necessaries, can never be other than unfavourable to great production or rapid growth: and his system consists of arrangements for securing that every colony shall have from the first a town population bearing due proportion to its agricultural, and that the cultivators of the soil shall not be so widely scattered as to be deprived by distance, of the benefit of that town population as a market for their produce. The principle on which the scheme is founded, does not depend on any theory respecting the superior productiveness of land held in large portions, and cultivated by hired labour. Supposing it true that land yields the greatest produce when divided into small properties and cultivated by peasant proprietors, a town population would be just as necessary to induce those proprietors to raise that larger produce: and if they were too far from the nearest seat of non-agricultural industry to use it as a market for disposing of their surplus, and thereby suppying their other wants, neither that surplus nor any equivalent for it would, generally speaking, be produced.

It is, above all, the deficiency of town population which limits the productiveness of the industry of a country like India. The agriculture of India is conducted entirely on the system of small holdings. There is, however, a considerable amount of combination of labour. The village institutions and customs, which are the real framework of Indian society, make provision for joint action in the cases in which it is seen to be necessary; or where they fail to do so, the government (when tolerably well administered) steps in, and by an outlay from the revenue, executes by combined labour the tanks, embankments, and works of irrigation, which are indispensable. The implements and processes of agriculture are however so wretched, that the produce of the soil, in spite of great natural fertility and a climate highly favourable to vegetation, is miserably small and the land might be made to yield food in abundance for many more than the present number of inhabitants, without departing from the system of small holdings. But to this the stimulus is wanting, which a large town population, connected with the rural districts by easy and unexpensive means of communication, would afford. That town population, again, does not grow up, because the few wants and unaspiring spirit of the cultivators

(joined until lately with great insecurity of property, from military and fiscal rapacity) prevent them from attempting to become consumers of town produce. In these circumstances the best chance of an early development of the productive resources of India, consists in the rapid growth of its export of agricultural produce (cotton, indigo, sugar, coffee, &c.) to the markets of Europe. The producers of these articles are consumers of food supplied by their fellow-agriculturists in India; and the market thus opened for surplus food will, if accompanied by good government, raise up by degrees more extended wants and desires, directed either towards European commodities, or towards things which will require for their production in India a larger manufacturing population.

Such, then, is the direct economical advantage of foreign trade. But there are, besides, indirect effects, which must be counted as benefits of a high order. One is, the tendency of every extension of the market to improve the processes of production. A country which produces for a larger market than its own, can introduce a more extended division of labour, can make greater use of machinery, and is more likely to make inventions and improvements in the processes of production. Whatever causes a greater quantity of anything to be produced in the same place, tends to the general increase of the productive powers of the world. There is another consideration, principally applicable to an early stage of industrial advancement. A people may be in a quiescent, indolent, uncultivated state, with all their tastes either fully satisfied or entirely undeveloped, and they may fail to put forth the whole of their productive energies for want of any sufficient object of desire. The opening of a foreign trade, by making them acquainted with new objects, or tempting them by the easier acquisition of things which they had not previously thought attainable, sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people: inducing those who were satisfied with scanty comforts and little work, to work harder for the gratification of their new tastes, and even to save, and accumulate capital, for the still more complete satisfaction of those tastes at a future time. . .

1 The great evil, and it is a serious one indeed, under which the inhabitants of the western country labor, arises from the want of a market. There is no place where the great staple articles for the use of civilized life can be produced in greater abundance or with greater ease, and yet as respects most of the luxuries and many of the conveniences of life the people are poor. They have no vent for their produce at home, and, being all agriculturists, they produce alike the same article with the same facility; and such is the present difficulty and expense of transporting their produce to an Atlantic port that little benefit is realized from that quarter. The single circumstance of want of a market is already beginning to produce the most disastrous effect, not only on the industry, but on the morals of the inhabitants. Such is the fertility of their land that one-half their time spent in labor is sufficient to produce every article which their farms are capable of yielding, in sufficient quantities for their own consumption, and there is nothing to incite them to produce more. They are, therefore, naturally led to spend the other part of their time in idleness and dissipation. Their increase in numbers far from encourages them to become manufacturers for themselves, but puts to a greater distance the time when, quitting the freedom and independence of masters of the soil, they submit to the labor and confinement of manufacturers. . 2

