,v > V-S*?V V-^-> v '+«-*&■<, ^ ./^ /\ ,o' ^ ■< O •'o.S « V ^°^ » -* V jt- *i O * e , ■ A - legal subdivisions, und to include, as far as practicable, the improvements of each settler; all of said lands, except such as shall be purchased by settlers at $1 25 per acre, as herein- before provided, shall, in parcels, as may be neces- sary, be appraised after survey, subject to the ap- proval of the Secretary of the Interior, by three disinterested appraisers, to be appointed by him, who shall each be paid for services and expenses not ex- ceeding ten dollars per day, for the time actually and necessarily occupied in the duties of such appraise- ment; and any of said hinds not claimed by settlers may be reappraised, at the request .of the company or companies interested, at the expiration of every two years; Prdvided, That no timber land shall ever be appraised higher than $7 50 an acre; and no prairie land, lying within ten miles of the located line of either of said railroads, higher than live dollars an acre ; and no prairie land, lying more than ten miles from such located line, higher than §2 50 an acre. Whenever any section or sections of not less in all than t wen ty-five miles i )f either of said rail roads shall have been constructed and equipped, and notice thereofgivento the Secretary of the Interior, he shall ascertain by the report of three disinterested com- missioners, to be appointed by him, whether suchsec- tion is completed and equipped as a good and efficient railroad : and if satisfied of that fact he shall accept such section. Each of such commissioners shall be paid not more than ten dollars per day, and neces- sary traveling expenses during the time actually occupied in traveling to and from and inspecting such section. All expenses of such surveys, appraise- ments, and inspections shall be paid by the Secretary of the Interior out of the proceeds of sales of the lands to settlers, or out of the hand payment made by the said companies, and shall be appropriately charged to the respective companies, and reimbursed by I hem at the next payment of interest or principal of said bonds, or, when said bonds shall have been paid, shall be reimbursed from the proceeds of sales ill said lands to settlers. All of such lands except such as are settled upon and shall have been pur- chased as hereinbefore provided shall be and re- main, open to settlement, preemption, and pur- chase, as follows: any head of a family, haying made such settlement on said lands as is required of preemptors, may purchase, at the land office of the proper district, a quarter section, or less, in legal subdivisions, to include hi< improvements, by pay- ing one half of tho appraised value of the land claimed in cash, within one year from the date of ; ach settlement, and the balance within one year after such first payment: Provided, That no such preemption or purchase shall include, more, than tOTty acres of timber land: And provided farther. That the lands of the reserve shall not be open to such settlement or preemption until after the date, to be fixed by the Secretary of the Interior, for tho selection by tho Osages of their lands in severalty, as hereinafter provided. The proceeds of all sales to settlers, alter deducting therefrom amounts charge- able to the said coin panics, Baall lie credited to them severally, pro rata, as pay men Is on the amounts next t hereafter falling due on the principal or interest of their respective bonds. When the whole of the bond and interest and proportion of expenses due from either of said railroad companies shall havo been fully and punctually paid as herein provided, and when the whole of the lines of railroad herein required to be built shall havo been completed, e [uipped, and accepted, as herein provided, the Sec- retary of the Interior hall cause to bo selected, re- served from sale and patented in e;ieh company, ils due proportion in average value of all the | herein authorized to be sold, which at that date re- main unsold tn settlers ; and shall also pay over to each company its proportion of any proce to ettlors remaining, or accruing, to its orodil it-; bond and interest ami expenses have been fully paid, as aforesaid: Provided, Thai no patent shall issue to any such company for anj land en which pa i I payment has been made by a settler, unless BUOh settler shall fail to make, final payment when due; and i he Secretary of the Interior, for good oause shown, may extend tho time tor linal payment by any settler: And provided 'further, That each patent issued to such company shall contain the condition that the lands therein conveyed shall be sold by said company within five years from the date thereof, and in default of such sale the lands so patented shall revert to the United States, to be sold in trust for the benefit of the Osages. And no patent shall issue to any grantee of such company. If cither or any number of said companies less than the whole shall forfeit its or their right of purchase, as hen . before provided, the other company, or either or ail of the other companies, which shall have performed all the requirements hereof, may, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, within sixty-days from the date of such forfeiture, (and notice thereof given by the Secretary of tho Interior to all of said companies,) assume all the obligations herein im- posed on the company or companies forfeiting, and he entitled to all the rights and privileges forfeited, subject to all the conditions herein prescribed. But in case such forfeiture occurs, and no other company is so admitted to the privileges forfeited, then the Sec- retary of the Interior shall sell the lands to which such company would have been entitled under tho previsions hereof to actual settlers, at such appraise- ment