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CHAPTER XII....continued
To one who hears so much as I have heard of the less than 21,000,000 acres of Ireland, and the 77,000,000 of the whole of the United Kingdom--including England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and every island adjoining or belonging thereto--the idea of the acreage of the United States is simply bewildering. One would require a gigantic mind to grasp or comprehend a thing in itself so gigantic. Practically speaking, the public lands, or those which have not passed into individual ownership, are illimitable. Millions and millions of square miles, hundreds of millions of acres, never yet surveyed--millions and millions of square miles, and hundreds of millions of acres surveyed, but not occupied, and capable of absorbing, for centuries, the surplus population of Europe. Almost any one of the new Territories--which will be the States of to-morrow--would swallow, at a bite, as a child would a cherry, all the agricultural population of Ireland, with its proprietors, resident and absentee, included. One thing, however, is indisputable--that the Irish who have emigrated, or who may emigrate to America, ought to find no difficulty in suiting themselves; also, that there are as good chances to-day for the bold and adventurous as there were ten, or twenty, or fifty years back.
Though it is difficult to afford a sober idea of what is of itself well nigh incomprehensible from its very vastness, I must endeavour to represent, and that as briefly as possible, the extent of the Public Lands of the United States.
The total extent of the Public Lands of the United States is 1,468,000,000 acres; of which 474,160,000 acres had been explored and surveyed up to the close of 1866. The surveyed land is generally well suited for agriculture, and in the most favourably circumstanced localities, on the banks of streams, and in the neighbourhood of trunk roads. There remain unsurveyed, and open to any settler under the Pre-emption Laws, 991,308,249 acres. In Colorado, a rich mineral and agricultural State, only 1,500,000 acres are surveyed, and 65,000,000, or nearly the extent of the entire of the United Kingdom, unsurveyed. In Washington Territory 3,500,000 are surveyed, 41,000,000 unsurveyed. In Oregon, a State into which immigrants pour at the rate of 20,000 a year, only 5,000,000 acres are surveyed, while 55,000,000 are unsurveyed. In Kansas, a partially settled State, the surveys extend over 16,000,000 acres, leaving 35,000,000 unsurveyed. Nebraska, 13,000,000 out of 48,000,000. California, with 27,000,000 acres surveyed, has 93,000,000 unsurveyed! This one State, to which the Irish have added so large a portion of its population, is six times larger than Ireland, or has six times more than the number of acres respecting which it appears--at least, up to the time these words are written--to be so impossible to deal with or legislate for according to the dictates of man's wisdom and the principles of God's justice. In Arizona, Dacota, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Idaho, there are enormous tracts, to be counted by hundreds of millions of acres, of every variety of soil, and richly endowed with minerals, open to the emigrant.
In Minnesota, into which immigration has been strongly flowing for years, there are 31,000,000 of unsurveyed land. In the older of the still modern States there are vast tracts of land open to the purchaser, and all surveyed. Thus, in Wisconsin there are 33,000,000 acres; in Iowa, 35,000,000; Missouri, 41,000,000; Alabama, 32,000,000; Ohio, 25,000,000; Florida, 26,000,000; Arkansas, 33,000,000; Mississippi, 30,000,000; Louisiana, 23,000,000; Indiana, 21,000,000; Michigan, 36,000,000; and Illinois, 35,000,000 acres. In the new mineral States, such as Colorado and Nevada, the mining population afford a ready market for all surplus agricultural produce. A couple of years since there were prices for agricultural produce in Colorado which would remind one of the state of things in California during the first rush to the gold mines; but cultivation has now so much increased that the prices, though most remunerative, have been considerably reduced. In the course of time mining enterprise will extend more to Arizona, Montana, Idaho, &c., all the new Territories and States being rich in minerals; and as mining operations advance in any locality, the agricultural population will be correspondingly benefited. In fact, with mining enterprise, all kinds of manufacturing industries gradually spring up; and those who are thus engaged form the readiest and best customers to the farmer, who finds with them a profitable market for his surplus produce of every kind.
The Government surveys not only follow the course of immigration, but meet its requirements. But there is always a large quantity of surveyed land in each of the new States, as indeed in the others, available for immediate settlement. Much of it is prairie, which does not present the difficulties of timber land in cultivation. The total thus available--offered or unoffered--in 1866, was sufficient to make 831,250 farms of 160 acres each.
Under the Homestead Law * a farm may be had at an almost nominal price--little more than the cost of its survey. Upon the unsurveyed lands any person may enter, and proceed to appropriate and cultivate a tract; and when the survey reaches and includes his land, he will have the right of pre-emption--purchasing its fee simple--at a small price, which may be somewhat enhanced by a neighbouring improvement, such as a railroad passing within a certain distance. The settler may have occupied his farm for years, it may be two or it may be ten, before the survey comes up to him, and he can therefore well afford to pay the very moderate price which the Government charges for what is then carefully and accurately defined, and for which his title is made good against the world. Under the Homestead Law the limit of the farms which each individual can obtain is 160 acres; but under the Pre-emption Law it appears the settler may purchase any quantity in proportion to the number of acres cleared at the time of the survey.
