Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1899 American Edition.djvu/114

 xcii UNITED STATES class have a dollar and a quarter an acre designated as the minimum price, and the other two dollars and a half an acre, the latter being the alternate sections, reserved by the United States in land grants to railroads, etc. Titles to these lands may be acquired by private entry or location under the home- stead, preemption, and timber-culture laws ; or, as to some classes, by purchase for cash. The homestead laws give the right to 160 acres of a-dollar-and-a-quarter lands, or to 80 acres of two-dollar-and-a-half lands, to any citizen or applicant for citizenship over twenty-one who wdll actually settle upon and cultivate the land. The title is perfected jjy the issue of a patent after five years of actual settlement. The only charges in the case of homestead entries are fees and commissions. Another large class of free entries of public lands is that pro- vided for under the Timber-Culture Acts of 1873-78. The purpose of these laws is to promote the growth of forest trees on the public lands. They give the right to any settler who has cultivated for two years as much as five acres in trees to an 80-acre homestead, or, if ten acres, to a homestead of 160 acres, and a free patent for his land is given him at the end of three years instead of five. On June 30, 1898, 1,067,313,014 acres of public lands had been surveyed. Of the total area of public lands 369,528,455 acres w^ere in Alaska, unsurveyed. In 1898, 6,206,557 acres were taken up under the Homestead Act, and 8,421,703 acres were disposed of for cash under the Homestead Acts, under the Timber-Culture Acts, located with Agricultural College and other kinds of scrip, and located wath IMilitary Bounty land w^arrants and selected by States and rail- roads in the several States and Territories. It is provided by law that two sections, of 640 acres of land, in each "town- ship," are reserved for common schools, so that the spread of education may go together with settlement. The power of Congress over the public territory is exclusive and universal, except so far as restrained by stipulations in the original cessions. Public Forests^ There are thirty forest reservations (exclusive of forest and fish culture reserves in Alaska) so designated by the Pres- ident in accordance with the act of March 3, 1891. These forest reservations embrace an estimated area of 40,719,474 acres, and are distributed as follows: ^ From annual report of Commissioner of General Land Office, 1898.