The Public Lands in the Hands of Corporations

The United States Economist makes an estimate of all the public lands in the United States, giving the number of acres which have been donated to schools and colleges; appropriated for asylums, for public buildings, for canal purposes, for Indian reservations; granted for railroad purposes, mainly the Pacific railroads; entered under the homestead laws of 1862 with its supplements of 1864 and 1866; from this estimate it appears that substantially the public lands are absorbed, and that the numberless acres of Western lands, cultivable but uncultivated, are no longer in the hands of the government, but in those of great subsidized railway corporations. There have been granted to the Pacific railroads two hundred and fifteen millions, nine hundred and seventy-one thousand and five acres of land, nearly twice as many acres as have been reserved for all the Indians in the United States; nearly four times as many acres as have been granted to all the schools, colleges and asylums in the country, and nearly one-tenth of all the cultivable area of the United States.

Hereafter, when we are disposed to grow eloquent over the "boundless acres of the West," to invite the European emigrant and the oppressed of all lands to come to the hospitable shores of America to help cultivate its wilds, let us remember that there are no more public lands to sell them; that the general government owns none, and that it is all in the hands of a few great railroad corporations. The widespread dissatisfaction of the people with the pernicious system of giving away the public lands to corporations is manifested just a little too late — when there are no more lands to be donated.