affects a con- siderable number of Americans who live under one set of conditions, must be of moment to all other Americans, for never forget, friends, that in the long run we shall all go up or go down together.
 A Peculiar Claim.
 The states of the high plains and of the mountains have a peculiar claim
 
 l lived and worked in them. and I have that intimate knowledge of their people that comes under such conditions. In those states there is need of modifica- tion of the land laws that have worked so well in the we'll watered fertile regions to the eastward, such as those In which you dwell here. The one object in all our land laws should always be to favor the actual settler, the actual home mak- ar yI,A fo lxt-O1 tIa Tor .,t,I there to bring up his children to inherit it after him. The government should part with it's title to the land only to the home maker-not to the profit maker, who does not care to make home. The land should be sold outright only in quantities sufficient for decent homes not in huge areas to be held for specu lative purposes or used as ranches, where those who do the actual work are mere 7ly tenants or hired hands. No temporary prosperity of any class of men could fin the slightest degree atone for failure on our part to shape the laws So that they may work for the permanent good cf the home maker. This Is fluxiamental, gem tlemen. and is simply carr ying cut the idea of your own farIns here in Iowa. Now, in many states where the rainfall is light 1t is a Snlp'c abSGrdity to ex- pect any man to live, still less 10 bring
 
 acres. Where we are able to introduce irrigation, the homestead can be very much less in size can, for instance, be forty acres; and there is nothing that congress has done du.ing the past six years more important than the enactment of the ational irrigation law. But where irrigation is not app icalle and the land can only be used I 1r grazing. it may be that you can not ran more than npc steer ta ton md , tr be much of a mathematician in order to see that where such Is the case a home stead of one hundred and sixty acres will not go far toward 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 graze upon that wishes to. The result is that the men who use them moderately and not with a view of 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. For instance, the small sheep farmer who has a home and who wishes that home to pass to his children im- proved in value will naturally run his flock that the land will support 1t, not only today. but ten years hence; but a big absentee sheep owner. who has ne nome on tnr idllu dl dii. put SlIipiy owns huge migratory fiocks of sheep. may well find 1t to his tprofit to drive them over the small sheep farmers range and eat it all out. He can then drive his fiocks on, whereas the small man cannot. Of coIrse, to permit such a state of things is not only evil for the small man, but is destructive of the best interests of the country. Substantially the same conditions obtain as regards cattle. The custom has therefore grown up of fencing great tracts of government land without warrant of law. The men who fenced this land were sometimes rich men, who, by fencing it, kept out actual 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 themselves and their own industry by preventing overgrazing of the range on the part of reckless stock owners who had no place in the permanent development of the country and who were indifferent to