Proving Up: Domesticating Land in U.S. History

PROVING UP Domesticating Land in U.S. History

LISI KRALL

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Proving Up

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Proving Up Domesticating Land in U.S. History

LISI KRALL

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2010 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krall, Lisi, 1954– Proving up : domesticating land in U.S. history / Lisi Krall. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-3079-9 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Land use, Rural—United States—History. 2. Land reform—United States—History. 3. Public lands—United States—History. I. Title. HD256.K73 2010 333.760973—dc22

2009033234 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I dedicate this book my father, Robert Wilhelm Krall; to my son, Francis Wilhelm Prus; and to the desolate and numinous land of Wyoming.

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Contents Preface Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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1. Thomas Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision and the Changing Nature of Property

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2. The Dialectics of Government Land Policies (1785–1862)

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3. The Dialectics of Government Land Policies on Arid Land

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4. Multidimensional Land

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5. Wilderness

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Epilogue

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Preface Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. —Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

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arly in my professional life I moved to central New York and away from southwestern Wyoming, a place that had been my home since birth. The contrast between these two places heightened in me an interest in the complex connection between people and the land. However, had it not been for the dramatic story of my paternal grandparents, this inclination would not have taken the path that it did. The story of my grandparents provided the seed for a broader inquiry into the interplay of economic change and dominant cultural attitudes about land. Here is their story. On July 9, 1920, my paternal grandfather, William Krall, was shot by his neighbor, Steve Lasich, in an altercation over water on his homestead on the sagebrush steppe of southwestern Wyoming. Two days later he died of “gas gangrene” from the wound. He was thirty years old, and he left his wife, Elise, my grandmother, and a son, my father, who was two years old at the time. The precursor to the story of my grandparents was written during the Cretaceous when dinosaurs stalked their prey behind cycads, and Wyoming was lush and verdant. Cretaceous conditions made for the formation of massive coal deposits, which eons later, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, powered trains, heated homes, fueled the production of electricity and, in the end, created a modicum of economic opportunity for men like my grandfather in an otherwise economically inhospitable land.

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My grandfather was born in Germany in 1890 and immigrated to New Haven, Connecticut in 1913. Initially he found work as a baker. Several years later he placed a newspaper ad for a wife, which my grandmother answered. She was a pragmatic German woman who had come to the United States in 1914 and was working as a domestic for a Jewish family in New York City. She must have assessed her circumstances and decided that her chances for a fulfilling life were more promising with my grandfather. She answered his solicitation, and they married in the spring and headed west in 1917. Fortunately, looking back was not something my grandmother was inclined to do. William followed his older brother, Robert, to southwestern Wyoming where he had gone to work in the Sublette Coal Mine in 1912. The descent into the pockets of coal deep in the earth, day after day, may have caused my grandfather to imagine economic redemption of another kind, coming from the land above. Land acquisition in southwestern Wyoming at the time was not restricted to those with the capital to buy coal mines. Those with modest means but with the will to work hard had the opportunity to file on homesteads and secure land. The Homestead Act proved very accommodating to the exigencies of wage labor and to those without money capital. First passed in 1862, it was revised numerous times and once again on June 6, 1912 to allow people, such as my grandfather and his brother, to live on their homesteads during the summer months, carrying out the activities of “proving up,” and return to the coal mine during the remainder of the year where they could earn enough money to cover the costs of improvements. Because the demand for coal was slack during the summer months and high in the winter, this plan synchronized coal mining and homesteading in a seamless economic orchestration—or so it appeared. William Krall renounced his past and swore allegiance to his “new” country, thereby being considered worthy of immigration and naturalization. On May 16, 1918 the Government Land Office (GLO) in Evanston, Wyoming, received a copy of his naturalization papers, which opened the way for him to make a homestead entry—S ½ NE ¼ Section 7 and S ½ NW ¼ Section 8, Township 25 N, Range 115 W of the 6th PM—in the Fontenelle Basin for which he paid sixteen dollars. My father was five days old at the time. The 160 acres of sagebrush/bunchgrass biome, at an elevation of about 8,000 feet, had a growing season of thirty-five days and received less than twelve inches of rainfall per year. This high, arid land was no agrarian utopia. Nonetheless, I can understand why my grandfather lived with some sense of hope, fueled by the possibility of avoiding the other alternative: a

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subterranean existence mining coal. I imagine that as long as he kept his eyes fixed on the map and the property description he could muster a modicum of optimism that his plan for a better life might actually work out. I am also convinced that William Krall was not dissociated from the reality of the land. Nor was he stupid. He did, after all, look out the window when the train pulled into Kemmerer, the center of mining activities in the region. I imagine he read the land correctly and understood full well that it would be impossible to make a living on a 160-acre ranch in this country: The property description read differently than the reality of the land. But he also must have been aware of the possibilities and economic opportunities offered by land ownership itself. The 160 acres might well be worth the struggle for several reasons: He might eventually acquire more land, and piece together an economically viable ranch. Or he might sell the land to one of the many other immigrant ranchers in the basin, make some money on the sale, and become a “petty capitalist,” a small business entrepreneur. He signed his homestead application, which meant that regardless of his intent for the land in the long run he would be required to prove up, on it in the short term. And proving up, gaining a title to the land by fulfilling necessary requirements, had to be reconciled with the land, not as an abstraction but in a real, physical sense. Immediately after he was granted his homestead claim, he filed an application to the GLO for permission to harvest timber. He requested to cut two-hundred house logs, five-hundred posts, and one-hundred poles that he would procure himself. The first summer on the homestead in 1918 was spent cutting timber and building a cabin, barn, storehouse, and corral. During that summer he and my grandmother also cleared three acres of sagebrush land and seeded it with clover, timothy, and red top, which in the future would be harvested for winterfeed for the two milk cows they had purchased. William also applied to the state of Wyoming for water rights in June of that year, barely a month after his homestead application had been approved. Without water he could neither prove up on the land nor capitalize on its value. Hay cannot be grown in southwestern Wyoming without irrigation, and hay is essential to a sound ranching operation. Once the water rights were adjudicated they would be permanently attached to the land and conveyed with the land when and if the homestead was sold, thereby further increasing its value. During summer 1918, William Newbrough, the licensed water engineer working for the state of Wyoming, arrived in the Fontenelle Basin to survey the land and determine where the irrigation ditch would be dug. As a result

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of his survey, the “Wm Krall Ditch” was approved and a water permit was given to my grandfather in October. The “Wm Krall Ditch” would join the “Krall Ditches A & B and the Pikl-Urbanian Ditch,” the names indicating the imprint of civilization on the dry land. Mr. Newbrough’s report stated that the map “correctly represents the irrigation described in the accompanying applications, together with a meander of streams, and shows accurately the location and area of the lands proposed to be irrigated in each subdivision.”1 And so it did, but it didn’t address whether or not it was reasonable or humanly possible to dig the “Wm Krall Ditch” in a timely fashion. The “Wm Krall Ditch” was designated to be 3.237 miles long and was comprised of two distinct sections. Both sections would have to be dug by hand with pick and shovel at the specification of two feet across at the base and twice that at ground level and over one foot deep. In compact, rocky clay soil this presented a daunting task for a single human being. Optimistically, with the two sections of the “Wm Krall Ditch,” my grandfather would eventually irrigate 64 acres. He was to complete his ditch work by December 31, 1921, which meant he would have three years to dig it. By 1923 he was to have put the water to beneficial use, fully cultivating the prescribed acres. The approved sections of the “Wm Krall Ditch” presented complications, the major one being that all water from Clear Creek, which would feed the “Wm Krall Ditch,” had been previously appropriated by Lasich and Bryson, neighbors to the north of my grandfather’s land. Yet Clear Creek was the only source of irrigation water accessible by gravity flow to his property. To remedy this shortage, he was required to first dig a twomile section of the ditch farther north to supplement the water into Clear Creek. That section would divert water out of the North Fork of Fontenelle Creek, contour around a rocky knoll, and empty it into Clear Creek. Once this section was completed, he would then dig the next ditch to divert water out of Clear Creek and carry it across Lasich’s land to his 64 acres as prescribed by Mr. Newbrough. In summer 1919, things had begun to heat up between my grandfather and Steve Lasich over the issue of water. Grandfather Krall needed to irrigate as much land as he was able to clear and plant in hay for feeding his two milk cows in the winter and possibly obtain a small bit of cash as well. Given the magnitude of the irrigation project, he may have realized the impossible task set before him by the water engineer. He knew he could not dig both ditches in time to take advantage of the short growing season. Opting for

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short-term survival, he must have decided that summer to get water in the most expedient way, by first digging the second leg of the ditch from Clear Creek across Lasich’s land. He would later face the more onerous leg of the ditch out of the North Fork of Fontenelle Creek to Clear Creek, the one designed to supplement the water he used out of Clear Creek. Clearly, his decisions were technically at odds with the rights he had been given. Without replenishing the water he would use, he did not have legal right to the water out of Clear Creek. By all reports, my grandfather was not a consummate diplomat. Apparently, during the summer, he had stubbornly “negotiated” with Lasich a shorter route for the irrigation ditch across Lasich’s property. Despite the infraction into Lasich’s water rights and the renegotiated ditch, they survived summer 1919 but by summer 1920 any good will between them was long since spent and Lasich and my grandfather lost their heads. My grandfather’s encroachment seemed particularly unacceptable in the drought conditions of that year. On July 9, 1920 Lasich took a 45-caliber rifle and shot at my grandfather. Whether or not he shot directly at him or just at his feet to scare him is unclear; nonetheless, the bullet ricocheted off a rock and hit my grandfather in the thigh, creating a nasty wound. Lasich helped to procure transportation for my grandfather to the Miners’ Hospital in Kemmerer, Wyoming, the closest town. In less than two days, my grandfather died of “gas gangrene.” A hearing was held, and Lasich, who had been arrested, was released on bail, and a trial was set for November. With the death of her husband and the need to prove up on the homestead and provide for a small son, my grandmother found herself in dire circumstances. It isn’t hard to imagine what must have been going through her mind. During the summer of my grandfather’s death she stayed on the homestead and cleared another ten acres of the land. By October she began to believe that she could pull together a life in Wyoming. She submitted notification to the GLO in Evanston that she would be absent from the land beginning October 15, 1920, but intended to return the following spring and would notify them when she did so. She then moved to Kemmerer where she testified at Lasich’s trial and in the winter sought work as a domestic to provide for herself and her son. As the first trial opened, a sense of unmitigated tragedy pervaded the atmosphere.2 J.A. Christmas, the prosecuting attorney for the county, highlighted the tragedy and offered up his commentary. According to the newspaper report in the Kemmerer Republican:

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Preface [The County and Prosecuting Attorney] outlined the grim story of the tragedy of last July, which began over a slight misunderstanding between two hitherto friendly neighbors over an irrigating ditch, followed by harsh words and possible threats, then by a too-handy gun carried to protect the defendant from real or fancied danger, a shot fired in the heat of passion, a young man full of health and vigor taken to an untimely grave, leaving a widow and three-year-old orphan boy, and last the murderer, in court, wearing the brand of Cain and facing a term in the penitentiary.3

It isn’t clear that Mr. Christmas ever went beyond this explanation to get at the heart of the matter. Indeed, one could hardly characterize what had transpired between my grandfather and Lasich as a “slight misunderstanding.” Rather an untenable alchemy of civilization and land came to bear upon them. In the trial, Lasich’s attorney, Mr. Sammon, presented accounts of the history of the alleged abuse my grandfather had perpetrated on Mr. Lasich in order to argue that Lasich had shot my grandfather in self-defense and that the death of my grandfather did not result directly from the wound. According to the Kemmerer Camera: Mr. Sammon told the jury that Lasich had a number of years ago taken up a homestead in the Fontenelle district and that everything had gone along pleasantly until Mr. Krall moved into the neighborhood. Since that time, said Mr. Sammon, there had been constant difficulty due, as he contended, to the belligerent disposition of Mr. Krall and his frequent interference with the defendant’s right in the use of roads and water ditches. On one occasion, Mr. Sammon told the jury, when the defendant had driven through a wire gate on Krall’s land, the latter had told him that if he had been there at the time he would have shot his hands off. On another occasion, according to the defendant’s attorney’s statement, Mr. Krall abused and threatened the defendant and afterwards told some of his friends that if Lasich had not run away he would have shot him. Mr. Sammon called attention to the fact that Krall was a large man weighing approximately 180 pounds and that he had kept the defendant in constant fear of bodily injury.4

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The circumstances of my grandfather’s disposition created so much ambiguity in the jury’s mind that the first trial ended in a hung jury. The second trial was scheduled for January 1922. In the meantime Grandma set about proving up and in spring 1921 she went back to the homestead. In March she submitted to the GLO in Evanston, Wyoming, a statement of her “desire to make final proof upon this land at the earliest possible date. . . .” But she knew that it would be impossible for her to cultivate 64 acres so in July she submitted an “Application for Reduction of the Required Cultivation,” which the GLO awarded her. Clearly, her special status as a widow resulted in the dispensation from the original cultivation requirements she received. She faced the reality of the land and her limited capacity to cultivate it and complete the pending irrigation ditches. In her words: There are approximately 64 acres of this land, which are susceptible of cultivation, and 10 acres of this land are being now cultivated. But the entry-man was killed during the summer of 1920, and I now have no means of support, except my own labor, and I have to support my minor child, aged 3 years. So I am unable to earn sufficient money to pay for the completion of the said ditch, and the clearing, seeding and cultivation of the remainder of the cultivable land. I have cleared an additional 10 acres, for the reasons above stated. All of this soil is extremely sandy and difficult to irrigate, as water from the irrigation ditches runs into the ground, and will not spread properly. There is 2¼ miles ditch yet to be made, before the land can be irrigated. The land now irrigated is irrigated from wastewater from the land of Steve Lasich.5 Grandma understood that the irrigation water she had been given legal access to would be impossible to secure, and she was reduced to the run-off from Lasich’s irrigation water. In November she told the state water commissioner that “proof for the beneficial use of water will not be submitted.” She thereby formally lost her water allocation. In September 1921, she submitted the final proof on her homestead entry, water or no water, cultivation or no cultivation. Eventually, she was given the patent to the land, a small concession for the life of my grandfather. She had already taken up residence in Kemmerer by that time and had started a boarding house, but she held onto the land thinking it might be worth something someday.

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In January 1922, Lasich’s second trial began. As in the first trial, Lasich’s attorney presented the argument of self-defense for his client. The testimonials about my grandfather’s threatening disposition intensified. It seems as if anyone who had a complaint about my grandfather testified. Sympathy for Lasich had fermented in the cask of time augmented by the fact that the image of my widowed grandmother and her young son, helpless and vulnerable, had waned, owing to my grandmother’s resourcefulness. The second jury simply acquitted Lasich and exonerated him of all responsibility in the death of my grandfather because my grandfather had been effectively portrayed as a man with a belligerent and threatening disposition. Whatever might have been true of my grandfather, this much is true. His frustration, however unseemly, certainly owed something to the fact that he did not suffer lightly the absurdities placed on him. Nowhere in the trial was there any consideration of the untenable problem of water procurement for his property; that is, whether it was humanly possible to do what he had been asked to do. Obviously, it is more difficult to understand the complexities of civilization than someone’s bad disposition. So in the end my grandfather was essentially held responsible for his own death. Initially I was caught up with the drama of my grandparents, with the poorly articulated land and water laws, with the lack of understanding of arid land, and with the ways that “little guys,” like my grandfather, were made expendable. Eventually, I moved in a different direction. I began to understand that my grandfather’s story was also a story of how successful ranching developed in the West and how the homestead laws were adapted to accommodate arid land homesteading. Over time, the forces of civilization and land and water and human frustration in the Fontenelle Basin sorted themselves out. Like my grandfather, the most recalcitrant of those forces were eliminated early on. The less problematic and edgy eventually settled into something workable. Homesteaders, who had been my grandfather’s neighbors: Pikel, Urbanian, Lasich, Holland, Bryson, and Hankin, sold out to my grandfather’s brother, Robert. None of these except my great uncle survived as viable ranchers. Finally in the early 1940s, my grandmother also sold the land to him for eight-hundred dollars, which did not recoup the investment in infrastructure let alone compensate for her husband’s life. Robert Krall became the western rancher, an enigmatic agrarian man but an agrarian man nonetheless. Eventually, my cousin Joe took over the ranch and ran it until the late 1980s when he sold it for a healthy sum. Thus I came to realize that even in this harsh and unforgiving place with these seemingly poorly adapted laws the agrarian ethos had somehow been extended. I began

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to understand that the more important and interesting story was about this dominant cultural attitude and its evolution over time. My grandfather’s story also led me to recognize the importance of land as capital and the persistent economic conditions that were a part of this drama. To be sure, getting title to the land meant my grandfather would have to cultivate the land and this was a formidable task given the inhospitable land and the poorly articulated land and water laws. Nevertheless, my grandfather understood that if he could get title to the land he might be able to sell it and invest the capital in something else, such as starting an automotive garage in Kemmerer, something he had talked about. Although he was a recipient of a stray bullet, my grandfather was not a hapless victim with naïve agrarian aspirations. His story started me thinking about the interesting dynamic and interface between the resilient agrarian habit of thought and the role of land in the market economy. My natural inclination was to focus my inquiry on agriculture, but I gradually came to the guiding belief that the agrarian ethos was adaptable and as an ethos of domestication it ultimately extended beyond simple agriculture. As fate would have it, in the late 1980s, my mother married Paul Shepard, a human ecologist, thereby giving me the opportunity to talk extensively with him over the course of the next decade. Paul played muse to this inquiry. My contact with him made a difference in what I garnered from the information before me. Although he died before this manuscript took concrete form, I can now see that my interaction with him influenced the way I eventually came to understand the agrarian ethos more broadly as an ethos of balanced domestication. Paul’s influence also helped me to hone an appreciation for how agriculture had revolutionized the relationship of humankind to land and environment and to understand the profound change this meant for humans whose form and psyche had been chiseled out of the Pleistocene. Out of this awareness came a more critical understanding of the processes of domestication. I was naturally disinclined to accept that an idyllic return to the agrarian life held the key to our future. I also came to understand that the agrarian ethos was not the only, or necessarily the most important, cultural attitude to emerge out this complex gumbo of economic and cultural development that is American history. A wilderness ethos had also been distilled, and it was worthwhile to understand and explore it as well. Both were our legacies, part of a complex tapestry that helps to inform our future. When Paul was near death from lung cancer in 1996 he told my mother that she wasn’t to worry about him if she awoke during the night

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and he wasn’t there. When my mother asked, “Where will you be, Paul?” he replied, “I’ll be in the back yard scything.” I was shocked by the profoundly agricultural act that came to him as he neared death. I wondered why he hadn’t chosen in his last moments to walk with wolves and bears and hunt on the Pleistocene steppe. In the end I have concluded that Paul, metaphorically speaking, was still cutting his way through the legacy of settled agriculture and domestication. The enigmatic image of Paul scything has returned to me many times in the years since his death. Ironically, it has provided me with a Pleistocene conscience in this contemplation on domestication.

Acknowledgments M

any people supported and encouraged me throughout this project. My mother, Flo Krall Shepard has been a lifelong source of inspiration about matters of the earth. Her example of walking lightly on the planet as well as her iconoclastic and heartfelt contemplations about her relationship to the natural world surely spilled over on me. When I was a child, on one of our many hikes together in the sagebrush steppe of Wyoming, she stopped with me to view a patch of lovely flowers and taught me a little poem: Pick if you must one flower face/ if nine more blossoms are left in place/one square foot must hold that many/if not, look, but don’t pick any. That moment somehow imprinted me with a sense of the tenuous beauty of nature and was likely the genesis of my environmental consciousness. My sister Kathryn Morton has been unmoved in her faith in me. She has been an earnest and steadfast companion, a soulmate in the truest sense of the word. My friends and colleagues Kate Graham, Jamie Dangler, Jackie Goodman, Sharon Steadman, Girish Bhat, Scott Moranda, Henry Steck, Gina Daddario, Jean Reagan, Anne Vittoria, Kathleen Burke, Paula Warnken, Madde Kitterer, Deborah Spencer, Val Myntti-Sherman, Craig Murphy, and Julie Ganson have each, in their own way, listened to my contemplations and frustrations and encouraged me to move forward with this project. Kate Graham listened to me mull over my ideas in the years we’ve spent walking the gorges of central New York and skiing its agrarian countryside together. Gina Daddario never failed to help me to find humor in the process, a necessary ingredient for finishing a book. Jean Reagan has been a kindred spirit in her connection to the West and in sorting out the writing process. Jaroslava Prihodova has provided me with wonderful and inspiring diversion. Mark Prus might have advised me to do a different book, but he has nonetheless been unmoved in his faith that I should finish this one. John Gowdy and Kent Klitgaard each gave important and sound feedback that helped me to hone this inquiry. The members of my department at SUNY

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Cortland have helped to nurture a rich work environment that contributed to my ability to complete this project. The initial mentoring and encouragement of my stepfather, Paul Shepard, helped me to understand that many things worth thinking about take a long time to settle. Finally, my father, Robert Krall, quite simply by virtue of his profound and honest attachment to a small piece of arid land has inspired in me the sense to know what matters most in this world. Without the wisdom and mentoring of Gerald Surette, this book would never have seen the light of day. Over endless meals and discussions, Jerry and I talked about the pulse of this book. His incisive mind, and his unique capacity to mentor in the fullest sense of the word, empowered me to move forward when I might otherwise have given up or lost my way. My debt to him is unequivocal. Chapters 1 and 3 were published in earlier versions in the Journal of Economic Issues and are reprinted with the permission of the Association for Evolutionary Economics. Chapter 5 was published in an earlier version in the USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P49.2007.

Introduction M

y curiosity about my grandparents has taken me far beyond the Fontenelle Basin in Wyoming and the coal-mining town where my grandfather went to work in 1917. Their story provided only the initial impulse of this book, which explores more broadly the interconnection of economy, culture, and land in the United States. My concentration is on the dominant societal impulses about land, the agrarian and the wilderness ethos, as well as the dominant economic organization of our time, that of the market economy. Lacking is any substantive exploration of the story of Native Americans or any particular ethnic group. These histories are not ignored out of arrogance or ignorance nor do I believe they are unimportant. They simply were not the emphasis of my inquiry. I hope this environmental history will help us ponder more fully the necessary ingredients for creating a sustainable future. At a time when environmental problems overwhelm us and we have the collective sense that we teeter at the tipping point in our relationship to the natural world, a more detailed understanding of our institutional relationship to land and by extension environment is warranted. It provides important insight into what is possible, what is essential, and what is misguided as we strive for change that will take us down a different path. It is essential from the outset to clarify some of the idiosyncratic vocabulary used in this book. Agrarian is an adjective that takes on different meanings depending on what it modifies. When used as the “agrarian ideal” it describes Thomas Jefferson’s idealistic vision of small independent farmers. Similarly, agrarian man denotes such a farmer. The agrarian ideal finds a corollary in petty commodity capitalism, a market economy made up of many small independent entrepreneurs competing for business. Agrarian man is analogous to the petty commodity producer. Both the agrarian ideal and petty commodity production describe mostly the early years of the market economy in the United States before the concentration and centralization of capital and the development of the

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modern corporation took hold, a process that accelerated rapidly over the nineteenth century and continues along this path to the present. The agrarian ethos is a core concept in this book. In part, it is rooted in Karl Polanyi’s idea that society responds with a “countermovement” to the revolutionary change brought about by the market economy to reduce man and nature to factors of production.1 In this sense, the agrarian ethos denotes a cultural impulse to interpret and modify the market economy in a way that reasserts control over land, for societal purposes. And what are those other purposes? Polanyi tells us, in the case of land: “It invests man’s life with stability; it is the site of his habitation, it is a condition of his physical safety; it is the landscape and the seasons.”2 Nonetheless the agrarian ethos is not simply a countermovement to the raw forces of the market economy. Once established, it takes on a life of its own and becomes embedded in the social fabric as a habit of thought, a cultural attitude. This is most apparent in Jefferson’s agrarian ideal and the agrarian expectations for economic development that grew out of it. By envisioning a specialized market economy of small farmers who would live independently and harmoniously on the land, it reflected a desire to avoid the most distasteful outcomes of the market economy in the context of the Industrial Revolution. For much of our economic development, agrarian expectations as a way to channel the raw forces of the market economy, continued to resonate in our social fabric. Eventually, a point is reached where this countermovement, now an embedded habit of thought, reflected in land policy, ceases to be a sufficient response to the material conditions as the market economy matures and evolves over time. Thus, the agrarian ethos evolves and changes as the market economy matures and becomes more marked in its cumulative effects. The agrarian ethos would become less narrowly agrarian over time. The accretion of land policies and the agencies that govern and oversee them map this history. For example, the creation of public land can be seen as the extension of the agrarian ethos, now no longer narrowly agrarian. As well, the twenty-first century variants of this societal impulse and cultural attitude are now expressed in the promise of green technology and the vision of more community-centered localized economies in the future. Thus, over time the agrarian ethos has become a more broadly construed ethos of ecologically balanced domestication and economic development. Although remarkably resilient, the agrarian ethos is not infinitely so, especially as the cumulative dynamic of the market economy makes the problem of a balanced and sustainable relationship with land increasingly challenging.

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The wilderness ethos also denotes a cultural response that developed under the force of a dramatically expanding market economy. It is distinctively different from the agrarian ethos because rather than promulgating domestication it promotes the conservation of undomesticated wild lands. It is the expression of human sensibility that tells us that domestication and manipulation are not the only way that humans connect to land and environment. It represents a decidedly different response to market forces that work in the direction of universal domestication over time. Both the agrarian ethos and the wilderness ethos must be understood as dominant cultural responses to unmitigated market forces as they impinge on land. The term institution is used liberally throughout the book. This word refers to habits of thought, societal responses, and attitudes, as well as the laws and more formal frameworks established in the social fabric that govern economic, social, and political activity. Some institutions are clearly more important than others and in this book the market economy represents a powerful institution as do both the agrarian and wilderness ethos. Material conditions also are of import in this analysis and may originate from a number of sources. They may come from the conditions laid down by the evolving and maturing market economy or result from inherent differences, potentialities, and limitations of the land itself. It is important here to provide an explanation of evolutionary or institutional economics, the foundational methodology used here. The legacy of institutional economics is well established within the discipline of economics but has been largely relegated to an arena outside mainstream economics. This is unfortunate because evolutionary economics targets, like no other economic framework, the intermingling of culture, economic, and material conditions as well as the processes of change over time. Although analytical, it is not simplistically mechanistic and it acknowledges dialectical as well as more direct causalities. By its nature it is interdisciplinary. Thorstein Veblen would probably be considered the father of institutional economics and his ideas as well as those of Karl Polanyi and John R. Commons are used throughout the book. This approach is especially fruitful in understanding the complex and often enigmatic interplay of cultural attitudes, societal impulses, and economic and material forces surrounding land. Evolutionary economics appreciates the changing nature of the economy over time and the fact that this evolving economy and the material conditions that surround it may from time to time be at odds with our habits of thought and other institutional fixtures laid down in previous times. Institutions co-evolve with one another over

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time. A point may be reached in this co-evolutionary process where institutional contradictions are so profound that fundamental change is needed to reconcile them. Along the way, much confusion about the nature of things might prevail. Using this methodology, the interplay of the dynamic market economy and dominant cultural impulses about land, the agrarian and wilderness ethos, are untangled. The methodology of institutional economics also recognizes that much of institutional change over time is often a matter of institutional drift. Things go as they will go. The organization of this book is mostly chronological in that it maps out a process of economic and institutional evolution with regard to land in the United States from the late eighteenth century through the present. The market economy is a powerful institutional arrangement with a life of its own but our experience with this dominant institutional arrangement was uniquely informed by the presence of a huge continent of mostly undeveloped and unsettled land. The agrarian vision of economic development in the United States came of age in the latter eighteenth century and offered a unique way of distinguishing the United States from England. The specter of the wretched existence of workers toiling in factories in England during the Industrial Revolution was something Jefferson thought could be avoided. He set out to create a homegrown variety of market capitalism with a distinctive agrarian bent. In a sense, this was our unique way of responding to the raw forces of the market economy that had unfolded in England. Land institutions and our cultural impulses with regard to land were perhaps naively formulated, beginning in the late eighteenth century, with this purpose in mind. Thus, we had a particular, land-based countermovement to the market economy, established in the late eighteenth century, which thereafter took on a life of its own over time. This initial response was historically specific and depended on a preindustrial stage of development in the United States juxtaposed with a more industrially advanced economy in England. Thus, the agrarian ethos, seen as the agrarian ideal, tapped into the pulse of an historical moment that gave it meaning and force. Over time as the productive potential of the economy increased, and land as property matured and moved beyond simple petty commodity production, it became progressively clearer that Jefferson’s idealized agricultural society would not materialize. Speculation and rent-seeking behavior became part of the economic landscape, a predictable and immutable force in agriculture and land ownership. The speculator and the noble farmer were governed by the same economic master and both were intent on participating in this

Introduction

5

process.3 Nonetheless for a long period of time something vaguely resembling Jefferson’s agrarian man was discernable and played an essential role in this process of economic development. Successful farming done by the hard work of the individual farmer added momentum to capital formation while simultaneously reinforcing agrarian man and an agricultural orientation as the counterbalance to raw economic forces. Thus, the agrarian ethos, with its early agricultural emphasis would be long lived in our history, although over time the agricultural emphasis would become progressively diminished as the forces and dynamic of the market economy impinged on society and land and demanded more dramatic and historically appropriate responses Early land policy, including the Homestead Act, provided quintessential examples of the interplay of the evolving market economy and the agrarian ethos, simultaneously a countermovement and an established habit of thought. For example, the ostensible purpose of the Homestead Act was to settle farmers on 160-acre farms and create a society of small farmers but because the land itself, once disseminated, could be bought and sold according to the dictates of a market system, the Homestead Act simultaneously accommodated the growing economic impulse to use land as a commodity, an impulse that became more marked over time. Under the Homestead Act, the dynamic of economic change and development and the arrangements of land ownership accommodated settlement, self-sufficiency, and speculation simultaneously to give a muddled institutional picture. The vision of agrarian society, that is to say the form the agrarian ethos had taken during the nineteenth century, was extended but not without dissonance that became more pronounced over time. Land policies on arid land retained the established agrarian rhetoric and embodied the long-established impulse against the raw forces of the market but arid land also more fully exposed and encouraged some of the tendencies in the market economy that the agrarian response was supposed to guard against. The possibility for successful agricultural enterprises on arid land existed but at the same time the risk to the individual increased. Economically viable arid land holdings needed to be larger, necessitating the mixing and matching and development of different avenues of land acquisition that simultaneously reinforced the role of land as commodity and encouraged speculation. Everyone was engaged in speculation of sorts and agrarian man, like my grandfather, was more intentional in viewing agrarian life as a temporary step to some other economic alternative. The line between a viable agricultural land holding and an inclination to speculate was harder to decipher. Yet even on arid land, the agrarian countermovement and habit

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of thought found concrete expression. Agrarian man was remolded on arid land to become the western rancher and the agrarian ethos was extended even here although as a response to the raw forces of market capitalism it was clearly becoming less tenable. Eventually, narrowly defined agrarian land laws and an agrarian response to the forces at hand were insufficient. Economic opportunity on land expanded beyond simple agriculture to include timber and mineral extraction. New institutional arrangements were necessary, to wit, the creation of public land. On its face, the creation of public land seemed to share little with the agrarian predispositions of the past, but on closer examination it is clear that public land and its management tapped into the agrarian ethos broadly construed: The sense that a place of harmony between humans and land (nature) could be forged despite the raw market forces at hand. Public land became the elixir and response to the spiritual and biophysical indifference market forces seemed to exhibit with regard to land. It was the depository of the conflicts and complexities of economic development on land but it was also the way the agrarian ethos metamorphosed into an ethos of balanced domestication as the market economy matured. Thus, public land was the extension of the same societal impulse as the agrarian ideal and agrarian man had been in a previous era. At best, the institution of public land opened a tiny window, before World War II, where it appeared that we had successfully navigated the complexities of land use under the market economy. Nonetheless, contradictions and cracks in the goals of public land management appeared in the postWorld War II period and continue to the present. As the world fills up and preservation, conservation, and recreational use all vie for a claim on public land in addition to more traditional economic uses, the impossibility of the multiple-use mandate becomes more evident. Thus, the ability of the agrarian ethos to stretch around the economic arrangements of our time, as seen in the multiple land-use mandate, is running up against material conditions that may call for a more fundamental change in our institutional fabric. The wilderness ethos is distinctly different than the agrarian ethos but it arose out of the same complex stew; that is, the simultaneous presence of unsettled land and the economic unfolding of the market economy during the nineteenth century. It too exemplifies the unique interconnection of economy, culture, and land in the United States. The co-evolution and interplay of the wilderness ethos with the market economy became manifest in our policies to preserve wilderness that took the form of policies setting aside wilderness areas. But unlike the agrarian ethos, the wilderness ethos is not as resilient in

Introduction

7

the face of the postindustrial market economy and its imperative to domesticate ad infinitum. It was never an ethos of domestication like the agrarian ethos, rather the opposite. It reflected an impulse to limit the hand of man and as such does not have the adaptability of the agrarian ethos. Economic growth, the hallmark of the market economy and the wilderness ethos, cannot participate in same institutional dance for long. The wilderness ethos cannot expand into the promise of green technology and green growth like the agrarian ethos. Yet it honors a sensibility somehow more discerning of the profound and problematic changes between humankind and the natural world that presently unfold.

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Thomas Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision and the Changing Nature of Property The great frozen ice caps of the world’s traditional agrarian systems and rural social relations lay above the fertile soil of economic growth. It had at all costs to be melted, so that the soil could be ploughed by the forces of profit-pursuing private enterprise. —Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution

T

homas Jefferson is recognized as the foremost proponent of the agrarian ideal, which he eloquently articulated in the well-known passage from the Notes on the State of Virginia: Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.1

Historians generally agree that this passage offers a vision of a nation of independent farmers who would provide the bedrock on which to build our republic. Agriculture would assure virtue, morality, and independence

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of its citizenry, the necessary ingredients for a sound democracy. Thus, this vision captured an important and defining cultural moment in our history. For example, Henry Nash Smith explains that Jefferson “saw the cultivator of the earth, the husbandman who tilled his own acres, as the rock upon which the American republic must stand . . . such men had the independence, both economic and moral, that was indispensable in those entrusted with the solemn responsibility of the franchise.”2 Donald Worster offers this commentary: “Jefferson is saying that it is impossible to corrupt an entire nation so long as the majority of its citizens are small landowners, dispersed across the landscape, dependent on no one but themselves for their livelihood.”3 Daniel Kemmis elaborates further: “Farmers who were primarily engaged in feeding, clothing and housing their own families had no choice but to depend on their own skill and industry. . . . In the hard, direct necessities of such agriculture, Jefferson saw the roots of a plain honesty, industry, and perseverance he saw, in other words, the roots of those ‘civic virtues’ upon which real citizenship depended.”4 We know in retrospect that Jefferson’s vision did not materialize and, in fact, it bears scant verisimilitude to nineteenth- and twentieth-century agricultural development or to the general course of our country’s economic development. Even so, an agrarian inclination cemented during Jefferson’s time, established a defining cultural impulse that was simultaneously a countermovement to raw economic forces and then an established habit of thought. A close and detailed look at our history illustrates that the market economy and the agrarian habit of thought were interwoven from the beginning. Thomas Jefferson was confronted with the practical problem of charting the course of economic development in the United States. He embarked on this task mindful of the past. Jefferson’s preoccupation with getting beyond the past is made clear in his statement: “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain even under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”5 Jefferson was not prescient about the future but there is no question that he tapped into the pulse of his historical moment and helped to establish an economic and cultural trajectory that then took on a life of its own. Jefferson appealed to natural law and economic liberalism, and its prescripts for trade, specialization, and the rights of individuals to pursue their interests, to formulate the laws and policies he helped to establish to discredit and dislodge past institutions and replace them with new ones. More specifically, Jefferson helped to put in place the legal basis of land

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ownership and establish a systematic method of surveying land to augment it. He worked to displace precapitalist land institutions embodied in the economies and cultures of Native Americans. With our abundance of land, Jefferson wanted our history with economic liberalism to be distinguished from that of England.

Locke, Jefferson, and the Natural Right to Property Jefferson clearly played a pivotal role in setting the stage for the economic development of the United States, which he perceived to be agricultural. Although Jefferson is not noted for contributing to economic thought his agenda was embedded in the economic principles of his time. Natural law and economic liberalism provided the lights that illuminated his way. John Locke’s emphasis on the natural rights of property is a well-known influence on Jefferson. As A. Whitney Griswold has pointed out, “whether consciously or indirectly and unconsciously borrowed from Locke, Jefferson’s theory of property is essentially Locke’s.” In fact, Griswold finds remarkable similarities to Locke in Jefferson’s words, “The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on . . . a right to property is founded in our natural wants.”6 The thought experiment that Locke invoked to uncover the order, which God had set in motion was to imagine a world and humanity in a “natural state.” In his “Treatise of Civil Government,” Locke said, “Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he has mixed his labour with and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. . . . God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational—and labor was to be his title to it.”7 This philosophical basis of property provided justification for replacing past institutional arrangements and introduced the notion that some uses of property are clearly superior to others. Hunters and gatherers who harvest the “fruits” of the land can exercise this right as long as more “industrious and rational” uses, like agriculture, are not forthcoming. In agriculture, labor is mixed with nature and this bestows a right to property that overrides less industrious uses. Locke states: “If we will rightly estimate things as they

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come to our use, and cast up several expenses about them—what in them is purely owing to Nature and what to labour—we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.”8 Labor was viewed as the prime mover in production. A few words of clarity are warranted in explaining Locke’s (and Jefferson’s) views on property. Ellen Meiskins Wood claims that Locke’s notion of the right to property turns on the notion of “improvement” and claims that in Locke “There is no other work more emblematic of rising agrarian capitalism.”9 Wood further asserts: “there is no direct correspondence (in Locke) between labor and property because one man can appropriate the labor of another.” Wood uses a quote from Locke to bolster her point: “the grass my horse has bit; the Turfs my servant has cut and the ore I have digg’d in any place where I have a right to them in common with other, become my property.” Wood therefore concluded, “By conflating labor with the production for profit, Locke becomes perhaps the first thinker to construct a systematic theory of property based on something like these capitalist principles.”10 However, both Locke and Jefferson were speaking of a preindustrial world. They were addressing petty commodity production, the small businesses of competing entrepreneurs, therefore, the conflating of labor and production for profit was not as meaningful as Wood makes it out to be. This point is articulated well by John Henry: “During the period in which Locke wrote, wage labor . . . had not yet crystallized as the dominant form. . . . Indeed, when Locke lists examples of labor, his examples could all be associated with independent craft producers or representatives of various contract workers who still had some semblance of independence.”11 Bertrand Russell also explicitly acknowledges that the notion of a right to property based on labor “was not so unrealistic” in preindustrial days: “Urban production was mainly by handicraftsman who owned their tools and sold their produce. As for agricultural production, it was held by the school to which Locke belonged that peasant proprietorship would be the best system.”12 Unquestionably, Jefferson adopted Locke’s evolutionary view of property rights and his agenda to override past property relations. This became immanently clear both in the policies he advocated with regard to Native Americans and in his arguments against the practice of entails; that is, any restriction on property ownership mostly with regard to dispensation of that property.

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Institutionalizing the Natural Right to Property Rights Despite Jefferson’s communications with the Native Americans, which give the impression of an openness with regard to native American culture, it is absolutely clear that Jefferson had one agenda, to “civilize” them and to assimilate them into American society as yeoman farmers and bring them to a higher stage of development. In the context of eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury North America, Eric Hobsbawm clarifies the problem: “The total conflict between a view of society which regarded individual perfectly alienable property not merely as the only rational but the only natural arrangement and one which did not is perhaps most evident in the confrontation between Yankees and Indian.”13 In a message to Congress in 1803, Jefferson expressed concerns that Native Americans would create problems for westward expansion if they didn’t become more willing to sell their lands and change their lifestyle. Jefferson stated: In order peaceably to counteract this policy of theirs, and to provide an extension of territory, which the rapid increase of our numbers will call for, two measures are deemed expedient. First: to encourage them to abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture and domestic manufactures, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and labor will maintain them in this, better than in their former mode of living. . . . In leading them thus to agriculture, to manufactures, and civilization; in bringing together their and our settlements, and in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our government, I trust and believe we are acting in their greatest good.14 Later Jefferson voices his frustrations in convincing Native Americans to change their ways and become farmers. He says: [T]hey are combated by the habits of their bodies, prejudice of their minds, ignorance, pride, and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among them . . . these persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors . . . they, too have their anti-philosophers who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all

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Proving Up their faculties to maintain the ascendancy of habit over the duty of improving our reason, and obeying its mandates.15

Habits, ignorance, pride, sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors are among the litany of adjectives used by Jefferson to describe the reluctance of Native Americans to give up their way of life. More importantly, this adherence to habit denies “the duty of improving reason, and obeying its mandates.” It is clear in his dealings with Native Americans that Jefferson had a specific view of what constituted property rights. It was not the right to the use of land in any culturally determined way. Rather it was the right to improve the land agriculturally, through one’s labor, and to exercise the right to sell it if there was someone else who was willing to improve on it. In order to justifiably usurp land from Native Americans he had to believe that their land rights were somehow less legitimate than those who were engaged in settled agriculture. That is to say, he believed that the common property of the hunters and gatherers did not bestow the rights of ownership in the same way that agricultural production did. The latter simply had bumping rights over the former.16 Given Jefferson’s beliefs about property he had several choices when it came to policies concerning Native Americans. His first choice was to turn them into farmers. If that failed he advocated moving them further west onto unoccupied land, which, of course, amounted to putting the problem off into the future. When Native Americans did not respond readily to his suggestions, Jefferson advocated, “federally supported trading houses” that assured that Indians would accumulate debt and have to cede their lands to pay it off. If Indians resisted, Jefferson simply advocated war and extermination. Interestingly, Anthony C. Wallace tells us that the actual course of land acquisition from the Native Americans under Jefferson was not arbitrary and certainly did not depend on which Indians would concede most readily to his civilization policy. According to Wallace, “Jefferson had other criteria for determining when and where to purchase”; one of those criteria was “to secure safe routes for inland trade.”17 Assuring the articulation of the farmers into the trading nexus was as important to Jefferson as the acquisition of land. The Louisiana Purchase secured the Mississippi as a transportation route for inland trade west of the Appalachian Mountains. Thus, Jefferson was determined to free Indian lands from their tribal bonds and to establish outlets for potential agricultural surplus.

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At the same time that Jefferson was “enlightening” Native Americans and reconfiguring their ancestral land, he also was engaged in freeing land from its feudal shackles. Jefferson was very much aware of the influence of the feudal past in Europe and our ties to it. He wanted no remnants of that past institutionalized on American soil. The practice of entails had been exported to America from Europe, although these feudal land relationships were never established in the United States to the extent they had been in Europe. For example, primogeniture was the practice of handing down property to the firstborn son and was a type of entail practiced in the United States. Although private property had been in existence since the onset of settled agriculture, land was not fully alienated throughout the feudal period. During this time the rights to land were bestowed, not as a natural right, but as a divine right clearly articulated through custom and tradition captured in feudal land relations that restricted how and to whom one could transfer land. Thus divinely ordained ownership did not bestow on the owner the right to freely sell property as is the case when land is fully alienated. Both serfs and lords were bound to the land and each other through custom, tradition, and hereditary rights that were God’s will. Jefferson advocated dismantling primogeniture and entails in Virginia and replacing them with a system of fee-simple ownership leading the way for other states to follow. Jefferson’s lengthy statement on the abolishment of entails and primogeniture in Virginia can simultaneously be read as a treatise on the establishment of the principle of fee-simple ownership on the land: Be it therefore enacted . . . that any person who now hath, or hereafter may have any estate in fee tail general or special in any lands or slaves in possession . . . whether such estate hath been or shall be created by deed, will, act of assembly, or any other ways or means shall have full power to pass, convey, or assure in fee-simple or for any lesser estate the said lands or slaves, or use in lands or slaves or such reversion or remainder therein, or any part or parcel thereof, to any person or persons whatsoever.18 Behind the legalese is the banning of entails and the creation of the conditions whereby land could be easily and legally transferred from one person to another. The institution of fee simple ownership provided a clear cleavage with feudal land relations, thereby establishing fully alienated land and asserting the supremacy of the natural rights tradition of property ownership

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over that of divine right. With the passage of the Land Ordinance of 1785, created by a committee on which Jefferson served, the provisions for feesimple ownership of land were laid out clearly as national policy. With a vast and “unsettled” continent at hand it also was essential to map out the land, thereby facilitating the transfer of land from the government to individual, and from individual to individual by providing clear title. Thus, one of the most important and necessary corollaries to fee-simple ownership was the surveying of the land. In many ways, the systematic application of modern surveying techniques began in earnest with the passage of the land ordinances beginning in 1785. The secretary of Congress directed a committee headed by Jefferson in 1784: “to devise and report the most eligible means of disposing of such part of the Western lands as may be obtained of the Indians by the proposed treaty of peace and for opening a land office.”19 Jefferson’s committee is credited with proposing the system of rectangular surveying.20 Marion Clawson comments on the significance of these policies: “The Northwest ordinance . . . provided for sale in fee simple to purchasers—the buyer got complete title to the land and could bequeath it or dispose of it as he chose. . . . Accurate land descriptions are essential to any scheme for the disposition of public land or for the transfer of privately owned land from one owner to another, if confusion, misunderstanding, and controversy are to be avoided.”21 Thus, the U.S. government put in place a system of rectangular surveys for purposes of transferring public lands to private individuals and for allowing transfer from individual to individual. Jefferson was intimately involved in the process. Rectangular surveying reinforced the system of fee-simple ownership in that it assured a person of the concrete material dimensions of purchased land. The policies Jefferson pursued with regard to Native Americans and the role he played in establishing the framework for the legal system of land ownership were the practical dimensions of his commitment to the Lockean tradition of property ownership. But Jefferson’s adherence to the natural law tradition did not end with Locke. Jefferson had the advantage of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith to guide him in pursuit of his agrarian vision and our path of economic development.

Economic Liberalism: The Natural Order Although the Lockean tradition of property as a natural right provided a cornerstone of the agrarian vision, its foundation was fortified by Jefferson’s

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commitment to economic liberalism. Indeed it was economic liberalism that provided the broader economic context of his agrarian vision and further legitimized it. Jefferson’s notion of the supremacy of agriculture is often juxtaposed with his less-than-laudatory views on manufacturing, which are sometimes misinterpreted as categorical condemnations of manufacturing and commerce. This perspective is unfortunate in that it discounts the importance of economic liberalism in framing Jefferson’s vision. In one of his more famous passages on the subject of manufacturing, Jefferson states: While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.22 This quote seems to leave little question about how Jefferson felt about manufacturing. But it is important to note, as Robert Heilbroner and Aaron Singer point out, that one of the objections Jefferson had with regard to manufacturing “sprang from a classical estimation of farming and a correspondingly dark picture of nonagricultural toil.”23 Jefferson’s vision of agriculture was undoubtedly informed by the squalor and degradation of the lives of those engaged as laborers in the manufacturing cities of England during his time. Given the horrendous conditions of the English working class, it is not surprising that the idealistic pastoral serenity of agriculture appealed to Jefferson. Moreover and perhaps more importantly, Heilbroner and Singer point out that Jefferson thought manufacturing was somewhat superfluous in the United States; therefore, he believed that one could sell agricultural surplus for the limited manufactures that were needed.24 Indeed, Jefferson envisioned a course of economic development where both manufacturing and agriculture had a place but the role of manufacturing

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was limited not only because it was relatively insignificant, but also because trade would allow us to specialize in agriculture and exchange our surplus for needed manufactures. Thus, economic liberalism was foundational to Jefferson’s agrarian vision. And his agrarian vision must be seen as a way to guard against the outcome of raw economic forces that had unfolded in England. Some confusion exists on this point, in part, because Jefferson’s displeasure with manufacturing is erroneously interpreted as disapproval of commerce and by extension a market economy. A more recent example of the confusion about Jefferson is found in the work of Daniel Kemmis, who makes the following point in his book Community and the Politics of Place: In all these reflections about the connection between civic virtue and agriculture, Jefferson was contrasting agriculture (and specifically subsistence agriculture) to commerce and to manufacturing. What bothered him about those nonfarming activities was the disconnectedness and the anonymity which seemed necessarily to accompany them. . . . Jefferson was appalled by the thought of large numbers of people making their living by depending solely upon the choices of other people with whom they had no social or moral ties of any kind. Yet it was this very disconnectedness, which lay at the heart of Adam Smith’s doctrine of the “invisible hand” of the market.25 Kemmis fails to tell us, however, that Jefferson enthusiastically embraced the principles of laissez-faire capitalism as set forth by Adam Smith. Although Jefferson did not contribute anything new to economic thought, he was completely wedded to the economic liberalism that came of age during the eighteenth century. He understood clearly that his agrarian vision found legitimacy in the context of laissez-faire capitalism; that is to say in the noninterference of government in specialization and unfettered trade. In the words of Jefferson in his first inaugural address: “About to enter, fellow citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper that you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration . . . encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid.”26 Jefferson’s adherence to laissez-faire capitalism was reinforced by the fact that the natural rights of property and economic liberalism were part

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and parcel of the natural law tradition making it logically consistent for Jefferson to adhere to one if he believed in the other. The idea was that the natural order of the market economy flowed from the natural rights of property. Both replaced providence, which had dominated feudal life, with the notion that God’s work can be discovered through our ability to reason. God sets in motion laws and principles that give order to the universe and apply as surely to our economic life as to the motion of planets. Our job is to discover and abide by this natural order. Thus, organizing economic life on the basis of the market economy is merely acknowledging the order that God had put in motion. We know, in fact, that Jefferson was influenced by the Physiocrats, eighteenth-century political economists in France, who believed that government policy should not interfere with natural economic laws and that land was the only source of wealth. Both they and Adam Smith, through systematic economic analysis, legitimized the notion that laissez-faire capitalism is the natural way to organize economic life. Therefore, both the Physiocrats and Adam Smith provided the intellectual roots from which Jefferson’s agrarian vision sprang. A closer look at the influence of the Physiocrats and Smith is warranted because Jefferson’s affinity for the former has been somewhat misinterpreted and his adherence to the latter has not been adequately recognized.

Jefferson and the Physiocrats Both Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson served as plenipotentiaries to France; Franklin, first and then Jefferson, who served on the eve of the French Revolution. This diplomatic connection with France put Jefferson in contact with the Physiocrats; for example, he was a personal friend of Dupont de Nemours who Joseph Dorfman says helped publish the Physiocratic views of Turgot.27 The Physiocrats’ concentration on the agricultural sector was part of a general problem for those interested in economic matters during this time, the systematic analysis of the source of wealth and surplus. They identified the agricultural sector as the source of surplus, the produit net, because it allowed them to simplify their economic analysis without the complications of exchange. As Eric Roll points out: “The produit net was not a surplus of social wealth in the abstract but of the concrete material

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wealth of useful goods. It was this technological approach which led the Physiocrats to single out one particular branch of production as the only really productive one.”28 But by identifying the creation of surplus in agricultural production, Physiocratic thinking helped to break the mercantilist hold on economic thought that identified the sphere of exchange as the source of wealth. Mercantilist protectionist measures “to foster industry were useless” because wealth originated in agriculture production and not in exchange. Thus, the Physiocrats were led through their analysis to their laissez-faire conclusions. Although Jefferson was attracted to the Physiocratic emphasis on agriculture, it did create problems for him. As reiterated by Chester Eisinger, “What Americans did accept from the Physiocrats was the idea that . . . the farmer supports all. . . . Franklin and Jefferson were its chief advocates.” Jefferson was well aware of his political constituency and was not about to extol the virtues of agriculture on the one hand and advocate taxing it on the other as the Physiocrats had. Eisinger tells us that Jefferson suggested to Du Pont de Nemours “that a single tax on land was not for America.”29 Thus, in reality Jefferson disassociated himself from Physiocratic thinking with regard to taxation. Jefferson could side step the sticky issue of a tax on agriculture by concentrating instead on the principles of laissez-faire and the notion of a “natural order” that emerged from the analysis of the Physiocrats.30 Roll says that the political precepts offered by the Physiocrats were “embodied in an elaborate system to which many books were devoted. . . . Quesnay himself wrote one of its principal [sic] expositions. The chief concept of that system was that of the ‘natural order.’ ” Roll continues: “The essential aspects of the natural order were the right to enjoy the benefits of property, to exercise one’s labour, and to have such freedom as was consistent with the freedom of others to follow their self interest.”31 The influence of the Physiocrats was clear to Jefferson: Political economy in modern times assumed the form of a regular science first in the hands of a political sect in France, called the Economists. They made it a branch only of a comprehensive system on the natural order of societies. Quesnai first, Gournay, Le Frosne, Turgot and Dupont de Nemour . . . led the way in these developments, and gave to our inquiries the direction they have since observed.32

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Jefferson and Smith Fortunately, Jefferson had the benefit of Adam Smith and J.B. Say and other economists carrying on the analytical tradition begun by the Physiocrats without the baggage of a tax on agriculture. In this sense, the world of the Physiocrats and that of Smith were one and the same. Perhaps the convergence in their thinking is obscured by the fact that Smith designated a chapter in The Wealth of Nations arguing against the Physiocratic notion that agriculture is the only source of wealth. But as Roll rightly points out: “[In] spite of his own belief. Both in his adherence to naturalism and in his interest in the problem of the surplus, his path is parallel to theirs.”33 The Physiocrats and Smith agreed that wealth originated in the sphere of production and also in their adherence to naturalism; that is, in their belief in the natural order of an unfettered market economy. Smith elaborates on the benefits of this natural order in the creation of wealth. He argued that we are by nature selfish, motivated by a habit of labor and the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. Given these natural human characteristics the reliance on the invisible hand of the market will channel these motives into an organized socioeconomic system where our desires will be met as will the desires of others. Moreover, this organization will encourage an even more detailed division of labor, increased productivity, and an ability to continually expand our material wealth. Roll says of Smith: “Smith becomes thus a champion of laissez-faire of even greater force than the Physiocrats, because he applied the principles without basing it on the view that agriculture occupied a specially exalted position.”34 Jefferson, as mentioned previously, was familiar with the work of Adam Smith, although he preferred the work of Say because he found the latter easier to read.35 In the work of Smith, and Say, Jefferson could find justification for an esteemed place for agriculture as part of the logic of specialization and free trade.36 In a report to Congress in 1793, Jefferson’s views become very clear: Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles of regulating laws, duties and prohibitions, could it be relieved from all its shackles in all parts of the world, could every country be employed in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free to exchange with others mutual surpluses for mutual wants, the greatest mass possible would then be reproduced of

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These could easily be the words of Smith. It is clear that Jefferson both adhered to and understood the logic of laissez-faire capitalism and the role that specialization and free trade played. Smith and Jefferson are unequivocally kindred spirits in this regard. Later, as is well known, Jefferson tempers his earlier views on manufacturing when free trade is interrupted by war and the prospects of specialization in agriculture become impossible. Jefferson makes his views clear in a letter to Benjamin Austin in 1816: You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to continue our dependence on England manufactures. There was a time when I might have been so quoted with more candor, but within the thirty years which have since elapsed, how are [sic] circumstances changed! We were then in peace. Our independent place among nations was acknowledged. A commerce which offered the raw material in exchange for the same material after receiving the last touch of industry, was worthy of welcome to all nations. It was expected that those especially to whom manufacturing industry was important, would cherish the friendship of such customers by every favor by every inducement, and particularly cultivate their peace by every act of justice and friendship. Under this prospect the question seemed legitimate, whether with such an immensity of unimproved land, courting the hand of husbandry, the industry of agriculture, or that of manufactures, would add most to the national wealth . . . but who in 1785 could foresee the rapid depravity which was to render the close of that century the disgrace of the history of man? Who could have imagined that the two most distinguished in the rank of nations, for science and civilization, would have suddenly descended from that honorable eminence, and setting at defiance all those moral laws established by the Author of nature between nation and nation, as between man and man. . . . We have experienced what we

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did not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations: that to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist . . . experience has now taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.38 Jefferson changes his mind about our role in manufacturing because war had set “at defiance all those moral laws established by the Author of nature between nation and nation, as between man and man.” He understood that with the disruption of trade if we needed manufactured goods we would have to produce them ourselves. But there seems to be some confusion on this point. For example, Fred Shannon, the agricultural historian, writes in his book The Farmer’s Last Frontier: Just as the War for Independence was drawing to a close, Thomas Jefferson expressed the hope that America would always remain an agricultural nation, relying on Europe for manufactures. He feared that the rise of cities, dependent on trade and mechanical industry, would imperil American liberty. But thirty-five years later, at the close of the second war with England, he was advocating the fostering of manufactures as a means of preserving independence from foreign countries.39 The truth is Jefferson was not concerned with preserving our economic independence from foreign nations. He understood that without the ability to produce manufactured goods, our economy would be vulnerable if trade were interrupted. Jefferson was simply realizing the increasing importance of manufacturing not amending his fundamental belief in economic liberalism. Specialization and trade, basic tenants of laissez-faire capitalism were cornerstones of his belief system, not economic independence. Jefferson’s vision was given legitimacy in the context of economic liberalism. Specialization in agriculture and free trade were clearly his preference. If the experience of England was an indication there appeared to be a most unsavory side to the market economy that could be avoided, or so Jefferson thought, with a specialization in agriculture. And this was an obvious fit for the United States with its abundance of unsettled land. Jefferson tapped into the pulse

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of the historical moment. Anxieties about the new economic forces were emergent but these could be assuaged by an appeal to specialization in agriculture. By virtue of land we could encourage a virtuous and unique brand of capitalism. Thus, economic liberalism and Jefferson’s agrarian ideal had a unique convergence in American history. The agrarian ethos was a land-centered counterbalance to the raw force of the market economy. In this way it was firmly established as a cultural ethos, a foundational institution, which would thereafter take on a life of its own, all the while co-evolving with the market economy. Yet the force of change in the market economy was remarkable, a change that Jefferson did not anticipate. Even so, the evolving circumstances of the market economy did not negate the agrarian ethos, although over time the small independent farmer would surely become a relic of the past. To understand the remarkable resilience of the agrarian ethos and its dance with the evolving market economy it is important to consider what happened to property and more specifically land as property as the market economy matured.

The Metamorphosis of Property Jefferson helped to institutionalize “natural law” as the guiding principle for the economic development of the United States. Thus, laissez-faire capitalism and fully alienated land, land that could be sold without restriction, became foundational to his agrarian vision. He was successful in “redivining” property on American soil and he held to a consistent and cohesive vision of our economic development. But despite all that we might attribute to Jefferson, we should remember that his vision was rooted in a world of petty commodity production, production comprised of small business entrepreneurs. In Jefferson’s world, increased productivity inherent in the division of labor would be nurtured through specialization in agriculture and free trade. The benefits of the increased productivity, brought about by hard work on the land, would be apparent in an individual’s capacity to trade their surplus for access to use value. But a dramatic increase in output and a world where use value would become subordinate to exchange value were alien to Jefferson. In this the purpose of production shifts from making useful things to making money. Yet the world changed in precisely this manner as the institutions derived from economic liberalism and natural law were fertilized by the Industrial Revolution with the invention of the steam engine and

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power-driven machinery. The possibilities for increased productivity grew exponentially around the detailed division of labor in manufacturing and the specialized tools that arose organically from it. The increase in productive potential created seemingly unending possibilities and imperatives for profit. Economic reality was fundamentally altered by its own internal logic and dynamic, and these changes would affect Jefferson’s agrarian vision and over time the agrarian ethos. Contrasting Jefferson’s vision and expectations with the course of our economic development more clearly demonstrates what Jefferson did not anticipate. In the first place, Jefferson did not see the expansionary propensity of the market economy. In Jefferson’s first inaugural address he commented on the attributes of our nation that enabled us to “become happy and prosperous people” and pursue our “republican principles, our attachment to our union and representative government.” Among those attributes he identified was the following: “possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation.”40 Because we know Jefferson was thinking in agrarian terms, we wonder whether we should interpret him literally; that is, did he think we had enough land for agricultural expansion for 20,000 years? Although we may not want to literally interpret Jefferson, at the very least, this statement reveals how little Jefferson understood the dynamic of growth unleashed by the institutional foundations he helped to establish. Clearly, he did not understand the way in which the opportunities and imperative for profit, in the context of fully alienated land, a world of increased mechanization and transportation fueled by fossil fuels and the development of financial institutions for capitalization, would engender expansion and accumulation. In little more than 100 years after Jefferson’s life, the vast continent, which seemed unending to Jefferson, would be gobbled up and what happened henceforth would be a matter of concentration and consolidation. The increased importance of manufacturing and the changing nature of agricultural production and agrarian life also offer poignant examples of the unanticipated outcome of economic change. By the end of the nineteenth century, manufacturing had eclipsed agriculture in its economic importance. Abetted by the industrial revolution, what Jefferson saw as ancillary and superfluous, became central. In the words of Fred Shannon: “By 1850, the rising industrial structure was beginning to challenge the supremacy of agriculture, and, before 1900, the former had taken a secondary position in the nation’s economy.”41 The potential for manufacturing to explode in the context of nineteenth-century economic liberalism had simply escaped Jefferson.

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Moreover, the technological “lessons” of manufacturing fed back into agriculture changing the nature of agricultural production and agricultural life. The increase in agricultural productivity decreased the ratio of the agrarian population relative to the rest of the population. Despite our abundance of land, agriculture, as a way of life, had become diminutive relative to manufacturing. Moreover, it became necessary for the farmer to employ mechanization, modes of transportation, and the financial institutions at his disposal in order to participate fully in the process of capitalization or face the possibility of economic ruin. The farmer, fully articulated with the market and caught up in the imperative of accumulation and growth precipitated by these changes would have scant resemblance to the farmer of Jefferson’s vision even by the latter half of the nineteenth century much less to the corporate agriculture which dominates agriculture today. John R. Commons addresses the agricultural sector specifically in his discussion of property: The transition in meanings of property and liberty applies to agriculture as well as manufactures, commerce and transportation, and to individuals, partnerships and associations as well as corporations. Farming has become a going-business, or a bankrupt business, like other businesses. The isolated, colonial, or frontier farmer might produce and consume things, attentive only to their use-value, but the modern farmer lives by producing social-use-values: and buying other social-use-values produced and sold by other business men. In this way he also “produces” exchange-value, that is, assets.42 Jefferson’s words stand as a stark reminder of what he did not anticipate. At the end of the passage in the Notes on Virginia outlining his agrarian ideal Jefferson finishes with the following words: “but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption”43 On the face of it, the reality of fully commodified land stands in sharp contrast to the Jeffersonian vision of land as the bedrock of our independence, democracy, and community. Surely we can forgive Jefferson his transgression. Both the necessity of being mindful of the past and the slow movement of technological change during Jefferson’s lifetime added to the

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inherently difficult task of anticipating the future. By the 1830s, when the forces of technological change were more fully revealed, Jefferson’s life came to a close. Without the benefit of the industrial revolution “profit-pursuing private enterprise” looked rather benign to Jefferson: a mostly self-sufficient independent farmer tinkering with a little nail manufacturing on the side. Perhaps unwittingly then, Jefferson helped to establish the institutional foundations necessary for the full flowering of capitalism after the Industrial Revolution, a dynamic that would change the meaning and purpose of property. Jefferson also helped to establish the countermovement to these forces: an agrarian ethos. Initially grounded in self-sufficient agriculture it became a habit of thought and cultural expectation that was reflected in our economic development for a long period of time. By the late nineteenth century, the stark consequences for property inherent in commodification and commercialization had become more completely and formally recognized. Commons describes the changes in the judicial interpretation of property, which were the outgrowth of the expanding market economy. Commons tells us that the courts had come to acknowledge a new claim to property that went beyond a claim to the means of consumption or the simple production of use values. “[T]he transition in the definition of property from physical objects to exchange value was completed. . . . The shift in the meaning of property . . . is a distinction between capital and capitalization, between things and assets, between things owned and the powers of acquisition residing in the ownership of things, between use-value and exchange value.”44 These changes would apply to land as well as other forms of property. Commons was not the only economist to explicitly recognize these changes in the meaning of property. Thorstein Veblen discusses the fact that the evolution of market capitalism made obsolete the natural law foundations of property, which had grounded Smith’s discussion of economic laws. Veblen’s discussion could just as easily apply to Jefferson. In Veblen’s words: Adam Smith spoke the language of what was to him the historical present, that is to say the recent past of his time. . . . But in the historical sequence of things he stood at the critical point of transition to a new order. . . . What had gone before was the era of handicraft and the petty trade, the habitual outlook of which had become (second) nature to the thoughtful men of that time; what has followed after is the era of the machine industry

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Veblen continues with a description of the most salient feature of the new era, the recognition of which had been slow in coming: “Indeed, it has taken something like a hundred years for the formulas of the economists to adapt themselves to the new run of facts in business and industry . . . economists have begun to recognize that ‘capital’ means ‘capitalization of earnings capacity.’ ”46 Thus, both Commons and Veblen recognized that property under this new economic era had taken on a new meaning that meant something different for the farmer. Before the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of modern systems of finance, when the primary source of productive property resided in an individual’s labor, property could more easily be perceived as a reward for labor and the source of our independence. The farmer might produce a surplus, which could then be traded to more fully reproduce his life by giving him access to a greater variety of useful goods, consistent with the productive potential of society at the time. But this productive potential was modest without the benefit of the Industrial Revolution and in its modesty reigned the supremacy of use value over exchange value. But under market capitalism, wedded to the Industrial Revolution and its financial institutions, the right to productive property inevitably extended beyond productive labor to the right, as well as the imperative, to use property in the drive for efficiency and maximization of profits. In this new era, productive property became the ticket to participation in “the runaway potential of capitalization” and exchange value would come to dominate use value.47 Before Jefferson’s vision had the opportunity to unfold, the meaning and purpose of property had changed.48 There was no doubt a divergence between Jefferson’s vision and the reality of our economic development. In this new world the institutional framework Jefferson helped to establish would take on new meaning as the production of use value would recede into the background and be replaced by the imperative to make money and the dominance of exchange value. In Veblenian language, business would come to dominate industry.49 Yet despite the force of this economic impulse or perhaps because of it the agrarian ethos was extended in the shadow of these formidable economic forces although its narrow agrarian variant would play itself out by the early twentieth century.

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During Jefferson’s time the agrarian ideal provided an appealing counterbalance to the raw forces of the market economy; it uniquely concentrated this impulse on our connection with land. In this way an agrarian ethos, an impulse to “domesticate well” in the face of market forces that obviously had the potential to take us in a different direction, became foundational to our national psyche and inextricably interwoven with economic liberalism. Economic development in the centuries after Jefferson, and despite the changing nature of property, provided ample opportunities for the expression and extension of this impulse even though eventually it was no longer manifest in Jefferson’s agrarian ideal literally and narrowly construed. The settlement of land went on for well over a century after Jefferson was gone and the hard work and diligence of the farmer still played a role alongside the need for speculation and “capitalization of earning capacity.” The agrarian ethos, as a land-based ideal of thoughtful and harmonious economic development, domestication, itself evolved along with the changing market economy. Opportunity abounded within the realities and demands of economic development for this cultural impulse to find expression, as exemplified by the creation of public land. Our history isn’t a simple case of commodification of land and market forces negating agrarian man and the agrarian habit of thought. The institutional dynamic at work was more nuanced and complex. Neither the dynamic and force of the market economy nor the strength and resilience of the agrarian ethos can be ignored in this history. In fact, it is the co-evolution of these dominant institutions that defines the history of our connection to land.

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The Dialectics of Government Land Policies (1785–1862) The image of this vast and constantly growing agricultural society in the interior of the continent became one of the dominant symbols of the nineteenth-century American society—a collective representation, a poetic idea that defined the promise of American life. —Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land

T

he institutional dance of the agrarian ethos and market capitalism reveals a complicated co-evolution. In the early stages of U.S. market capitalism the agrarian ethos was expressed as the agrarian ideal, a small independent farmer attached to land. The agrarian ideal tapped into an historical moment and became an established habit of thought and an expectation for agricultural and economic development. Land policies, leading up to and including the Homestead Act were an expression of the interplay and evolution of the nineteenth-century market economy and this variant of the agrarian ethos initially established in the Jeffersonian era. Eventually, a point would be reached where the agrarian ideal no longer resonated and the agrarian ethos would be expressed in a different form in keeping with a different historical moment. Nonetheless for a long period the agrarian ideal lingered with market capitalism while the latter matured and ripened. Studies of land policy during this early period have failed to capture the important institutional and evolutionary dynamic at work. Analyses of this period of American history reliably focus on the opposition between revenue generation and the needs of the actual settler or between speculation and settlement. Appropriate appreciation for the co-evolutionary interplay of the foundational land institutions is lacking in these simplistic dichotomies. Agrarian sentiments, which arose in the world dominated by the production of use value, were extended for a time in a world that came to be dominated

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by exchange value even though the economic connection to land was altered with the maturation of the market economy. In this way the agrarian ideal was reinforced and extended over a long stretch of history. Late eighteenth-century land policies had established the basic institutional arrangements of land ownership so that land could become fully alienated and participate as “property” in the unfolding market economy. This was a central tenant of all subsequent land policy and was an essential thread connecting all land policy. And simple agrarian sentiments, the foundational legacy of the Jeffersonian era, became an established habit of thought and accommodated the new economic imperatives dictated increasingly by market forces. By forcing “settlement” as a condition of property ownership, the Homestead Act reinforced Lockean perceptions of property ownership and simple agrarian expectations. In the end, self-sufficiency provided a “buffer” for the farmer allowing him to hang on when the immediate economic circumstances dictated by raw market forces might otherwise have signaled to him that he should give up and fold. Although the agrarian ideal was reinforced in this way the use of land for purposes of speculation was, at the same time, emergent. Even though it appeared that the noble farmer was distinct from the land speculator this was not entirely so, both farmers and speculators took advantage of opportunities to seek out rent. Veblen captures this nicely: [The farmer] is commonly driven by circumstances over which he has no control, the circumstances being made by the system of absentee ownership and its business enterprise. . . . In the American tradition, and in point of historical fact out of which the tradition has arisen, the farmer has been something of a pioneer . . . and it has been an essential trait of this American pioneering spirit to seize upon so much of the country’s natural resources as the enterprising pioneer could lay hands on—in the case of the pioneer-farmer so much of the land as he could get and hold possession of. The land had, as it still has, a prospective use and therefore a prospective value, a “speculative” value as it is called; and the farmer-pioneer was concerned with seizing upon this prospective value and turning it into net gain by way of absentee ownership, as much as the pioneer-farmer was concerned with turning the fertile soil the present use in the creation of a livelihood for himself and his household from day to day.1

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Under these changing circumstances, speculation increasingly became an entrenched part of the logic and imperative of land ownership. The economic historian D.C. North comments: “There is no doubt that speculation in public lands was a favorite occupation of Americans in the nineteenth century. Not only big speculators . . . but smaller holders speculated too. . . . Speculation was endemic to any system of private ownership of assets.”2 The underlying motivation of the “speculator” is to seek out rent, an unearned return. Rent is captured by virtue of property ownership and the foresight or luck to be in the right place at the right time, to get the “competitive edge” that may eventually be eroded over time. Both speculator and the settler felt compelled to seek out rent, not because of individual greed, which may also have been present, but because rent seeking is at the very core of an exchange economy. The notion of a natural right to property is foundational to a market economy where mixing one’s labor with ownership of land legitimizes property ownership. But this mixing becomes more complicated as the market economy matures. Selfsufficiency is not the goal, and individual economic survival depends on a more diverse array of strategies. The appearance of rent-seeking behavior is testimony to the evolution and extension of the market. Individuals, speculators, and settlers alike, must act on the possibilities of “prospective use” in order to capture “prospective value” because everyone is disciplined by a price system where all are doing the same thing. Forays into the domain where rent can be garnered are made because not entering may eventually condemn one to economic obsolescence. Indeed, rent provides a windfall for new investment and future capitalization that serve to give you the competitive edge. Speculators and settlers engage in the same rent-seeking behavior but at different ends of the same spectrum. If the speculator captures and seeks out rent he is considered ruthless and greedy, whereas the settler is considered hardworking and noble. The stark reality of the market economy, when presented through the unadulterated acts of the speculator, is seen as most unsavory. But the hard work of the noble farmer, despite its appearance, is not simply geared toward self-sufficiency; he simultaneously tests the boundaries of prospective use and enhances the possibilities for garnering a prospective value.3 Mindful of this framework a reinterpretation of the Homestead Act is warranted. Placing the Homestead Act in the historical context of coevolving land institutions requires proper attention to the connection of the Homestead Act to the policies that preceded it during three periods: Period

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I, 1785–1820, begins the enactment of the Land Ordinance of 1785 and extends through 1820. Period II, 1820–1841, leads up to and includes the passage of the Preemption Act. Period III, 1841–1862, is the period after preemption and leading up to the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862.

Period I, 1785–1820 Discussions by historians of this early period generally regard it as a time when revenue generation for the government was the driving force behind land policy. We are told that as a consequence the speculator benefited over the settler because the government quickly sold large tracts that settlers could not easily afford. Payson Jackson Treat interprets the goal of public lands administration in the period: “During this period the public lands were administered as a source of revenue. . . . The revenue theory of management clashed with the needs of the actual settler. It prevented a reduction in price, a granting of donations to pioneers, and even a general preemption. But at this period Congress felt that there were other interests to be considered aside from those of the advance guard of the westward movement.”4 In a similar vein, Marion Clawson argues: “Everyone agreed that the publicly owned lands should be disposed of to private ownership; the questions were, how fast, and by what means? The argument largely turned around sales of land as a major source of revenue, versus land as a basis for settlement of a landowning, land-farming class. . . . The argument is generally characterized as Hamilton versus Jefferson; Hamilton favored using land as a source of revenue, Jefferson was concerned to promote a small landholding rural society.”5 Treat and Clawson appear to agree that the goal of revenue generation is central to the dynamics of this early period of land policy, and this goal eclipsed that of the needs of the settler. This is a specious dichotomy that clouds the understanding of early nineteenth-century land policy. Unquestionably, revenue generation gave an advantage to speculators who had the money to buy large tracts of land from the government, thus edging out the small farmer. And speculation, as it is inclined to do, ran somewhat amok. Yet it is more important to understand that speculation emerged early in our economic history as a clear and vital part of the market economy. Given economic arrangements it was an unavoidable component of the process of economic development. This is not a question of Hamilton versus Jefferson as both Hamilton and Jefferson had moved beyond simple mercantilist attitudes and understood clearly that the wealth

