States having no public lands at time Land Grant College Act was passed were given scrip certificates for land located in States with federally owned land.

42

1Under the provisions of the Ordinance of 1785 and succeeding Acts.
2 Under the provisions of the Act of 1787 and succeeding Acts.

43

46,080

46,080

46,080

of this Act more than 11 million acres have been granted to the States for agricultural and mechanical arts colleges. 99 Also, over the last 100 years the various States have been the recipicnts of specific grants for schools for the blind, deaf and mute, normal schools and numerous educational and charitable institutions.

Since the Ordinance of 1785, the States have received in excess of 100 million acres of land for educational and institutional purposes.

The dedication of a part of the public domain for schools has been and will continue to be one of the enduring monuments to the multi- and varied usage of the Federal lands. Today the Land Grant Colleges enroll over 20 percent of all the students in institutions of high learning in the United States. 100 The phrase "school sections" is a common term in America and even today they are the principal source of income for many rural school systems.

The period of land for internal improvements has been summarized by Professor Benjamin H. Hibbard in the following manner:

The use of land grants for internal improvements
purposes was a part, indeed a major part, of the
whole episode of conscious developments of the
nation through public action. It was believed
that private action was likely to be too uncertain
and too slow. The only known alternative was
public action. Beginning with wagon road and
canal grants in the twenties, followed closely
by river improvement grants, the plan of granting
the land to the States was devised. These
specific grants extended over a period of about
forty-five years ... 1823 to 1869. A more
general plan was embodied in the half million
acres grants, mainly for the same, or at least
similar purposes, in the Act of 1841....

The grants for the railroads, the most liberal
donation ever made for the encouragement of
private enterprise, reached the figure of
129,000,000 acres....

Minor grants, and grants to the States for mis-
cellaneous purposes run well into millions, but

the interest in internal improvements had under-
gone a profound change and by 1889 when a new
group of States was admitted, and no longer was
there a disposition to appropriate land for such
projects. 101/

As might be surmised from the account of internal improvements and the educational land grants, the work of the General Land Office increased tremendously between 1836 and 1862.

The huge acquisitions to the domain from 1846-1853 added to the work load. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, with Mexico, February 2, 1848, the United States acquired 338,580,960 acres in what is now California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

The Oregon Compromise with Great Britain in 1846 added 183,386,240 acres to the public domain.

Texas.

In 1850 the Federal Government purchased 78,926,000 acres from Then in 1853, an additional 19,988,800 acres were purchased from Mexico in the area that has become known as the Gadsden Furchase. 102,

Within seven years the United States added 619,982,720 acres to the public domain for total cost of $41,791,597 or about 15 cents per acre. The great quantity of new land opened vast areas that required surveys, land officers, and numerous administrative functions that coincided with development.

John Wilson, the Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1853, gave the following description of the work load to the Congress:

Some idea may be entertained of the amount of labor
performed during the past year, from the fact that
there have been issued 78,414 patents of every
description, including cash sales; bounty lands
under Acts of 1812, 1847, 1850, and 1852; for swamp
lands, reservations under Indian treaties, and
private land claims derived from former govern-
ments, and confirmed by Congress and the courts;

some of which occupy many folio pages of closely
written manuscript. For the same period 35,395
certificates for cash sales, 6,181 declaratory
statements, and 79,751 warrants were posted, and
100,618 selections for internal improvements,
railroad grants, and the swamp and overflowed
lands, were entered in the tract books. Besides,
361 receivers' accounts were adjusted, 292
accounts of disbursing agents, 406 of surveyors
general and deputy surveyors, 253 of publishers
of newspapers, 15 for locating land warrants,
and 302 refunding accounts were settled. 1,657
pieces of scrip for Virginia revolutionary claims
were issued, embracing 129,669 acres, and 298
of these claims were examined.

In

There were 19,717 letters recorded, occupying
12,000 folio pages equal to 24 volumes; 23,861
letters registered, occupying 3,204 pages, equal
to 6 large volumes; 135 manuscript patents,
occupying 301 pages; 1,610 accounts recorded,
occupying 1,695 pages, over 3 large volumes.
addition to these, about 10,000 packages of
monthly and quarterly returns, letters, lists,
abstracts, etc., have been received, and 12,100
packages of patents, blank forms and circulars
have been packed, sealed, directed and trans-
mitted from this office, during the past year
and the official seal has been affixed to upwards
of 150,000 patents and exemplifications.

Nearly all this, as you are aware, may be con-
sidered as merely manual labor, and is exclusive
of the complicated and difficult duties incident
to our general operations, and which require a
great deal of time, and a thorough knowledge of
land legislation of Congress, of foreign and
Indian treaties, the decisions of the courts,
the precedents established, and the laws, usages,
and customs of the foreign governments which
preceded us in sovereignty. 103/

The general situation prompted Commissioner Wilson, who at one time had been a clerk in the General Land Office, to make a plea to the Congress for increased salaries. He wrote: