(From the Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, 1916, pp. 46-49).

This is a striking illustration of how our government, acting through Congress, the Courts, and the General Land Office of the Department of the Interior, has sought to obtain justice for all parties concerned, and to fulfill the original purpose of securing the development of the land in the interest of the state and the nation.

LANDS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Something like 133,000,000 acres of our public lands have from time to time been turned over to the states, the proceeds to be used for the promotion of public education, for the construction of roads, and for other purposes (see Chapters XVII and xix).  In some cases these lands have not been used altogether for the purposes for which they were granted.  School lands have sometimes been sold at a nominal price to individuals who have reaped the profit, whereas the lands might have been so administered by the states as to have brought large returns for educational purposes.  In some cases, state officials have made unwise investments of the funds derived from the sale of the lands, thereby losing them for the use of the state.

LAND MONOPOLY AND TENANTRY

The control, or “monopolizing,” of the public land by large holders is said to be one of the causes of increasing tenantry (Chapter X, p. 116); for as the available supply of desirable farming land is diminished, the actual home-seeker is driven to take less productive lands, or to purchase from the large holders at a higher price.  The more recent land laws limit the amount of public land that an individual may acquire to an area sufficient to enable him to make a comfortable living for a family (see above, p. 199).  They also exact from the homesteader an agreement that he will actually occupy and cultivate the land.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR LAND FRAUDS

The responsibility for the defects in our methods of administering the public lands rests in part upon our governmental representatives, who have not always dealt wisely with the extremely difficult problem.  But it rests also upon each individual citizen.  There are those, be it said to our shame, who deliberately seek to defeat the purpose of the laws and to appropriate to their own selfish uses the lands which belong to the nation as a whole.  There is one division of the General Land Office in Washington known as the Contest Division.  Before it come, not only the ordinary disputes that are likely to arise between rival claimants, but also cases of alleged fraud and violation of the land laws.  In the year 1916 more than 12,000 cases of alleged fraud were acted upon, and nearly 12,000 other cases awaited action