breaking and planting should be permitted to acquire title on payment of $1.25 an acre. In January, 1890, before these petitions were received, a bill had been introduced in the house, "To provide for commutation of timber culture entries." In February the house committee on public lands reported a substitute, "An act to repeal timber-culture laws and for other purposes. The senate retarded its progress somewhat, but finally, on March 3, 1891, eighteen years after the passing of the first act, the repeal became a fact. The long discredited system had been an unconscionable time in dying.15 It was not, however, quite dead yet. The new statute provided for commutation, and entitled those who wished to do so to complete on the original terms. The repealing statute provided as to commutation, "that any person who [has] made entry under the timber culture laws, and who has for a period of four years complied with the provisions of the said laws, and who is an actual bona fide resident of the State or Territory in which said land is located, shall be entitled to make final proof thereto, and acquire title," by paying $1.25 an acre. The fouryear period would make it possible to distinguish genuine cultivators from dishonest men, and it was attempted to exclude speculators from a distance. Commutation of timber culture entries proved to be a fairly popular way of acquiring title. Nine and twenty-nine hundredths per cent of all land transferred under the acts-in fact, over a million acres - was commuted to cash. In the four months after the authorizing statute, 67,000 acres were commuted; and over 300,000 acres in each of the two succeeding years. After 1897 the amounts fell below 8,000 acres annually; but there were small amounts every year until 1905.16 Even longer than the business of commutation, continued the activity by the regular method. In 1893 the requirements as to final proof were reduced. It was necessary no longer to show that there were any living trees on the land, but simply to show that trees had been in good faith planted and in good faith cultivated. As by law a claim lapsed in thirteen years, all business should have been terminated in 1904. Local land officers, 15 Ibid., 1888, 56; Congressional record, 51 congress, 1 session, pp. 70, 1523, 2352, 2538; United States statutes at large, 26:1095. 16 Reports of commissioner of land office, 1891-1905. however, carelessly permitted entries to be made after 1891. There were still pending in 1906 "about five hundred sixty-nine entries, practically all of which were made long after the expiration of the statutory period." The last final proof was made during the year ending June 30, 1909, and the tale of the "treeclaims" was then complete."7 It remains only to examine the statistics touching the operation of the act. There were made 290,278 original entries, amounting in all to a little more than 43,500,000 acres. Counting both entries on which final proof was made in the usual way, and those commuted for cash, we find that 72,371 entries, or twenty-four and nine-tenths per cent of the total, resulted in transfer of land. The land transferred amounts to 10,865,480.61 acres. The average size, in the cases both of original entries and completed claims, is almost exactly 150 acres. 18 By taking the amounts of the original entries year by year, it is possible to plot a curve, showing the fluctuations of public interest in timber culture land. After the amount of cultivation required was reduced in 1878, from forty to ten acres, there was a rapid rise that lasted for two years. The decline of the two succeeding years was possibly due to the seriousness of the drought and the grasshopper plague; possibly to other causes. Reference has already been made to the comparative amount of business done under timber culture and homestead legislation. The curves for both are roughly alike. Both show a general tendency to rise from 1877, both decline a little at 1880, and both reach their highest points in our period in 1886. For the timber culture acts, the acreage represented by the original entries that year was a little over five and a third million acres. A decline then began that lasted into the early nineties; and when a prosperous time in homestead land business came again, the timber culture acts had been repealed. Entries were made and completed in twenty-one different states and territories. In only nine, however, did the number of completed entries exceed seven hundred, or the acreage for which title passed amount to more than one hundred thousand 17 Report of commissioner of land office, 1906, 40, 41; 1909; United States statutes at large, 27:593. 18 No attempt is made to give page references for these statistics. They are drawn from the annual Reports, but involve arithmetical work for which the Reports furnish only the starting points. Explanation of graph: The upper line represents original entries under the home stead act; the lower line, original entries under the timber culture acts. acres, 3.000.000 acres. The following table gives these nine states arranged in order according to the number of entries, and the total acreage: The four leading states form a solid block from Kansas to North Dakota; and Colorado and Minnesota, which follow at some distance, flank the solid block on west and east respectively. The other three are the Pacific coast states. Nebraska, whence had come the original movers of the acts in the senate, profited most. It should be added, with reference to the table above, that final entries made before 1889 in the Dakotas were returned in the Reports simply as of Dakota territory. The amounts for the years before 1889 have been here apportioned to North and South Dakota in the ratio shown by all the final entries after that date. By division it is possible to find what part of the total area of a state passed into private hands under the timber culture acts. The following list shows what percentage of each state's area is land alienated from the public domain under timber culture legislation: The same four states head the list again, and in the same order, followed by Colorado, and Minnesota, but with Washington ahead of Minnesota. The other two Pacific states are again in the leading nine. The use of the timber culture method of acquiring title to land occurred when two conditions appeared in conjunction: the agricultural frontier, and a soil naturally devoid of timber. There are no statistics of the amount of timber produced through the working of the acts. It is suggested that the curious make inquiry of the now elderly men who were young in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas, in the eighties and nineties of the last century.19 UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE WILLIAM F. RANEY 19 There were twenty-two statutes which touched upon the timber culture system. They are printed in United States statutes at large, 17:605; 18:21; 19:54, 59, 405; 20:19, 113, 169; 21:48, 140; 25:854; 26:121, 1096; 27:270, 572; 28:227, 594, 599, 744; 29:43; 32:63; 33:59. |