as he shall approve, and on the terms of pay- ment hereinbefore prescribed; and after deducting tho proportion of expenses of survey and appraise- ment which would have been otherwise chargeable to such company, shall invest tho proceeds for tho benefit of the Osages, as hereinbefore provided. If either of said companies shall consolidate with, or assign its franchises to, any other company legally authorized to construct the line of railroad herein required to be built by it, such other company shall be subrogated to all the rights and obligations under this act of such company herein named: Ami pro- vided aho, That the said Osage Indians shall have the right to select lands in severalty on the said res- ervation, not theretofore selected and occupied by settlers, to the extent of one bundled and sixty acres for each head of a family, and eighty acres each for all other persons, belonging to the said tribe, and the samcshall be patented to the person so selecting, or to his or her guardian, if a minor or incompetent, the lands so selected and patented to be inalienable, except by the consent of the President. All moneys paid to the United States for the said lands shall be applied on the baud payments herein required, to the credit of the several companies signifying their acceptance of these propositions, and iu the propor- tions hereinbefore indicated, Mr. ROSS. Mr. President, it is now two years that this proposition has been pending before the Senate. During that time a degree of prejudice has been excited against it which was probably never before created against a merely local measure. It is not necessary .to inquire into the motives which instigated the crusade that has been waged, but it is sufficient at this time to state that that criticism and prejudice are the result of an entire misappre- hension of the facts in relation to it, and I shall ask the indulgence of the Senate for a few moments lo state as briefly and succinctly as I may, what those facts are. In the first place, this amendment proposes to authorize certain railroad corporations in the State of Kansas to purchase, ostensibly, eight million acres of Indian lands in that Slate at. twenty cents per acre, but in reality about seven million acres at about twenty-five cents, as five hundred thousand acres are re- served forBchool purposes, and aboutas much incre fur the' benefit and occupancy of the Indians, in addition to the expenses of ap- praisement, survey, &c, which have to be paid by the purchaser. The corporations proposing to purchase are six in number, are all living organizations, chartered under the laws of the Suite, three of them now under rapid process of construe- | tion. and aggregating altogether seven hundred arid fifty miles of railroad within the State. With this endowment these seven hundred and fifty miles of railroad will all be completed probably within two, and certainly within three years from the passage of this act. The amend- ment is intended to be so framed as to secure the construction of every mile of these respect- ive roads, and not an acre passes iuto their hands until completion. On these lands there are less than four thou- sand Indians. They insist that they have long since sold their lands, and all they now want is their money. I know it has been asserted that thev are dissatisfied with the sale, and ask that it be not ratified ; but I also know, from the official records of the Interior Department, and from personal intercourse with many of them, that it is not true. A most unreasonable and exaggerated idea exists in regard to the value of these lands. It is true that this tract comprises as beautiful and fertile lands as can be found anywhere in the West ; but it is also true that this consti- tutes but a limited portion of the whole, whde the great bulk of the reservation is of an infe- rior quality. If there is such a place as the great American desert, it is in the southwest- ern part of Kansas and the northwestern part of the Indian territory. Vast portions of it are nothing but dry, barren, sandy_ plains, utterly destitute of both water and fuel, the land alkaline and the water brackish. This I know to be its character, for I have seen it. I am confident, too, that there is not a capitalist in the country who would pay this price for it, unless he had the means and intended to con- struct internal improvements to or through it, which would bring it within the reach of civil- ization and of markets ; for only in this way could he ever expect a return of his invest- ment. The Indians are provided with a liberal allow- ance of land for homes in severalty, wherever they choose to take it within the reservation, where the money they receive for the surplus may be applied with some hope of success for their civilization and improvement, and the Government relieved from the annual appro- priations which we now have to make for their eare. , There are some twenty or thirty thousand white settlers now on the lands. They have gone there generally with the consent of the Indians, in most cases paying them royalty for the use of their lands until their sale could be ratified by Congress. These people have of course taken up all the best of the lands, and by this amendment they are guarantied the right to purchase their the min- imum price of public lands. Th - not settled on at this date, and comprising all poorest part of the reservation and none of i best, is to be appraised by Government ap- praisers, and the maximum of that is li.v I according to quality and contiguity to roads. After appraisement the lauds are open to all to settle upon and purchase at the ap- praised value as freely as upon any part of the public domain. Another noticeable feature, and one which ought to commend the bill to those who profess a desire to aid the construction of railroads, but fear the effect of investing titles to large tracts of lands in corporations, is thai roads do not get title to an acre of land until they are completed. During all the time em- ployed in their construction the lands are open to preemption and settlement, the same as pub- lic lands. Following up and even preceding the construction of the roads, as settlements inevitably will, there will at that time be but little if any valuable lands left, nothingbut the sterile sand batiks, to fall into the hands of the corporations, and even these they must dispose of within five years of the completion of their roads, or forfeit them, to be sold for the beuelit of the Indians. Great stress has been laid by the opponents of this scheme upon the assumed impropriety of selling great tracts of land to corporations. It is claimed that they should be reserved for future generations of the landless poor. The meaning of that, in brief, is that they should be reserved for haunts for the buffalo ami the savage; that they should be preserved as lurk- ing places from which a vengeful foe to civil- ization can spring upon the defenseless sett ie- ments of the pioneer, burn his cabin, drive his stock, murder him. and take captive his women and children. That is what it amounts to, and nothing else. Of what use will they be to the coming generations of landless poor, or to anvbody else, with such incumbrances as that? How else are you going to bring these great interior plains within the bounds i ilization and development but by the influence of internal improvements? And how else are you going to secure those internal improve- ments but by offering reasonable inducements to capitalists to invest their money in ti: struction of those improvements? W he ference does it make to the Government what becomes of these lands so long as the rights ol its wards and its citizens are protected? It does, however, make this difference to us: t he adoption of this amendment will, within the next ten years, create $1,000,000,1 where nowis nothing buta barren sand I 1,000,000 of wealth, more than w evolved In forty years - !,, communities ol' comparatively recenl origin, like those of the West, with but little money, but an abundance of land, we have no means within our reach so effective for the construction of railroads, and consequently in stimulating development and promoting the general prosperity, as the appropriation of; lands. As appears upon the face of the prop- osition, it takes nothingfrom the Government, but actually adds to its resources, by opening up sources of production which do not now exist, and which can never be developed but by the construction of railroads. It works no hardship to the settler, but directly the reverse, because in paying the increased price required for his home, he buys with a certainty that within a reasonable time he will be furnished a remunerative market at his door for every pound of vegetable and animal product of his land, with the additional advantage of the certain advance, far beyond its cost, of his homestead whenever he desires to sell it. So apparent and well understood is this that in nine cases out of ten of inquiries at the local land offices and elsewhere for eligible locations upon the public lands, almost the first question asked is whether they will be within the reach of projected lines of railroad. It is also proven by the experience of every land-endowed rail- road company in the West. Not less than seven hundred thousand acres of railroad lands in my own State have been sold to immigrants within the last three years, in many cases at enhanced prices, simply because they were within reach of these improved means of communication. The immigrant prefers these rather than go out upon the public domain, away from schools, churches, and society, where lands could be had at one quarter or one tenth the price. lie has been content to pay more if necessary and own correspondingly less land, and remain where he can send his children to school, enjoy the benefits of society, and, above all, have a market at his door for all he has to sell. This one substantial fact is worth more than all the theorizing of the. opponents of land sub- sidies to railroads, and demonstrates in a most practical and convincing manner, the wisdom and beneficence of the system which our Gov- ernment has adopted. To the State, also, this system of appropriating lands is a great gain, because the construction of every mile of road within its borders increases directly to the amount of its cost, the aggregate of its taxable property, which is also still farther increased in an endless ratio by the additional attraction to immigration and consequent increased pro- duction; so that, instead of any being losers, all are gainers. The time was when we might look for prosper- ity and development in the distant and isolated regions of the interior, when the stage- coach and i he Hal boal ul d the wants of com- merce and furnished ample means of trade and communication. 