Year: 1874

According to the dispatches, more than the usual excess of tinkering with the laws relating to the public lands is block ed out by our national legislators during the present session. The laws may need amendment in some respects, but If gen eral law combining all the good features of the pres ant laws cannot be enacted, il were far better to let alone what we have. It is impossible for the masses honestly interested to keep posted on never-ending changes in the law and the regulations which necessarily follow. The Commits s1oner of the general land office recogni- Zes this fact, and also the annoyance and trouble officers have in administering new laws, and therefore has recommended the repeal of the homestead and preemption laws and combination in one law ofthe es- sentially good features of the old ones and thereby simplify the requirement Of title by actual settlers and make it more diffi- cult for speculators to possess themselves of lands they do not intend to improve or occupy. If Congress is wise and desires to favor the bona fide settler, it will adopt the commissioners propositions.

 There are many proposed laws relating to the dry lands of the great plains of the West. One proposes to permit actual Cc- cupantS to enter $40 instead of 160 acres as now; another is designed to prevent one man from monopolizing a large area of pasture lands by getting possession of a spring or small flow of water. This latter will be a difficult task, at least for years to come, and if it could be done at once, its effect would be pernicious. The best remedy against this kind of monopoly is that of time. As the population becomes very dense and the land is wanted for till age, artesian wells must be sunk, and just in proportion as water is obtained thereby, will the monopoly spoken of be broken up. It might be well enough to permit the entry of $40 acres of grazing land by one man, for few would, if able, attempt to sink an artesian well if restricted to I60 acres, and there are many thousands of square miles which must be supplied by artesian water if ever done at all. Less than mile square and ordinarily several times as much grazing lands are too little for one stock grower of much pretensions. Congress would. do well to proceed very carefully in tinkering laws appertaining to mineral, agricultural or grazing lands.

 Under proper restrictions, we think all mountain timber lands should be survey cd and sold outright at auction. Most all such lands will never be occupied by set tiers except to strip them of their timber, and in this they are unnecessarily waste full. Timber is growing scarcer more rap- idly than the average man appreciates, and law whereby the mountain timber lands-all that are of much importance between the Rocky and Sierra Nevada mountains-could be owned by individ- uals, would tend to economiZe the supply of timber and operate to the common ad- vantage of all farmer, mechanic and tradeSman.

 The mining law ought to be let alone for another year at least, by which time the people would become acquainted with its provisions and application, and probably find compliance with it as easy as any likely to be passed. If it is thought best to donate the cost of survey and the land, too, to claimants, let that be done, but in the interest of all directly concerned, the machinery of procuring title ought to be let alone-at least until it shall have time to be fairly and fully tested by experience. However much machinery the present law and regulations have, anyother that would protect and guard all interests, would necessarily involve an equal if not greater amount.