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of the nation was determined by its productive capacity. The important point is to understand that early land policy was configured to move the process of economic development along, given the conditions at hand, and speculation was an unavoidable part of that process. The first land ordinance in the United States was passed in 1785 and laid out the U.S. government’s policy for dispensation of lands. Treat has called the Ordinance of 1785 “the foundation of the American Land System.”6 A better-known variant of the Ordinance of 1785 was passed as the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. Although modifications to these early land ordinances would take place, the basic provisions would not be altered: Land would be conveyed through a system of fee simple ownership that gave owners unlimited ability to dispose of it after it was “purchased” from Native Americans. In order to operationalize these institutional arrangements, a method of rectangular surveys was firmly established and a surveyor general appointed to survey lands. This was a necessary corollary to transmitting a clear, fee simple title that would give the owner the right to sell the land. The experience of obtaining lands from Native Americans is instructive in highlighting the expectations established early in the history of land policy. On a more practical note, the fact that Native Americans did not share our worldview also presented logistical problems and made the removal of Native Americans both an “ugly and bloody business” and an arduous process.7 We took the moral high ground in usurping land from them and did so simultaneously as we formulated our economic philosophy for the land. The idea that agriculture should supersede the hunting and gathering lifestyle of most Native Americans was predicated on the principle that agriculture constituted a higher stage of development. In Jefferson’s view, the notion that mixing one’s labor with the right to the land was clearly a higher stage of development by virtue of the fact that it made land more productive. Clearly, Native American hunting and gathering did not result in this superior productivity because rather than mixing their labor with the land they merely harvested its gifts. Thus, we saw it as our moral duty to “civilize” Indians by purchasing (or taking) their land and making farmers out of them. Jefferson maintained that we were “acting in their greatest good” by doing so.8 In this sense, the agrarian ideal was seen as the antidote to the atavistic beliefs and economic arrangements of Native American societies (which had actually succeeded on the land for thousands of years) and provided us with the moral authority to take their lands. It had become embedded as an expectation in our social fabric beginning in the late eighteenth century.9

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Although natural rights philosophy provided us with the moral justification for “civilizing” Native Americans it certainly did not ring true to them. They considered their relationship to the natural world (and land) to be reciprocal and numinous rather than hierarchical and dispassionately economic. Our hierarchical and economic view of the land is clearly embodied in fee simple ownership and its operational corollary, the rectangular survey. Systematic, neat, and linear, the latter reflected our underlying attitude toward the earth, giving the illusion of control. But no matter how we tried, the earth would not become square and flat thus the process of surveying was constantly challenged by topography. The variable land forms and vegetation, imbued with spirit for Native Americans, merely annoyed and frustrated the surveyor and impeded the process of surveying the land and the effort to obtain clear and timely surveys. With this context in mind, we can look at the dynamics of early government land policy in a more illuminating light. A primary reason the government sold land in large tracks was that it was more difficult to survey smaller plots given both the logistical problems associated with surveying and limited government coffers.10 Yet surveying large plots created its own problems. By 1797 reports to the secretary of the treasury indicated a poor showing in land sales and asked for an assessment of the situation. Part of the blame centered on the size of the plots, but reports also indicated that there were problems with the price, which proved to be too high for almost everyone, speculators and settlers alike. With regard to these problems, Treat concludes, “If Congress insisted upon selling land in large tracts it must either reduce the price or extend credit, and if it desired to sell to the settler it must either reduce the price or the size of the minimum tract. Twelve hundred and eighty dollars, the minimum price for a section, was too much to expect from a pioneer.”11 Pragmatically, it was difficult to reduce the size of plots sold, thus extending credit, or reducing the price, seemed to be the only solution to the problem. The lack of interest for land at the price the government offered reflected the limited agricultural markets at the time. By extending credit the government had the opportunity to sustain some flow of revenue and garner interest payments until demand for land picked up. From the perspective of the buyer, credit allowed them the advantage of betting on future values without having to pay for their gamble entirely out of pocket. Moreover, the extension of credit, as opposed to reducing the price, helped to shore up land values further east on land that was already in private ownership and for political reasons there was logic to the former.

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The extension of credit and selling in large tracts ultimately promoted land speculation, which eventually spun out of control. Government policy clearly encouraged a bet on the prospective value of land. Land speculation was not an aberrant drift, but without well-developed agricultural markets speculation ran ahead of itself and land markets “bottomed out.” The problem of speculators not being able to capitalize on their “investment” was further exacerbated by the fact that “free land,” obtainable through squatting was always available to those willing to live on the margins of settlement. The government responded to speculation run amok by rescinding credit in 1820. Loan default had become common practice. Given the limitations for speculation to pay off in this early period and in order to avoid the unsavory prospect of confiscating land that had been “sold,” the government also forgave debts and extended the time frame for repayment of outstanding loans. Eventually, the government moved to reduce the size of plots sold and lowered prices. That was not to say that the government had suddenly become enlightened about the needs of the settler although on the face of it, that seemed to be the case. Rather, the government was predisposed to follow this path because speculation, endemic to the system, and, indeed, a part of the logic, encouraged by these particular policies, had resulted in excess supply in land markets, and price adjustments were, in the end, the only way to realign them. Explaining this early period of land policy by emphasizing the motive of revenue generation and the ways in which it tipped the scale toward the speculator at the expense of the settler ignores the more interesting and important evolutionary and dialectical processes at work. There is a complicated picture of institutional change and tension at play. Early land policy laid down the economic bedrock of land as property in the form of fee-simple ownership. This form of land ownership was made operational through the use of the rectangular survey. Moreover, the moral authority for the usurpation of land from Native Americans was expressed in our agrarian expectations. The difficulty in surveying land in a timely fashion and without great cost was a persistent problem and reflected our misconceptions about our dominion over the land. Government’s policies tried to set out ways to manage the difficulties in surveying by selling in large tracts and extending credit but this exacerbated speculation. But the rewards of speculation were limited because markets were poorly developed and unsettled and “free” land was always available. The result was overcapitalized land markets; the government was left with the prospect of loan defaults and land confiscation.

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The only alternative was price reduction and sale in smaller plots in an attempt to realign land markets. This strategy reasserted the agrarian ideal thereby reinforcing a sense that the needs of the settler had won out as an intentional part of government policy. This was far from the truth of the historical matter.

Period II, 1820–1841 By 1820, in the face of severely overcapitalized land markets, the government was forced to abolish credit and reduce the auction price of land and the size of tracts sold. Striking a balance between tempering speculation and continuing to develop the productive potential of land was not an easy matter. The hallmark of this second period of land policy was the passage of the Preemption Act of 1841. The Preemption Act allowed those who had settled on land not yet available for purchase, to purchase the land for the minimum auction price once it was surveyed and put up for sale. Eventually preemption applied to surveyed and unsurveyed land alike. The passage of the Preemption Act has been viewed by historians as a fundamental break with past government policy with regard to the land. Land policy historians once again set up the dichotomy of revenue generation versus promoting the needs of the settler as the framework for interpreting land policy. Yet this is a misplaced emphasis. With regard to this Act, Treat says, “The growth of the sentiment in favor of preemption, therefore, was parallel to the changing conception of the ultimate object of land legislation. So long as revenue was the end to be sought, preemption was undeniably bad. But if the furtherance of settlement was to be the desire of Congress, then preemption was but a step toward the ultimate goal—the granting of homesteads to settlers.”12 Roy Robbins agrees with this assessment: “[I]t was evident that Congress at last regarded the settlement of the public domain as more desirable than the revenue that might be obtained from it. . . . It was at last intended that the actual settler be placed on an equal basis with the speculator in competition for land.”13 Similarly Paul Wallace Gates states, “Preemption was a repudiation of the view that the government should encourage all elements wishing to acquire land to bid at land auctions. . . . It marked another step away from the early revenue policy that was to culminate in free lands in 1862.”14 The legalization of preemption through the Preemption Act did legitimize the needs of the settler but this was a vestige of a more fundamental process at work. Given the economic

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arrangements for land development and the problems therein, it was simply illogical to do anything else. A general survey of the literature on preemption shows that squatting on lands that had not yet come up for auction was an increasingly recalcitrant problem. The timely provisioning of surveys continued to be a problem especially in light of the rewards and incentives endemic to market arrangements. Roy Robbins tells us that: “The Land Commissioner pointed out (to Congress) that if surveys kept abreast of the line of settlement and there were a sufficient number of land offices, there would be no need for preemption.”15 But even after surveying took place there were problems, which led to squatting on government lands. Marion Clawson explains “There was always some interval after survey before land was actually offered for sale, and settlement took place during this period also. People took up land, cleared the forest from it, erected buildings, and grew crops, all without any legal title to the land.”16 While Treat characterizes the problem in much the same way, he extends the analysis: When lands were finally secured (from Native Americans) the pioneers demanded that the tracts be at once opened for settlement. This meant the extension of surveys, and once more Government could not keep pace with the settlers. The surveys took time and required money, and they were extended over good and bad land alike. The first comers naturally desired the choicest land. They would push a few miles further into the wilderness in order to secure a choicer location. Soon the reports of the Surveyor-General showed that millions of acres of surveyed lands remained unsold, while settlers were complaining that the surveys were not being extended rapidly enough. This was one reason for the squatting evil.17 From the perspective of the squatter it made no sense to buy either land from the speculator or inferior land from the government when it was possible to make a more sound economic decision by squatting on land not yet available for purchase. The development of transportation networks reinforced this movement because it simultaneously allowed people greater mobility to locate further west and increased outlets for agricultural surplus. Thus squatting emerged as a result of the logistical problems with surveying land in a timely fashion but also because it was sound speculative behavior on the part of the squatter. This was a behavior that simultaneously expanded the

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development of agriculture by the independent farmer, thereby reinforcing our simple agrarian predispositions. Between the period 1820 and 1841 when a general preemption act was finally passed markets expanded dramatically with the building of the Erie Canal which opened up transportation into the interior United States. The Erie Canal was completed in 1825 and by 1840 the canal boom had been so great that Chicago was linked to both the Atlantic and the Mississippi. In this way the interior grain belt was opened up to European markets and the mobility of the country greatly increased. Moreover, the power of steam took hold, furthering transportation with the expansion of the railroads. The expansion of transportation networks greatly enhanced the expansion of markets thereby increasing the possibilities for speculation to pay off. Squatters were speculating too, on the probability that the future would bring them prosperity. And as the pace of market expansion increased so did the possibilities for capitalizing on speculation. This expansion provided economic opportunity, and it promoted squatting, a force the government simply could not control. Clearly, the government had certain ambivalence about preemption because for years it passed preemption on a case-by-case basis but hesitated to pass a general act. In the early nineteenth century it was common for individuals to petition Congress for preemption. Congress responded to these petitions with the following statement: “granting the indulgence prayed for would operate as an encouragement to intrusions on public lands, and would be an unjustifiable sacrifice of the public interest.”18 Clawson identifies the dilemma this presented the government when he asks the question: “How shall we regard these people: as trespassers, which legally they were, liable to all the penalties imposed on trespassers in densely settled areas; or as noble pioneers, opening up the land to settlement so that others could follow more safely—which they also sometimes were?”19 Indeed early on squatters did present government with a dilemma. The government’s problems with squatters were complicated. First, and especially in the early years of the Land Ordinance, it inflamed antagonisms with the Native Americans with whom the government was actively trying to negotiate treaties. This problem initially led the government to forcibly remove settlers and, aside from Clawson’s claim that one of the virtues of squatters was to provide “a buffer against the Indian,” it is more likely the government found squatting on Indian lands created more problems then benefits.20 Second, squatting frustrated the attempt by the government to provide clear titles, and, perhaps more importantly, it was a general affront to the power of the government to enforce a respect for the institutions of

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property ownership and the right of the government to enforce those rights. Frederick Jackson Turner says of the frontiersman or pioneer, many of whom were squatters, “Along with individualism, self reliance, and equality, went antagonism to the restraints of government.”21 Thus there was a general fear that sanctioning preemption was akin to sanctioning lawlessness. Moreover, it created problems for the government to dispose of the less desirable lands that had not been sold in public auction as squatters moved onto better lands, which had not been opened for sale. This exacerbated the administrative problems for the Government Land Office (GLO) because it put increased pressure to survey more land and open additional land offices further and further west before previously surveyed lands were sold. For all these reasons the government was initially reluctant to grant preemption. In the end, the scales were tipped in favor of preemption. Clawson tells us: “First in special laws, after 1840 in general laws, the virtues of the illegal occupier were placed in higher regard than his sins.”22 It wasn’t so much a matter of recognizing the virtues of the settler that tipped the scales in favor of preemption. The rapid expansion of transportation networks and markets that provided a counterbalance to overcapitalization, which had plagued the early period of land policy, created a new set of conditions. Squatting now enhanced the possibilities for speculation to pay off as it pushed the margins of settlement further west. These economic benefits eclipsed the modest benefit of immediate revenue generation in importance. More importantly, because of the nature of capturing economic rewards, squatting simply could not be stopped and any attempt to do so would have placed the government in the untenable position of appearing to be against the settler who was an essential actor in the dynamic of economic expansion. Finally, because the government was granting relief to settlers and speculators who were not able to pay off land loans at the time, it was simply inconsistent to give relief for credit that had been extended yet not grant preemption. Relief acts were passed even after the system of government credit was abolished in 1820. Thus, what appeared to be intentional and accommodating to the building of agrarian society and “for the settler” was in fact the inevitable accommodation to the evolution of nineteenth-century market capitalism where squatting simply made good economic sense and could not be effectively controlled with the enhanced possibilities for speculation to pay off for both the speculator and the settler. In this period, tremendous market expansion went hand in hand with preemption.23 Preemption was the outcome of a complicated and dynamic institutional dance; it accommodated both the expanding market economy and extended and reinforced the agrarian ideal.

