He can go on to a quarter section which
may be worth fifteen dollars an acre, and preempt it before it is
surveyed, and finally obtain it for $1.25 an acre.
Whereas the
speculator must wait till the land is surveyed and advertised for
sale; and then he can get only what has not been preempted, and at a
price which it brings at auction, not less than $1.25 an acre. Then
what land is not sold at public sale is open to private entry at $1.25
an acre. It is such land that bounty warrants are located on. Thus it
is seen the pioneer has the first choice. Why, I have walked over land
up here that would now bring from ten to twenty dollars an acre if it
was in the market, and which any settler can preempt and get for $1.25
an acre. I am strongly tempted to turn farmer myself, and go out and
build me a cabin. The speculation would be a good one. But to acquire
a title by preemption I must dwell on the soil, and prove that I have
erected a dwelling and made other improvements. In other words, before
a man (or any head of a family) can get a patent, he must satisfy the
land officers that he is a dweller in good faith on the soil. It is
often the case, indeed, that men get a title by preemption who never
intend to live on their quarter section. But they do it by fraud. They
have a sort of mental reservation, I suppose, when they take the
requisite oaths. In this way many valuable claims are taken up and
held along from month to month, or from year to year, by mock
improvements. A pretender will make just improvements enough to hinder
the actual settler from locating on the claim, or will sell out to him
at a good profit. A good deal of money is made by these fictitious
claimants. It is rather hard to prevent it, too, inasmuch as it is
difficult to disprove that a man intends some time to have a permanent
home, or, in fact, that his claim is not his legal residence, though
his usual abiding place is somewhere else. Nothing could be more
delightful than for a party of young men who desire to farm to come
out together early in the spring, and aid each other in preempting
land in the same neighborhood. The preemptor has to pay about five
dollars in the way of fees before he gets through the entire process
of securing a title. It is a popular error (much like the opinion that
a man cannot swear to what he sees through glass) that improvements of
a certain value, say fifty dollars, are required to be made, or that a
certain number of acres must be cultivated. All that is required,
however, is evidence that the party has built a house fit to live in,
and has in good faith proceeded to cultivate the soil.
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