NADP Homepage Show Comparing Allotment and Homesteading, 1900-1915 Both allottment and homesteading were political expressions of ideas of 19th-century reformers. Both promised (at some point) a quarter-section of land to participants who were
expected, vaguely, to be transformed through land ownership into yeoman farmers. They may be said to have differed mainly in that homesteaders were volunteers who could choose their locations, while allottees had no choice concerning participation and little or no choice concerning location. found its most profound expression in the pious hopes of the land reformers of the 1840's. George Henry Evans and his fellow agrarians, writing for the columns of the Working Man's Advocate, the True Workingman, the New York Daily Tribune, and other labor of general newspapers, harped incessantly on the issues of widespread misery, poverty, and unemployment as a consequence of capitalism and land monopolies. All this they confidently expected to be remedied by a homestead policy which would give land to all who could use it.2 The Homestead Act was passed in 1862. Adult citizens and aliens who had filed first papers for citizenship could file a claim for 160 acres in return for a $10 fee. After living on the land or at least farming it for five years and paying a few more fees, the homesteader got title. The trouble with the Homestead Act in operation, as with the Pre-emption Act, was that Congress merely adopted the law and then did absolutely nothing in the way of helping the needy persons out to the land or extending them credit and guidance in the first heartbreaking years of occupancy. Perhaps these functions were outside the scope of federal authority, at least as then conceived, but without them the Homestead Act could benefit only monopolists or persons of fairly ample means.7 Table 8 shows the approximate success rate of homesteaders who
filed original entries in 1900 through 1910. The table is arranged to compare original entries with the corresponding final entries filed five years afterward. The figures should be considered at best approximate because the fact that a homesteader filed for final entry after five years does not necessarily mean that the homesteader had been a success as a farmer. By E. A. Schwartz, associate professor of history, California State University, San Marcos NOTES 1. Ray Allen
Billington, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, fourth edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974), 323-24. What promised settlers 160 acres of land?The Civil War: The Senate's Story
To help develop the American West and spur economic growth, Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm the land. The act distributed millions of acres of western land to individual settlers.
Which government gave US citizens 160 acres of free land out West?President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. On January 1, 1863, Daniel Freeman made the first claim under the Act, which gave citizens or future citizens up to 160 acres of public land provided they live on it, improve it, and pay a small registration fee.
What US law passed in settlement of the Great Plains by 160 acres of land to settle to make productive use of 1862?The Homestead Act of 1862 was responsible for bringing many settlers to the area. The Act offerred up to 160 acres of free land to anyone willing to settle and cultivate it for three years, but these "homesteaders" were soon to find that water was a key factor in their success or failure.
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