1 Porter, Speech on Internal Improvements, Annals of Congress, 1810, p. 1388. 2 Cf. Bowen, in Chapters XII and XIII, pp. 657-658, 687–689.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PUBLIC LAND POLICY

INTRODUCTION

Great as the influence of the settlement of the West has been upon our national life, the demands which it has made upon the government, as already noted, have been curiously small. When a nation undertakes to colonize on any considerable scale, its government is commonly called upon to deal with at least four important matters. It has first to devise some form of government for the newly settled communities; second, it has to regulate the commerce of these communities with itself and with the rest of the world; third, it has to regulate the relation of the settlers with the native inhabitants of the country; and, fourth, it has to dispose of the public lands. In the case of the United States, only the last of these has ever played any considerable part in our national politics/ By devising, at the very start, a form of government for the territories which handed over to the settlers practically complete self-government, and adding to this the policy of admitting new settlements into the Union as states very early in their development, the national government escaped entirely the difficult problem of governing dependencies. The admission of territories into the Union as states has often disturbed our politics, but the government of territories has never done so. In the same way, the establishment of interstate free trade by the Constitution of 1789 and its extension to the territories excluded completely that other difficult problem of colonization, commercial regulation. Indian affairs have occasionally become important and called for energetic action on the part of the government, but the small number of natives and the vast territory into which they could retire before the advancing pioneers have prevented these difficulties from becoming permanently serious. It is only the disposition of the publie lands which has called for the continuous attention of the legislature and administrative officials.

The public land policy of our government has been determined by two ideas: first, that of using the land as a financial resource of the federal government; and second, that of putting the lands as speedily as possible into the hands of actual settlers. The first was strong enough to prevent the lands from being actually given away until the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. From 1820 on, however, the second idea came steadily to the front, as shown by the reduction of the price of land, its sale in smaller areas, the preemption policy gradually adopted, and the grant of large areas to aid in the construction of canals and railroads. The chief effect of these last, from the point of view

of the country as a whole, was to hasten settlement. With the adoption of the Homestead Act the idea of using the public lands as a financial resource was X abandoned entirely, though our financial needs were never greater than at that time. Henceforth the public domain was to be devoted almost entirely to the interests of actual settlers. The only exception to this was the grant of lands to all the states for educational purposes.

The history of this policy reveals but little appreciation on the part of our statesmen of its far-reaching influence upon our social evolution. Perhaps the most important circumstance affecting American society is the fact that the people have always been in contact with unoccupied lands. The settlement of these lands has always constituted a large part of their activity. About the only way in which the government could regulate this great influence upon our national life was through the land policy; but our statesmen never seem to have realized that this influence could be anything but beneficial. The only evil that the policy sought to prevent was the engrossing of large areas by speculators who would thereby prevent or postpone their occupation by actual settlers. That there was an evil to be feared in the too great dispersion of the people over the land never made any impression on the masses of the people, though it did not escape the attention of a few thoughtful observers. Getting the public lands into the hands of actual settlers seemed obviously wise and beneficent. Little attention was given to the fact that this involved the scattering of the inhabitants of the older state's over a vast area.

This is the more remarkable since the injury to the older communities which the movement involved was obvious enough, and there is not lacking evidence that many individuals in those communities saw and appreciated it. Never in the halls of legislation, however, did it receive any discussion. There are two possible explanations of this. In the first place, no public man wished to alienate western people by opposing a policy which they so strongly favored, even though it involved some sacrifice of the interests of his constituents, and some injury to the nation as a whole. In the second place, the eastern states did not fail to recognize that the growth of the West reflected prosperity úpon themselves. After 1815 internal trade became the great prize for which the commercial cities of the seaboard were contending, and it was to the South and West that the eastern manufacturers looked for that great home market which was their chief support. Moreover, foreign immigration set in to supply the place of the pioneers from this section. Even Virginia and the Carolinas, which felt most severely the drain of their population to the West, received some compensation in the resulting rise in the value of their slaves. For these reasons no effective protest was made against a land policy that stimulated the too great dispersion of the population. The social evils involved in this movement were too complex and difficult to be comprehended by the ordinary citizen. Only thoughtful persons were likely to recognize it, and only disinter ested ones were likely to urge its remedy upon the legislature. Such persons were never numerous enough to influence the land legislation of the country.