Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1914-06-27
CATCHING UP CANADA
Proposition for Homestead Entries by
Minors Has Been Gaining
Strength in Congress.

a long time to wake up to the fact that
the Canadian government as better
homestead laws thar our own, and for
that reason the Dominion b as been able
to induce hundreds of thousands OF
Americans to go into Canada. One of
the provisions in the Canada homes tead
law allows an eighteen year old boy to
acquire home, and the result is that
young men under age have been taking
up the public land of the Dominion.
i The proposition for homestead entries
by minors has been gaining strength in
Congress, and it has received an impetus
last month when the western govern ors
in their annual conference at Denver
went on record as unanimously resolving
that eve approve the plan now before
Congress to permit honest tead entries
by persons over eighteen y ears of age"
The Interior Department and the Agri-
culture Department have both strongly
endorsed the sugges ted legislation.
Since the Secretary of the Interior has
been enabled to designate entirely arid
lands that cannot be irrigated as enarg-
ed homesteads, enabling settlers to Sc
cure 800 acres of land instead of 100,
there been noticeable improvement in
conditions of settlers in sections of the
country where grazing has been the
principal 30 urce of income.
The change in the homestead law by
which settlers can acquire title in three
years has more than doubled the entries
throughout the United States. During
the fiscal year ending June 80, 1912, tn e
total Homestead entries throughout the
United States were 24,326, covering A.
306,06S acres of land. The three-year
homestead law was passed June 6, 1912,
aud during the fiscal year ending June
80, 1913, there were in the United States
80, ,252 final homestead entries, covering
more than ten million acres of the pub
lie domain.
During the debate in the House upon
the bill of Representative Taylor of
Colorado, authorizing minors of eighteen
years or over, to take homestead and
desert land entries, Representative
Burke of South Dakota, who is shortly
to be advanced to the Senate, used the
argument that many of the boys serving
in the navy and marine corps are not
more than eighteen years old, and that
the average is about twenty. He in
sisted that those boys who recently gave
their lives at Vera Cruz were not too
young to file on homestead, and he
said that he preferred to encourage the
boys to remain at home, to stay on the
farm. instead of going into the army and
navy. He concluded that "if boy is
old enough for military service he ought
to be able to file on the public domain"
Burke, Republican, and Taylor, a
Democrat, have been two of the best
friends the homesteaders had in Con-
gress, and they have both been enemies
to what has been termed by them as
professional conservation" Taylor
says that there is no monopoly of
agricultural land in the west today, and
everyone who has big farm is trying
to cut it up and sell it into smaller tracts.
He adds that a comparison of the land
laws ofthe Dominion of Canada with
those of the United States, shows great
many liberal features in the system of
occupation in Canada than are found in
our own homestead laws.
At the investigation before the Senate
in January Mr.. William J. White in
charge of immigration movement to
Canada, testified that 100000 citizens of
the United States had gone to Canada
to take up lands. The United States
has just discovered that the Canadian
government has been spending between
100000 and $4,000 year in advertising
in the states along the border, and the
greater part of the money has gone into
the ''patent insides" of country news
papers. Now since the horse has been
stolen, Congress is going around to lock
the doors to check immigration.
According to our Agriculture Depart
ment the cost of reducing wheat in Sas-
katchewan is fifty-fve cents per bushel
on farm, and sixty-two cents f. o. b.
cars. 1t has been figured out that the
Saskatchewan farmers last year relied
fourteen and one-eighth cents profit
per bushel.
And yet in the face of the long win
ters and scarcity of fuel in the Canadian
northwest, the clever Canadians have
coaxed away 100000 farmers from the
United States.