1 > u t. thai lime has gom by, and cities cannot now be successfully built or farms profitably cultivated away from the great arteries of commerce and of thought afforded by the railroad and the telegraph. Perhaps as signal an instance as any to be found of the beneficent influence of the land- grant system, long since wisely adopted by the Government, is in the State of Kansas. We have in that State completed, and projected with a certainty of completion, some three thousand miles of railway, nearly all of which is aided, and all of which is largely stimulated by grants of land. One thousand miles of these roads are now in operation, costing an aggregate of §20,000,000 for construction and many millions more for stocking. Contrary to the received idea of that country, capitalists and railroad builders found there a region which needed only the developing power of the railroad to make it what it has since proven to be, the most productive spot on the continent for grains and fruits and vegetables. The result has been that where sixteen years ago, there was not a white man living, or ten years ago, at the admission of that State into the Union, when there were but one hundred and seven thousand white people, we have to-day six hundred thousand people, and a population increasing at the rate of two thou- sand a day. During the last year our contri- butions to the support of the Government have increased three hundred per cent. ; and that contribution is rapidly increasing from month to month. It is a remarkable fact, too, that this great increase both of people and of wealth, is confined to the localities which are or are certain soon to be penetrated by rail- roads. At least two thirds of this vast influx are seeking homes on lands comprised within the railroad withdrawals. They appreciate the importance and value of the proximity of railroads ; and while the3 r can go anywhere upon the public lauds, and take a homestead for the asking, they prefer to pay the prices they do and remain within the limits of trade and civilization. it will not be denied that no way has yet been devised so promotive of the settlement and improvement of the West as the reason- able appropriation oi' its lands to the building of railroads. It is not alone the lands that are traversed that are benefited ; but the initial and terminal points also, far removed from them, are made important centers of trade and trans- portation; and their citizens, together with the people on the otherwise worthless lands of the interior, are made rich and prosperous. New ") ork and Boston, as well as San Francisco and Portland, are thus directly benefited by the construction of these interior lines. The value of every man's farm on either Bide of a railroad is al once immensely enhanced. Immigration is attracted, and all lands open to Btstth men! in the vicinily are rapid ly taken up. The increased means of transportation prac- tically bring the consumer of the East to the door of the producer in the West.' Schools and churches are established and maintained where, before the advent of the railroad, settlements were too sparse and poor to admit of these peculiar indices of prosperity and progress. Society is increased, strengthened, and im- proved, and the political importance of the State is augmented by every vote that is se- cured by the added facilities for business and for comfortable living afforded by railroads. It is in this way that the railroads give the lands to the Government instead of the Gov- ernment giving them to the railroads, by giving them value and making them attractive to immigration and productive of wealth and rev- enue. The disposition of the public domain is largely a question of dollars and cents to the country — a question as to how much shall be realized out of them. As a source of cash revenue it has long since been conceded that nothing is or can be realized directly from their sale by the Government; that the $1 25 per acre received for them as an item of revenue is so insignificant as to be unworthy of con- sideration ; that the return to be anticipated from their sale is in their development and the production from them of taxable property, and not in the price per acre received for them. The great bulk of the public lands are hun- dreds of miles from railroad communication, and consequently that distance from market. Suppose the settler goes out and takes a homestead, getting his land for comparatively nothing. It is inevitable that in the absence of liberal grants of lands he must remain there many years before railroad communication will be much nearer to him than now. In the meau time he is fortunate, and succeeds in raisingabundantcrops of grain, and vegetables, and stock. His neighbors are, like himself, producers and not consumers. The country is sparsely settled, because there are no unusual facilities for transportation and trade, and nothing, in the absence of railroads, to con- centrate settlements and build up towns. His produce is a drug in his own neighborhood and region of country because of the absence of towns, and consequently of consumers. When his crops mature and the marketing season of the year comes round, he has therefore to load them into his wagon and carry them these hun- dreds of miles before he can sell them at anything like the ruling rates of the markets. It takes him a week or more to reach that market, and nearly as long to return. Who cannot see that the necessary outlay of teams, of money, and of time, and especially of the latter, if properly valued, would leave the farmer a very small dividend, or rather none at all, at the end of the round trip? He would return creditor to his farm if not in debt to his grocer. How many men would go out upon the public lands in this age of railroad develop- ment, with the prospect before them of an in- definite continuance of this state of thin. [| cannot be said that the rapid development of the West disproves this theory, for not one in ten of the immigrants to the West have gone there but in the confident expectation of in a few years enjoying all the benefits of near rail- road communication and the advantages of a close market. As a single illustration of this fact, scarcely were the settlements organized in the valley of the Kansas river before the agitation of the proposition to make that the route of the Pa- cific railroad was commenced, and it was largely the confidence which was felt even at thai day, that the project would ultimately succeed, that attracted and retained the two