Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1887 — LAND FOR THE LANDLESS. [ARTICLE]

LAND FOR THE LANDLESS.

How the Public Domain Has Been Squandered Under Republican Rule. [From the Indianapolis Sentinel.] The Republican party, almost from the day that it came into power, began the work of giving away the public land to railroad and land sharks or every description. The rights, interests, and welfare <>f the people were totally disregarded by the Republican party. Said the Hon. b. M. Stockslager, a member of the Forty-eighth Congress from Indiana: “The American people were amazed when they learned that on the Ist day of July, 1862, just forty-one days after'the homestead law was approved, the same Congress, with a reckless disregard of their own action never before witnessed, granted to the Union and Pacific Railroads a magnificent belt of land forty miles wide, extending from the Missouri River to near the Bay of San Francisco, and containing to the Union Pacific 16,115,000 acres and to the Central Pacific 15,260,000 acres. Thus the homestead law, by which the millions of acres of unsettled land were pledged to the people as a heritage to the actual settlers—to the men of toil who would cultivate them and make them blossom and bloom and bear fruit—was violated, disregarded, and set aside, and a most gigantic system of reckless squandering es the lands inaugurated. This was an entire change in our laud system, both in the manner of disposing of the public lands and of the amounts to be given. Before that date not a single acre of the public domain was ever granted to a railroad or other corporation. Donations of the public lands had been made.from time to time to the States, aggregating in all 31,600,846 acres, for the purpose of being disposed of by the States in aid of education, for military roads, for internal improvements, and for railroads. But the grants were all to the States.”

The Republican party has been from the first the monopolist party. It has sought in every possible way to create an aristocratic class, based upon wealth. It has not only robbed the people of their lands to create a landed aiistocracy as crushing as that of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but it has sought by tariff protection to enrich the few by burdening the poor with enormous taxation upon the prime necessities of life. There is no more vital question than that which relates to the pubi c lands, the public domain—the broad acres designed by a beneficent Providence for the homes of the people. The Republican party has from the first ignored the people; it has legislated for the land-grabber, the land thief, the land monopolist, the landed aristocrat, and this policy of the Republican party was kept up until 200,000,000 acres of land was granted to railroad corporations. Says Mr. Stockslager, now acting Land Commissioner, in his speech in the Fortyeighth Congress: “The mind is staggered in an effort to contemplate this imperial estate granted to great corporations. It can only be grasped by comparison. You can carve out of it 1,250,000 homesteads of one hundred and sixty acres each. It is equal to two hundred and forty States the size of Rhode Island. It is equal in area to seven States like Pennsylvania, with her 45,215 square miles; four and one-half times as large as all the New England States; equal to the thiiteen original States, which have 204,001,280 acres. The total area of Great Britain and Ireland is 74,137,600 acres, or but little more than one-third these grants. There is not among all the enlightened nations of modern Europe one that has an area which equals that of our railroad kings. The empire of Austria-Hungary and the kingdom of Italy, with Switzerland and the Netherlands added, have an area of only 250,012,620 acres. The creation by law of this most gigantic land monopoly the world has ever seen must in the very nature of things be felt upon our institutions and upon our people. The example of the Federal Government has been followed by some of our States, which have granted millions of acres of their public lands to railroad corporations, or sola them in large bodies to individuals. All the barriers have been thrown down, and fore ; gn and domestic capitalists have been reaping a rich harvest for themselves in the purchase of vast areas of land. But so far as the people are concerned, they, through their unworthyrepresentatives, have sown the wind, and they are destined to reap the whirlwind.” The Democratic party is now engaged, and has been engaged at all times when an opportunity offered, to put a stop to the squandering of the public lands by the Republican party, ana now chat it has the power to stop the stupendous wrong it is regaining some of the land the Republican party bestowed upon railroad corporations, and which has been forfeited. A Washington dispatch of recent date says the Assistant Land Commissioner has issued orders relative ‘o the land of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, and also in reference to the Florida Railway and Navigation and the Gulf and Ship Island Railway Companies, whose land grants all lie in Florida, and also to the Missouri, Kansas and Texas. According to the estimates made officially, the Atlantic and Pacific order throws open to settlement 25,000,000 acres, and the orders to the Florida Railway and Navigation Company and the Gulf and Ship Island Railway Companies will largely increase the amount of land restored to the pc ople, and the policy now being pursued by the Democratic administration will result in the restitution of fully 50,000,000 acres of the public lands to the people, and open them to homestead settlement, enough for 312,500 farms of 160 acres each, a hundred thousand more farms than there are m Indiana of all sizes. These are subjects which the people can afford to take into consideration. They will discover, on the one Land, the Republican party‘throwing away the people’s land, bestowing it on railroad corporations. seeking to build up a landed aristocracy, while the Democratic party is resolved by every lawful means to give as much as possible of the public land back to the people, the rightful owners of the acres.