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Period III, 1841–1862 The Homestead Act was finally passed in 1862; Congress had discussed it extensively since the passage of the Preemption Act. The basic provisions of the Homestead Act were to give 160 acres of land to individuals who were heads of households or 21 years of age.24 The method of transfer stipulated that individuals who had entered on a homestead were required to pay a few nominal fees and live on the land and cultivate it for five years, at which time title would be transferred to them. After six months of residency, homesteaders could buy their homestead outright. More importantly, once they gained title to the land they could do whatever they wanted with it—which, of course, included selling it. Cash sales of government lands continued after the passage of the Homestead Act and so did preemption. Land not yet surveyed was not open to homesteading, but it was open to preemption. The most common source of misunderstanding with regard to the Homestead Act is to view it as a fundamental break with the past and the victory of the settler over the speculator. This view ignores much of the institutional and material dynamic operating at the time, which gave land a particular life that was quite independent of the initial method of transfer. Under these institutional arrangements, land would function as fully alienated property, in the context of the evolving market economy, where exchange value was quickly replacing use value. Thus, the economic role of land acquired under the Homestead Act was precisely the same as for land acquired through cash sales, preemption, and grants to railroads. In this sense the Homestead Act did nothing to change the economic bedrock of land policy. Moreover, the economic motivations for acquiring homesteaded land were precisely the same as for other land transfers. In these fundamental ways the Homestead Act was entirely consistent with previous land policy and a logical extension of the forces at play. The work of the eminent land policy historian Paul Wallace Gates offers an example of the tendency to view the Homestead Act as a break with the past. Gates begins his discussion of the Homestead Act with the following statement: The Homestead Act of 1862 is one of the most important laws which have been enacted in the history of this country, but its significance has been distorted and grossly misinterpreted. An important misconception concerning the Homestead Act is that its adoption marked a more or less complete break with the past,

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in that the lands which previously had been considered as a source of revenue were now to be given free to settlers. As part of this interpretation it is held that direct land sales virtually ceased except for transactions under the Preemption Law, the commutations clause of the Homestead Act, the Timber and Stone Act, and the Desert Land Act.25 Gates then argues that the Homestead Act, and its successors, was one of the many ways in which the government dispensed with land. More specifically, he points out that all of the mechanisms for the dispensing of land that predated the Homestead Act; for example, granting lands to railroads and states, as well as direct government land sales, and so forth, were left in place after the passage of the Homestead Act.26 Gates is correct that it was one of the many ways of dispensing land, but the implicit message in his statement is that had this not been the case; that is, had the other ways of conveying land been abandoned with the enactment of the Homestead Act the act would indeed have marked a fundamental break with past policies. This is simply not true. Gates’ problematic assessment of what happened with the passage of the Homestead Act is summarized in the following statement: “Free-land policy as embodied in the Homestead Law was then grafted upon a land system to which it was ill-fated and incongruous.”27,28 The fact is there was nothing incongruous about it. Homesteaded land, like all other government land transferred to private ownership was integrated into the system of land ownership with exactly the same status as other land; that is, on the basis of fee-simple ownership. Undoubtedly, distributional implications in the initial method of transfer were present, but the Homestead Act was neither ill fated nor incongruous. It was entirely consistent with the forces at play, not at odds with them. This aside, even if the Homestead Act had replaced all other types of land dispensation it would not have ultimately marked the victory of the settler over the speculator and the creation of an agrarian society of small independent farmers. Raw economic forces would, over time, work against this idyllic agrarian outcome. The processes of speculation and concentration of land holdings would have proceeded because speculation and concentration of economic resources, including land, were a logical part of the process of tapping the potential for capitalization, a necessary component for accumulation, expansion, and economic survival. Moreover, land speculation was not limited to the so-called speculator; the “big guy” trying to capitalize at the expense of the “little guy.” Economic historians understand this fact very well. Speculation

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had never been the exclusive domain of the speculator, and agrarian man, the settler, had always participated in this aspect of the market economy. The role of the settler in this respect was limited by his modest economic circumstances giving the impression of something altogether different. Nonetheless, even in its limitation, it was a part of the same economic imperative. Although the rhetoric of the Homestead Act implied the policy was intended to accommodate and serve the small farmer it would be more accurate to say it served the dynamic of economic development. The settlement and hard work of the noble farmer was involved in this process and a key player in agricultural development over an extended period of time. Speculation and homesteading were mutually reinforcing. Moreover, the selfsufficiency of the farmer continued to be a stabilizing response to indifferent market forces and moderated their volatility. The Homestead Act conceded a rhetorical recognition to agrarian man, and in its actually workings reinforced this image, all the while fully accommodating the raw economic dynamic at work. In this way, the Homestead Act summoned the agrarian ghosts of the past and directed them in the service of the future and in doing so reinforced both the agrarian ideal as well as the forces of economic expansion and the maturation of the market economy. The evolution of the market economy during the nineteenth century was also accompanied by the growth of industrial centers and a traditional working class; increasingly the country became less agrarian. In the growing industrial centers and a traditional working class; more obvious class tensions were mounting exacerbated by the cyclical nature of the economy and the more obvious concentration of economic power. George Henry Evans, leader of the New York Workingmen’s Party, advocated passage of the Homestead Act as a way to counteract the unemployment in the industrial centers and Horace Greeley helped to incorporate this demand into the Republican platform. Thus, the passage of the Homestead Act has been viewed as a “safety valve.” Henry Nash Smith sums up this trend: But by the 1830s a new calculus and new symbols were required to interpret the new West that was being created by forces wholly foreign to the agrarian assumptions. The greatest of the new forces was the technological revolution which set loose the power of steam—in boats on the western waters, somewhat later in railways, and eventually in factories. Steam power hastened the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture, caused the accumulation of capital in units of unprecedented size . . . and

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created new cities on a metropolitan scale like Cleveland and Chicago. These changes spelled the end of the simple economy which in the first stages of settlement had corresponded at least approximately to the agrarian ideal.29 The point here is not to demonstrate that the unemployed from the cities actually took up homesteads. Historians have already argued persuasively that they did not. For example, Fred A. Shannon argues against the notion that the Homestead Act actually decreased the unemployment or economic strife in the industrial centers. To the contrary, he demonstrates that the unemployed from the industrial centers did not have the skills or resources necessary to homestead and did not take advantage of the homestead acts. Smith also argues against the notion that the Homestead Act actually served to provide industrial workers with economic opportunity. But he poses the more important question when he asks how we account for the universal acceptance of the safety valve theory in the nineteenth century if it was false. He answers the question in this way: “The doctrine of the safety valve was an imaginative construction which masked poverty and industrial strife with the pleasing suggestion that a beneficent nature . . . would solve the new problems of industrialism. . . . [T]he safety valve theory was the form taken by the myth on the plane of economic analysis.”30 Smith is absolutely correct. The use of the Homestead Act as a “safety valve” is a measure of the versatility of the agrarian ethos as a cultural impulse directed toward mitigating raw market forces. The Homestead Act served to assuage a multitude of anxieties arising out of our economic arrangements and it reinforced the belief that we would safely guide the market economy on a more desirable course if we continued to adhere to our simple agrarian roots. In this way the light of the agrarian ideal burned brightly, all the while the economic forces at hand worked at some level to extinguish it. The Homestead Act mollified tensions at a time when urban growth, manufacturing, and class conflict were increasing. There was enough free country left, marginal, as it might have been, to tap the agrarian sentiments and help quell class tensions mounting in manufacturing. In this sense it mattered little whether industrial workers actually took up homesteads.31 The Homestead Act also accommodated market expansion in less significant ways. Unlike preemption, it was initially only open to land that had been surveyed thereby providing a more timely connection between clear titles and settlement, which facilitated the purely logistical problems confronting the GLO as it tried to disseminate clear titles to land. Problems confronting the

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government were exacerbated by the presence of Native Americans conflicts. D.W. Allen has argued that the method of dispensation of land changed with the Homestead Act because the government found it beneficial to use it as a way to lower the military costs of enforcing disputed property rights with Native Americans.32 Settlement in contested areas would do the job for them. Perhaps more importantly, because the government had never initiated a systematic process of classifying lands, and because land of uncertain economic value often remained unsold, especially land far from transportation or with marginal agricultural prospects, free land pushed the margins of agricultural settlement onto more marginal land de facto increasing land values on less marginal land. Much of government land available for private ownership remained unsold and unsettled during the mid-nineteenth century. The government had initially responded to the issue of unsold land with the Graduation Act of 1854. Previous to the enactment of the Graduation Act, all government land had been auctioned using the same minimum price. Many were opposed to the Graduation Act, which varied the minimum price inversely with the length of time the land had been on the market, because they argued that much land would be given away for a pittance to speculators. But it is likely that the more salient problem with the Graduation Act was that it encouraged speculation without settlement to offset it, which only further aggravated excess supply in land markets and diminished the possibilities for a return to speculation. Thus, the Homestead Act also was used as a buffer against these tendencies. It is clear that the adoption of the Homestead Act grew out of the exigencies of nineteenth-century economic development and constituted neither a fundamental break with the past nor the victory of the settler over the speculator. On the face of it, the provisions of the Homestead Act seemed to reassert the “agrarian ideal” as the antidote to speculation. Paul Wallace Gates articulates this common misinterpretation when he describes the philosophy of the movement for free land: “Government had an obligation to withhold the public lands for actual settlers only and should [have] freely grant them the land instead of allowing it to be monopolized by capitalists who bought it, not for development, but for resale to the land hungry.”33,34 As history would show there was no antidote to speculation, which was an unequivocal part of the market economy as it played out on the land. Speculation and settlement were part of the same dance and both settlers and speculators were involved in speculation.

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According to Smith, “One of the most significant facts of American intellectual history is . . . the astonishing longevity of the agrarian ideal as the accepted view of Western society.”35 Indeed, Smith points out that long after the economy matured, changing the character of the economy, we continued to believe in the agrarian ideal. It survived because through the element of self sufficiency and hard work embodied in the daily life of the farmer and his modest participation in speculation the noble farmer accommodated the economic forces at hand all the while simultaneously reinforcing the agrarian ideal. Although he was not an end unto himself, he appeared so. Furthermore, the promise of land assuaged the anxieties and fears of the working class who could imagine that land offered potential escape from the drudgery of wage labor. Thus, the Homestead Act extended the agrarian ideal and reinforced the agrarian ethos more broadly construed, giving us the sense that there existed an antidote to the less desirable outcomes of the market economy. In summary, it is important to interpret the history of early nineteenthcentury land policy in the context of a co-evolutionary dance of the agrarian ideal/ethos and a maturing market economy. Both revenue generation versus settlement, and speculation versus settlement, are specious categories, which confuse rather than illuminate understanding of the underlying forces and dynamics at work. The overarching dynamic was one of economic development, which would be dictated by the interaction of foundational land institutions and the particular historical moment. Amid these changing circumstances, settlement and self-sufficiency accommodated the forces at play, all the while reinforcing simplistic and familiar agrarian sentiments that soothed our discomfort with the unwieldy forces at hand. Speculation was an integral part of the extension and expansion of the market and was used by both the speculator and the settler depending on the circumstances. Thus, land policy during this period both reinforced agrarian sentiments and accommodated the underlying economic dynamic. Wearing an agrarian cloak, government land policies were tapped in the service of economic development based on market capitalism. In this way, habits of thought from the past were reinforced and carried forward in the shadow of economic forces at hand, forces that were increasingly indifferent to the settlement of small independent farmers.

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The Dialectics of Government Land Policies on Arid Land Gradually, I began to see that many critical issues in the West are dominated by the thinking of another century . . . —Charles F. Wilkinson, Crossing the Next Meridian

A

rid land presented a unique set of material conditions for agricultural development. Land west of the one-hundredth meridian did not have sufficient rainfall to guarantee agricultural success without irrigation. Furthermore, much of the land in Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, and Montana has an elevation of more than 6,000 feet, thereby creating a very attenuated growing season. Even with adequate water, the variety of harvestable crops is limited to hay and alfalfa. Without water, agricultural success is even more uncertain and is limited to pasturage and the growing of native plants and hardy exotics adapted to extreme aridity. Add to this the uncertainty of precipitation, which varies from year to year and from place to place and the result is an increased possibility that any individual homesteader might fail.1 Governmental land policies formulated for farmers east of the Mississippi River were challenged by the agricultural development of the arid West. Nonetheless the co-evolution of market capitalism and the agrarian ethos continued even in light of the unique material conditions presented by arid land. Agrarian man was remolded and a different variant of agricultural development emerged. Purely laissez-faire approaches to the use of land and water proved inadequate for the economic development of the arid West where systematic government intervention was necessary. Nevertheless, the foundational land institutions, the market economy, and the agrarian ethos remained stalwart in the face of aridity. There is no question that homesteaders were more vulnerable on arid land because of poorly articulated land and water laws and a limited ability

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to rely on self-sufficiency in the face of uncertain economic and climatic conditions. The exact needs for successful agriculture were more ambiguous than they had been in the East and this made the drama and risk of homesteading the West more pronounced. The story of my grandfather was not unusual in the sense that many homesteaders confronted impossible odds. Yet in the end, my grandfather’s brother developed a successful ranch and he was not the exception. Arid land also created conditions where the line between unadulterated speculation and the legitimate needs of agrarian man became more difficult to decipher because a viable agricultural operation required amassing very large tracts of land. Small land holdings were anathema to the creation of an economically viable agricultural unit. The necessity of access to water introduced another imperative for success or failure that broadened and reinforced the processes of speculation. Aridity thereby introduced new material circumstances that encouraged speculation and concentration of land holdings, which were natural corollaries in the evolution of market capitalism. In the end, the image of agrarian man was reinvented on arid land as he became the western rancher, an enigmatic character, capitalist, and hard-working noble “rancher” at the same time. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of the arid West is that while the unadulterated forces of the market economy were more fully exposed and reinforced, arid land simultaneously demanded an increased need for government management and mediation. The extended hand of the government provided a necessary response to the economic and material forces at play and in so doing reinforced a sense that economic development could be orchestrated while conserving our basic institutional arrangements as they applied to land. In these ways, both government intervention and the enigmatic western rancher embody the co-evolution of the agrarian ethos and the market economy as they encountered arid land. These foundational land institutions were altered but not negated by the challenges of the interior West. Historians of land policy have been somewhat confused about the processes at work on arid land. For example, the work of Paul Wallace Gates is replete with detailed historical accounts of the ways in which greed, speculation, monopolization, fraud, and the inability to fully understand the limitations of aridity drove a wedge between the stated purpose and outcome of land polices in the West.2 Although it is technically true that the rhetoric and outcome of land policy diverged somewhat on arid land, Gates and other land historians attribute this tension to the contamination of land policy by these factors as if land policy existed in a vacuum disconnected from a broader economic context. The settlement of arid land necessarily reinforced

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those aspects of market capitalism with which people were uncomfortable; specifically, speculation, accumulation, and rent-seeking behavior, traits encouraged by the imperatives imposed by aridity for successful agricultural development. Although the purpose of the Homestead Act and original land policies was to limit development to 160 acres, the demands of arid lands made it necessary to amass large tracts of land, and this imperative could not be disconnected from speculation. Without the security of self-sufficiency, western homesteaders and ranchers were more dependent on economic decision making and taking advantage of opportunities that came their way making them appear more capitalistic. Yet the arid West did not eclipse either the market economy or the agrarian ethos; it altered and extended them. In this way, the agricultural development of the arid West is testament to the adaptability and co-evolution of foundational land institutions in light of the new material circumstances presented by aridity.

John Wesley Powell and Western Land Policy John Wesley Powell has been immortalized for his understanding of the imperative that aridity placed on the agricultural development of the arid West. Historian Donald Worster claims that “[F]rom 1869 to 1881 Powell kept on striving for that comprehensive scientific vision of the West and eventually found it. . . . What made this region strikingly different from the eastern part of the country . . . was the aridity.”3 Wallace Stegner, in his introduction to Powell’s report on arid land in the West, reinforces this view, “When much of the country, and nearly all of the West, had elected to overlook the fact, or deny it, he [Powell] saw the West as arid land.” Stegner continues: “If one really believed in the small, free hold system, and Powell did, it was time to try saving the free holder from a body of land law that was doing him in.”4 Although Worster and Stegner are correct that Powell clearly understood aridity and the problems it created for the small free-holder, they don’t fully appreciate the significance of what Powell did not understand. Powell mistook the rhetoric of land policy for its purpose. Moreover, he presumed that it was possible to create an agrarian society of small landowning farmers or ranchers on arid land, without altering the economic foundations of the free-hold system. In these ways, he did not fully understand the market forces at play. Powell presented his “blueprint” for assuring success of the small farmer or rancher and the reasonable and sustainable use of the land in 1879 when he submitted his Report on the Arid Region of the United States to Congress.