hundred thousand people now in that valley. This is my observation and experience ; and the same considerations will apply with equal force to all parts of the West, proving that it is abso- lutely cheaper and better for the frontiersman to pay the enhanced value given to his lands by the presence of railroads than to take them for nothing and remain long distances from communication and markets. Settlers do not go upon lands to which there is in their judgment no probability of the ex- tension of railways. There are now open to settlement in the West, under the homestead law, millions of acres of the finest lands that lie under the sun, which the Government is begging the poor of the country to take as a gift, across which a stream of emigration is daily pouring, seeking more distant and no better lands, simply for the purpose of getting within reach of railroads, or rather of secur- ing locations where railroads will be sure to come at no very remote day. It must be clear to every one that out upon the great plains of the West, far removed from market, devoid of water communication, and scant of fuel, the progress of settlement mast be exceedingly slow unless there be a reason- able expectation of a remedy for these dis- abilities, by a timely provision of better means of transportation than they now have. That remedy consists in the construction of railroads. Suppose we cause by the appropriation of lands the construction of roads across and through these plains. We cause at the same time the building of innumerable towns and cities, and a concentration of business and capital. Every settler upon them will be brought within an easy day's drive of a station and a market. He saves his weeks of time in getting to ami from a market. He avoids the necessity of large investments in teams, and more than all, he receives at his door for his load of produce a price approximating if not equal to thai "t the East. Who does not see that that region, in large part now barren and desolate, becomes at once G a desirable country to live in? Under this stimulus hundreds of thousands of the people of the East are silently wending their way to it, to possess and enjoy their share of the benefits to be derived from this appropriation of the public lands. Who does not see, too, that this increase of production and accumulation of property adds directly to the volume of national wealth and the enlargement of the sources of national revenue? And who does not see, too, that this development in Kansas directly tends to reduce taxation in Massachusetts as well? So that in this way, and this only, can these lands be made productive of good to all the people, and not to corporations and localities merely. The corporations purchasing these lands propose to enhance their value by im- proving them ; and the terms of the sale rigidly guaranty that improvement. They propose to expend many millions of money upon them in this improvement, and having made that immense outlay in redeeming what will other- wise remain a barren waste until long after this generation shall have passed away, who would deny them an adequate, even a munificent, re- turn upon their investment? Suppose a corporation of individuals pur- chase a swamp in the vicinity of this city, and expend large sums of money in filling it up and making it habitable for the purposes of produc- tion and trade — would it be right to say that those who have thus expended their means in enhancing the value of their property and in- creasing the wealth of the community should receive no adequate return upon their invest- ment of time and money? This is a parallel case. Here is a region of country far removed from civilization, effectually sealed up against settlement and development in the absence of railroads, and can only be made habitable and inviting to the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant, by the construction of these artificial means of communication and trade. Much of it is literally a barren waste of sand, and utterly valueless, except as it may be brought into proximity to valuable internal improvements. If these corporations expend their money in making it habitable and attractive, thus adding millions upon millions, to the wealth of the country, where is the justice of estopping them from the sale of the lands whose value they have thus enhanced, at prices at least approx- imating a lair return? And where is the wrong to anybody — the Indian, the settler, or the < rovernment '.' Capital is hesitant about engag- ing actively in tlmse improvements until this. our almost only resource, can be safely pledged. It is useless to aver that railroads will be built as fast as the country needs them without this encouragement, I hat we now have already pro- I all tin' railroads we need, an 1 that these arc sure to be built whether they have the aid of the: e lands or not. 'I hat is all true : but the yOUllg tiM'ii of tO-day do not want to wait until they are gray-haired before they can enjoy the commercial advantages which these roads will give them. 