Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1916-02-19

washington, ID. u, teD. IL ue
United States has an emigration prob
lem. All our national life we have
been worried over the immigrant,
whether to admit him, what to do
with him. Apparently everybody
wanted to get in and nobody wanted
to get out. Now the opposite issue
arises.
In the last ten years almost mil
lion Americans have emigrated to the
Dominion of Canada. Their space
cannot he filled by any million Of the
immigrants that Europe sends us so
literally. They are no problems for
Canada. Practically all of them are
young native born farmers and their
families, the best kind of Americans.
The present congress Is considering
a number of different bills calculated
to keep the American at home. They
are all land bills, for the question is
land question. Canada has millions
of acres of land open to entry, and she
has the most liberal kind of land laws.
Contrary to the current impression,
the United States also has an i'm
mense amount of public land unpre.
empted In the eleven farthest west-
ern states, you can pick a homestead
out Of 260 million acres of land.
Four-fifths of Nevada is still subject
to settlement and entry. So is two
thirds Of Utah, half of Arizona and
Wyoming, and one-fifth to one-third
of Oregon, Idaho, Montana. Colorado,
California and New Mexico Uncle
Sam is still in the land Office bust.
ness, but his trade is falling off.
Now it is desirable that as much
of our public lands as possible should
be settled by Americans. Out of the
26O million acres open to entry it is
doubtful whether more than half can
ever be put under cultivation, but 100
million acres of land is still a good
sized block of real estate. 1t can sup
port millions of people. Yet those
who might take it up as the home
steader's phrase goes, are moving
across the border, largely, according
to the statesmen of the border states,
because of the more liberal land laws
they find there. In Canada every
homesteader must be British citi-
zen, born or naturalized. So our emf
grants are lost to us for good.
One Of the bills before congress pro-
vides for a homestead twice as big
as the so-called desert claim, which
can now be located, and four times the
size of the old hundred and sixty acre
homestead that made the middle west
The new size is the six hundred and
forty acre grazing homestead. 1t
must be located on land designated
by the secretary of the interior as
grazing land, and the object of the
men behind the bill Is to utilize Sec
lions which are too broken and bar
rem for farming, by combining stock
raising and the growing Of a few odd
crops in the level or watered cor
ners. In this way six hundred and
forty acres may support family.
That has been the underlying prin-
ciple of all our land legislation for the
last hundred years: to divide it into
the smallest tracts necessary for the
support of a single family. But the
character of the public land is chang
ing. A hundred and sixty acres in
or Kansas can support several
families at pinch. Even three hun.
dred and twenty is too little in some
Of the dry. rocky states. Moreover
the land that is open to entry today
has been picked over. 1t is what ev-
cry early settler rejected when he
came to look at the country. So the
man who homesteads nowadays needs,
and is entitled to, bigger piece of
land.
If the six hundred and forty acre
bill passes congress, it will make u
great difference in certain fundamen-
tai conditions in the west. All the
immense tracts of public land are not
lying idle there. They are being used
for the grazing Of cattle and sheep.