by which the humblest citizen could identify the tract upon which he wished to establish his home.  The price of lands was placed within the reach of all the enterprising, industrious, and honest pioneer citizens of the country.  It was soon, however, found that the object of the laws was perverted, under the system of cash sales, from a distribution of land among the people to an accumulation of land capital by wealthy and speculative persons.  To check this tendency a preference right of purchase was given to settlers on the land, a plan which culminated in the general preemption act of 1841.  The foundation of this system was actual residence and cultivation.  Twenty years later the homestead law was devised to more surely place actual homes in the possession of actual cultivators of the soil.  The land was given without price, the sole conditions being residence, improvement, and cultivation.  Other laws have followed, each designed to encourage the acquirement and use of land in limited individual quantities.  But in later years these laws, through vicious administrative methods and under changed conditions of communication and transportation, have been so evaded and violated that their beneficent purpose is threatened with entire defeat.  The methods of such evasions and violations are set forth in detail in the reports of the Secretary of the Interior and Commissioner of the General Land Office.  The rapid appropriation of our public lands without bona fide settlements or cultivation, and not only without intention of residence, but for the purpose of their aggregation in large holdings, in many cases in the hands of foreigners, invites the serious and immediate attention of the Congress.

The energies of the Land Department have been devoted during the present Administration to remedy defects and correct abuses in the public-land service.  The results of these efforts are so largely in the nature of reforms in the processes and methods of our land system as to prevent adequate estimate; but it appears by a compilation from the reports of the Commissioner of the General Land Office that the immediate effect in leading cases which have come to a final termination has been the restoration to the mass of public lands of 2,750,000 acres; that 2,370,000 acres are embraced in investigations now pending before the Department or the courts, and that the action of Congress has been asked to effect the restoration of 2,790,000 acres additional; besides which 4,000,000 acres have been withheld from reservation and the rights of entry thereon maintained.

I recommend the repeal of the preemption and timber-culture acts, and that the homestead laws be so amended as to better secure compliance with their requirements of residence, improvement, and cultivation for the period of five years from date of entry, without commutation or provision for speculative relinquishment.  I also recommend the repeal of the desert-land laws unless it shall be the pleasure of the Congress to