'Their fathers before them tried that and found it a poor investment of time. Each generation lives essentially for itself, and it is the duty of each for itself and for its own good, to seek the highest possible stage of development, and not leave for the next what can and should be done within and for itself. We want, and the country needs these railroads now, and we can have them and wrong nobody, but rather benefit everybody, by the plan I pro- pose. We have been admonished, in the course of the debates on this subject, that we are but hastening a conflict between railroad corpor- ations and the people ; that the time is coming, to quote the words of gentlemen, " when these corporations will be our masters." Let me admonish gentlemen, in turn, that there are better ways of averting that danger, if any such exist, than by stopping the construction of rail- ways; better ways of averting the evil, if there be grounds for its apprehension, than by per- mitting our vast interior to remain the undis- turbed haunt of thieving savages instead of planting upon it the ilag of civilization and pro- gress. When that danger comes, if it ever does, I have no fear that there will not be vir- tue and independence in the people sufficient to devise effective means for the correction of the evil. This generation wants the roads, and the next will be quite as competent to take care of itself as we ourselves have been to take care of this. It is folly to deny ourselves a sub- stantial good for fear our children may not know how to use and control it. Mr. President, it is objected to the appro- priation of lands to railroads that it creates great landed monopolies of the corporations receiving them ; that they tie up and withdraw from settlement the hinds of the nation, which should be held open for the benefit and occu- pation of those who are to come after us. It is usually true of those who make this criti- cism that they are great admirers, and justly, too, I think, of the beneficent public-land sys- tem which has so long been adopted by the Government. Now, what has been the prac- tical working of that system ? In the west- ern States many million acres of the public lauds have been purchased and obtained even by preemption, in large tracts, by a few indi- viduals, and held without any improvement whatever for purely speculative purposes, the holders waiting for the settlement and develop- ment of contiguous lands to enhance the value of their own. Here is a monopoly as great as that <>!' which gentlemen complain on the part of railroad corporations, and far worse in its effects, because those contribute nothing to the improvement of their own or their neighbors' lands, while the railroad contributes largely to bol ll, N i et do we bear any outcry against this B*> 14 b absorption of the public lands in the hands of non-improving speculators? Not at all. That is all reserved for those who spend their money by the million in giving value to their own and their neighbors' property. There is another source of land monopoly, under the guise of a benevolent gratitude, which has been largely practiced in this coun- try. We are told, in the reports of the Com- missioner of the Geueral Land Office, that seventy-five million acres of the public lands have been appropriated to the satisfaction of soldiers' land warrants. Seventy-one million acres of those warrants have been laid upon the public lands. By whom were they laid ? The Commissioner tells us that not one in five hundred of those acres has been entered by the soldiers to whom the warrants were issued. It will be remembered that immediately at the close of t lie Mexican war these warrants, or the right to draw them, were sold at New Orleans, by the soldiers returning from Mex- ico, by the thousand, at from sixteen to twenty- five dollars each. Speculators swarmed in that city to gather up these warrants, after- ward to lay them upon immense tracts of the public lands and hold them for speculation against those seeking homes upon the public domain. A few years ago an act of Congress authorized the issuance often million acres of college scrip, to be also passed into the hands of speculators, as it largely has, and at almost nominal rates. Congress has appropriated up to this time fifty-eight million acres of land to aid in the construction of railroads to the fourteen States of Illiuois, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Min- nesota, Missouri, Kansas, California, Oregon, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. These grants have secured the construction (and it could not have been se- cured otherwise) of seventeen thousand miles | of railroad in those States, exclusive of the thousand five hundred miles of Pacific railway, and created directly by their influence many thousand millions of public and private wealth. Yet in contrast to this titty-eight million acres so appropriated, with such incomparable re- sults, we have, bythe Commissioner's report, eighty million acres given away in the form of soldiers' bounty and college scrip, and thrown almost wholly into the pockets, not of soul- less corporations, as they are sometimes de- risively termed, who expend many times the original value of the lands in making them habitable and valuable, but into the pockets of the land speculator, to encourage and build up that most disastrous of all monopolies to the West, the private land monopoly. If we are to have any monopoly in lands, I certainly prefer that one which develops and enriches the country to that one which degrades and impoverishes it. But I do not concede that the granting of lands for building railroads in any real sense creates monopoly. Railroads cannot exist where there is no production, and there can be no production where there are not communities of enterprising and industrious people. It, is therefore imperative that they should sell their lands at reasonable rates and thus encourage settlement and production. To state the case is to prove it, and it is proven in the practice of nearly if not quite every laud-endowed railroad in the West. Printed at the Office of the Congressional Globe. r* ^ "J »"V « • o i. 'o K ^ '^, f v *. 0* /\ ++J v0v%. ,v V *'■ & vv i>«* ^ ^ bV" 0^ a\ ■\ V .vLVC •S^ r •\ <, ^ o • -» o C CV ^ V a • "••"<>. " ' o^" . t • . „ ^o :-X/ %-o^ "%^ i0-A ,0t-, ^rf 4°^ ***** I'- V* ^ < i\ •\ o V *$■ ■<£■ e C, vP * A V ^ ** ^ A ^ R-. ^0^ ^°^ doeb: bp.os. LIBRARY BINOSMO vP V ■W o ST. AUGUSTINE „ ^ Z ; > s ^ V \ ^ ^ '-. O *>^ v"^ /^^s_ FLA- \» ■+, V 10^.^^32084 J x ^