The amazing vastness of the land or territory of the United States may be indicated by a single fact in reference to her mines, which, in addition to her agricultural resources, offer an immense field for human labour. Her coal lands alone cover an area of two hundred thousand square miles; while the combined coal fields of Europe cover but 16,000 square miles--that is, the coal fields of the United States are more than twelve times more extensive in area than all the coal fields of Europe! Iron, that metal more really precious than gold, is found in the neighbourhood of coal. With respect to this valuable mineral, America maintains her supremacy of vast-ness; and any one who travels some hundred miles from the splendid city of St. Louis may behold a huge mountain of solid iron, rising many hundred feet above the plain, and presenting a striking feature in the landscape.
It is not at all necessary that an Irish immigrant should go West, whatever and how great the inducements it offers to the enterprising. There is land to be had, under certain circumstances and conditions, in almost every State in the Union. And there is no State in which the Irish peasant who is living from hand to mouth in one of the great cities as a day-labourer, may not improve his condition by betaking himself to his natural and legitimate avocation--the cultivation of the soil. Nor is the vast region of the South unfavourable to the laborious and energetic Irishman. On the contrary, there is no portion of the American continent in which he would receive a more cordial welcome, or meet with more favourable terms. This would not have been so before the war, or the abolition of slavery, and the upset of the land system which was based upon the compulsory labour of the negro. Before the war, the land was held in mass by large proprietors, and, whatever its quantity, there was no dividing or selling it--that is willingly; for when land was brought to the hammer, the convenience of the purchaser had to be consulted. But there was no voluntary division of the soil, no cutting-it up into parcels, to be occupied by small proprietors.
Now, the state of things is totally different. Too much land in the hands of one individual may now be as embarrassing in the South as in the North, especially when it is liable to taxation. The policy of the South is to increase and strengthen the, white population, so as not to be, as the South yet is, too much dependent on the negro; and the planter who, ten years ago, would not sever a single acre from his estate of 2,000, or 10,000, or 20,000 acres, will now readily divide, if not all, at least a considerable portion of it, into saleable quantities, to suit the convenience of purchasers. He will do more than divide; he will sell on fair terms, and he will afford a fair time to pay--he will, in fact, do all in his power to promote the growth of the white population, while yielding to the necessity of the times, which compels him to part with what has become rather burdensome and embarrassing to himself.
This is a subject on which I could not venture to write without the fullest authority; but I have spoken with hundreds of Southerners of rank and position, men identified with the South by the strongest ties of birth, property, and patriotism; and I know, from unreserved interchange of opinion with them, that the general feeling of the enlightened and the politic is in favour of inducing European settlers to come to the South, and come on easy terms. 'The experience of the past year (1866),' said a well-informed Southern gentleman to me, `leads most of our people to see the absolute necessity of dividing and sub-dividing the large plantations.' I heard almost the same words used in several of the Southern States, as well by owners of large estates as by persons extensively engaged in the sale and management of property.
There is a prejudice, and a somewhat ignorant prejudice, against the South; the prevalent idea being that no one but the negro can venture to brave its climate--that open-air labour in the South is death to the white man. I know of Irishmen who cultivate farms in all the Southern States, and who work at them themselves; and that they and their children are strong and robust. But not only are some of the Southern States temperate and genial, but in almost all those States there are portions which are most favourable to the industry and longevity of the white man. I was anxious to obtain reliable information on this point, and I received from the Bishop of Charleston--the honoured son of a good Irishman--a statement respecting a State that, perhaps of all others, is the one to which prejudice would first point as the most unsuited to the labour of the European. South Carolina, like all the Southern States, has its belts, of soil as well as climate, favourable and unfavourable to the European immigrant. Dr. Lynch says of his State, that it is 'probably the most Irish of any of the States of the Union.' 'Irish family names abound in every rank and condition of life; and there are few men, natives of the State, in whose veins there does not run more or less of Irish blood.' He adds, 'While its inhabitants have always had the impetuous character of the Irish race, nowhere has there been a more earnest sympathy for the struggles of Irishmen at home, nowhere will the Irish immigrant be received with greater welcome, or be more generously supported in all his rights; and I do not know any part of the country where industry and sobriety would ensure to the immigrant who engages in agriculture an ampler compensation for himself and family in a briefer number of years.' In his communication, written in compliance with my request, the Bishop points out the healthy and the unhealthy, the favourable and the unfavourable, belts or districts of his State.†
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NOTES:-
* For a copy of the`Act to Secure Homesteads to actual Settlers on the Public domain,' see Appendix.
† For the Bishop's letter, see Appendix.