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He extended this blueprint in later decades as head of the U.S. Geological Survey and a participant in the Irrigation Congresses in the 1890s. For assuring agricultural success to those taking up lands in the West, Powell saw the necessity of classifying lands according to whether they were pasturage, timber, or irrigable. He advocated that drainages be settled in a manner that would allow the greatest number of small farmers to succeed, and that they have sufficient capital to build reservoirs to tap the water resources of larger rivers to allow irrigation and the best use of land given the water. Established “commonwealths” would be responsible for the management of watersheds and rangeland. Worster describes clearly what we can call Powell’s socioeconomic belief system: “He believed enthusiastically in the idea of progress and he wanted to see progress come westward. . . . As a means to progress, he accepted the private business corporation, along with modern technology, the industrial revolution, and science. But he did not want to see concentrated private interests completely rule the West. . . . Powell wanted to see the West make progress in a different direction, toward a future securely in the hands of a self-governing agrarian population, men and women who were progressive in their thinking but not so intensely capitalistic in their motives.”5 Powell did not think his version of the agrarian ideal was impossible on arid land. And it wasn’t, but creating Powell’s idealized society would have been a more completely managed affair than he understood. Quite simply, it would have required a constant and sustained battle against the forces of market capitalism. Powell’s was a utopian vision inherited from that bygone era of petty commodity production that had little to do with the alignment of institutional and material forces in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a vision that could only be maintained with significant government control. It was antithetical to the forces of economic expansion and consolidation at work at that time, forces that were encouraged by agricultural development of arid land. Although Powell questioned the raw capitalistic motives of land ownership and advocated a less laissez-faire orientation to land policy, he never questioned the underlying economic bedrock of those policies, which made the tendencies and outcomes inevitable. Apparently he did not understand that a belief in progress, technology, and the basic institutions of a market economy would in the end be antithetical to an idyllic agrarian society of small ranchers and farmers in the West. Moreover, his belief in an enlightened capitalism where people were sensitive to the limitations of the land, concerned about community, and motivated to engage in cooperative economic behavior

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was quite naive. The entire institutional framework of a market economy engenders the opposite; that is, individualism not cooperation, motivation for profit and accumulation, rent-seeking behavior, and alienation from the land rather than sensitivity to it. Veblen captures this dynamic very well when he says, “The farm population . . . has nowhere and at no time been actuated by a spirit of community interest in dealing with any of their material concerns. . . . They have habitually “carried” valuable real estate at the same time that they have worked the soil of so much of their land. . . . They have been cultivators of the main chance as well as of the fertile soil.”6 Powell may have understood the aridity of the West and the problems it created for the establishment of an agrarian population of small independent farmers/ranchers, but he was not clear about the dynamic and evolution of the market economy. Aridity was important in defining a different material reality for the agrarian development of the West. In the end, the institutional dance of the agrarian ethos and market capitalism that defined the agricultural development of the West would not match that envisioned by Powell.

The Dynamics of Land Policy West of the One-Hundredth Meridian Uncertainty of agricultural potential was the salient condition that influenced the dynamics of U.S. policy for lands west of the one-hundredth meridian. Over time, land policy adjusted to these new material conditions in a way that allowed for agricultural development west of the one-hundredth meridian while retaining a semblance of simple agrarian flavor. The history and dynamic of land policy in the arid West can be characterized as follows: To be agriculturally useful, western land required access to water. In order to accommodate the need for water in the nineteenth-century laissez-faire environment, policies were enacted that promoted an individualistic approach to the development of water resources. But, as my grandfather’s experience demonstrated, this approach never fully resolved the disjunction between water and land. In many places, more dramatic government reclamation and management was sought to bring water to land. Accommodation also was needed to allow for the amassing of parcels of various sizes; for example, ranching and dry farming required extensive land holdings larger than 160 acres. It was impossible to adhere to the agrarian specifications established for the East and meet the needs of agricultural development in the West. But opening the door for access to larger parcels for legitimate agricultural

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purposes by mixing and matching policies simultaneously accelerated and reinforced the processes of monopolization, speculation, and fraud.

Arid Land and the Disjunction of Water and Land The disjunction of land and water make no sense from the perspective of agricultural development of arid land. However, when settlement extended into arid lands this is precisely the oddity that existed. Theoretically the government had a number of options for water development. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, for either ideological or practical reasons, government was not prepared to create a bureaucratic agency, which systematically tied land to water. Substitution of government bureaucracy for individual effort was antithetical to the principles of laissez-faire capitalism whose object was to give people access to property and let the magic of self-interest weave a cloak of prosperity. For this reason, the government initially looked at water as another resource, like land, to be developed through individual incentive and private ownership. Agriculture simply took its queue from water development for mineral extraction. Charles Wilkinson explains how western water law developed: “Miners used a simple, primitive rule of capture for water: “first in time, first in right.” . . . After the initial appropriation, the water right, like a mining claim, could be leased or sold. It was property—from the very moment it was first put to use.”7 Eventually, the doctrine of prior appropriations came to be embodied in state agencies. Thus, the federal government administered the dispensation of land and the state governments set about administering the dispensation of water. In 1890, Elwood Mead drafted Wyoming’s “water constitution” and other western states followed. Wilkinson elaborates on the relationship between these state agencies and the principles of laissez-faire: [W]estern water agencies were unique and, by today’s lights, curious institutions. . . . [T]his government overlay was in no remote sense a regulatory system. The statutes setting up the water agencies made essentially no change in the underlying body of law. The new agencies existed solely for the purposes of issuing water rights according to the established laissez-faire doctrine and, after issuance, for enforcing the rights of record. . . . Despite code provisions allowing the state engineer to deny applications on

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the basis of the public interest . . . state engineers in fact simply rubber-stamped all appropriations.8 State agencies simply defined water as private property according to the first in time first in right principle. This institutional arrangement, where water was allocated by the state government and land by the federal government, made for a poorly articulated arrangement between land and water. This arrangement also increased the risk for individuals with government land claims. Furthermore, the problem of creating an agrarian society of small independent farmers, given the particular course of water development in the West, was exacerbated by water ownership being monopolized, controlled and speculated upon. Ranchers could attain the use of undeeded grazing land to which they held water rights. The Desert Land Act (DLA) of 1877 is an embodiment of this laissezfaire approach to the development of water resources. Under the Act, 640 acres could be obtained by paying twenty-five cents per acre when they took out a claim and an additional one-dollar per acre after three years. Desert land filings could be made on land that was as yet unsurveyed and did not require residence. The Act specified that land should be taken out in compact form and was to be irrigated. As John Ganoe points out, the provisions were loosely formulated and enforced and defined reclamation in vague terms: “to make it an object for people to occupy the land.”9 He explains further, “Strictly speaking the Desert Land Act made no provision for reclamation except by individual effort.”10 Although the DLA ostensibly required that land be irrigated, the act itself provided neither economic support to develop water resources nor any institutional structure to connect land and water. This was left entirely up to the individual. Before 1890 water rights were adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, creating tremendous problems for acquiring water. After 1890 one had to maneuver his way through the morass of two governmental agencies in order to meet the vague requirements of the act and get clear rights to water. But because of the capital-intensive nature of reclamation most individuals simply lacked the money to fully develop the water resources. Under these circumstances it isn’t surprising that provisions of the DLA were loosely enforced, and resultant deviated from its stated purpose. The act encouraged fraud, speculation, and monopolization of land with only minimal reclamation. Worster elaborates on the act and its reclamation history: “Simply handing a settler, or purported settler, a square mile of desert

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with the requirement that he bring water to it, as the Desert Land Act did, was a snare and a delusion. It was mainly cattlemen who took advantage of that laissez-faire policy, along with speculators who accumulated vast tracts under the act and held them for future sale.”11 Although the DLA did not create a society of small yeoman farmers, it did build legitimate and viable ranching operations. Ranchers could take out a claim, which gave them the use of the land for twenty-five cents per acre for three years, often with no intention of “proving up” but merely for the use of the land in the short run. The data on the DLA reveal that the rate of “proving up” was low. From 1877 to 1925 only 29 percent of original DLA entries went to final patent.12 Furthermore, as explained earlier, when individuals “proved up,” they could often control contiguous land without owning it if they controlled access to water. This practice allowed for the monopolization of land beyond what official statistics reveal and extended access to land for grazing. Revisions to the DLA of 1877 in the General Revision Act (GRA) of 1891 did little to change this underlying dynamic despite the rhetoric that these revisions were directed at getting rid of fraud, speculation, and monopolization and were intended to promote the settlement of the small farmer by promoting reclamation and extended access to land for grazing. After 1891 and the passage of the GRA, acreage was reduced to 320 acres, state residency was required, and regulations for water development were more stringent. Claimants had to spend three dollars per acre after three years and were required to submit irrigation proposals with their land filings. But these revisions to connect land and water more closely did little to change the incentives for ranchers and or speculators to use the act for purely speculative purposes. Nor did it provide the resources needed by individuals to carry out water development. The GLO did not have the resources to enforce the letter of the law and little changed in the actual workings of the DLA. Agricultural development did not match the rhetoric of the DLA, but agricultural development proceeded nonetheless. By the 1890s, the government was becoming aware that it would have to be more systematically involved in reclamation. Private irrigation development had been disastrous through the provisions of the DLA and the formation of private irrigation companies. Gates observes that “Most private irrigation projects early fell into difficulties. . . . Ninety percent of the private irrigation companies were in or near bankruptcy by 1902.”13 The issues surrounding government reclamation have been extensively and capably analyzed by Gates, Worster, and Marc Reisner, to name but a few. My point here is

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that government involvement in reclamation was motivated by the failure of private irrigation efforts. The government realized that without reclamation, agricultural development would be limited. Interestingly, the rhetoric surrounding government reclamation was couched in terms of an idyllic society of small farmers thereby using a familiar agrarian ideal to justify and explain far-reaching government involvement. In his book Conquest of Arid America, William Smythe, one of the foremost spokespersons for government reclamation, extolled the virtues of irrigation in this respect. The book was written in the 1890s, at the height of the push for irrigation in the West. In 1905, after the Reclamation Act of 1902 had been passed, Smythe wrote in the foreword to the second edition of the book: This book is for all the optimistic Americans, but especially, it is for those who have the courage of their optimism—for the homeseekers who, under the leadership of the paternal Nation, are to grapple with the desert, translate its gray barrenness into green fields and gardens, banish its silence with the laughter of children. This is the breed of men who make the Republic possible, who keep the lamp of faith burning through the night of corrupt commercialism.”14 We know now that government sponsored reclamation did not create a Jeffersonian society of small farmers, but it did allow for the agrarian development of the West to proceed along lines roughly consistent with foundational land institutions. Government sponsored reclamation thereby exemplified the extension of the agrarian ethos, broadly construed, and the way in which the dance of the agrarian ethos and the market economy co-evolved when confronted with the material circumstances presented by aridity.

Flexibility in the Face of Aridity Adapting land policy to western conditions necessitated that individuals have the flexibility to create farms or ranches of varying size, but the exact size of plots needed was unclear. When the government allowed larger acquisitions of land it simultaneously pandered to the speculative and monopolistic tendencies inherent in the economic processes that underlay land policy. The dissonance created by these conflicting outcomes was moderated by retaining simple agrarian rhetoric in any single land policy yet enacting additional policies,

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which could be accessed in additive fashion to allow for the flexibility needed to orchestrate a successful agricultural unit. Gates has previously demonstrated that farms became progressively larger as one moved westward because of the flexibility provided by the numerous land polices.15 The proliferation of land acts in the West must be seen in this context. The mix of land policies enacted during the mid- to late-nineteenth century included but was not limited to the following: The Preemption Act was passed in 1841 and gave individuals the right to buy 160 acres of unsurveyed land they had worked. The Homestead Act (1862) granted individuals 160 acres of land if they lived on the land and successfully cultivated it for five years. Individuals could commute a Homestead after six months of residency for a cash payment. The Timber Culture Act was passed in 1873 and provided claimants 160 acres with the provision that they plant trees within ten years on forty acres. Later the acreage required for tree planting was reduced to ten acres and the number of years to eight. The purpose of the act was to grow trees for fencing and building material and to increase rainfall under the questionable notion that rain follows the plow. The specifics of the DLA (1877) have been previously discussed. The ability to mix and match land policies created the opportunity to obtain larger land holdings. At any one time until 1891, the Homestead Act (1862) and the Preemption Act (1842) in addition to the Timber Culture Act (1873) and the DLA (1877) were among the mix of policies one could use to obtain larger land holdings. For example, the Preemption Act was retained even after the passage of the Homestead Act. In commenting on the incorrect assessment of the Preemption Act by historians, Gates asserts: “Following the judgment of the Commissioner of the General Land Office who harped on the amount of fraud involved in preemption, they have given undo emphasis to this aspect and insufficient attention to the fact that preemption was consciously retained by Congress surely because of the greater flexibility it allowed settlers in adapting themselves to farming in the dryer portions of America.”16 He further elaborates: “Without seriously compromising themselves they could get ownership of a preemption quarter in a year, could commute a homestead entry in 6 additional months, and could make a timber culture entry for which they could easily sell a relinquishment if they needed the capital.”17 The DLA contributed to flexibility, especially important in adapting arid land to raising stock. Because no direct accommodations had been made for acquisition of grazing land until the passage of the Stock Raising Homestead Act (1916) and, later, the Taylor Grazing Act (1934), ranchers

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began monopolizing grazing lands through fraudulent use of DLA. Gates says that although the land commissioner complained of the fraudulent use, “[T] the Governors of 4 western territories—Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah—were convinced the measure was a godsend, making possible economic units of land for grazing, if not for irrigation farming. . . . Thus in Wyoming between 1878 and 1888 inclusive, the desert land entries amounted to 1,592,295 acres while the homestead entries were 287,701 acres.”18 During this time open range began to fill up and competition among ranchers and between ranchers and cattlemen and ranchers and farmers for land and water intensified. The flexibility embodied in these policies opened the floodgates to monopolization and speculation. Yet the extent of land privatized through these policies was limited; for example, by 1890, 44 percent of the land in Nebraska and 86 percent of the land in Iowa were in farms, whereas only 3 percent of the land in Wyoming, 7 percent in Colorado, and 2 percent in Montana were in farms.19 This disparity in settlement motivated the government to further revise land policies. The process of change began with the passage of the GRA of 1891 and continued with the passage of the Kincaid Act, the Enlarged Homestead Act, and the Stock Raising Homestead Act, in addition to the revisions to the Homestead Acts beginning in 1912. The GRA sought to change the DLA, which had been problematic from its inception in 1877. Not only had it not led to actual reclamation and settlement, it also promoted monopolization and speculation and control of land contiguous to desert land claims. According to Gates, Commissioner McFarland of the GLO: “reasoned that most filings had been made for speculative purposes in violation of the restrictions of the law, and complained that the lands were being held for grazing without settlement and without costing more than the original 25 cents an acre paid when the application was made. . . . It appears that few of these entries were carried to title within the 3 years allowed for making improvements.”20 Monopolization and use of land for grazing purposes, an essential ingredient to a ranching operation in many parts of the West, were somewhat indistinguishable. The changes in the DLA under the GRA did little to change this dynamic. The GRA also repealed the Preemption and Timber Culture acts. In the case of the Preemption Act the claim was that it was pandering to monopolistic elements by allowing individuals to buy land outright.21 The Timber Culture Act proved to be problematic as well. Under this Act, land often was caught in limbo, being neither private nor public property. As documented by Gates, land could be controlled for thirteen years without

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fulfilling the requirements, and neither residency nor payment of property taxes was required. This gave individuals access to land without any tax burden over an extended period of time. All of these changes embodied in the GRA passed on the heals of the populist movement, were modest attempts to control the tendency toward fraud, speculation, and monopolization, while at the same time attempting to reassert a simplistic idyllic agrarian vision. The inclination to frame land policies in agrarian language of less arid regions gave rise to overemphasizing the prospects for dry farming and underemphasizing the acreage necessary for both dry farming and stock raising. Gates characterized these changes in the GRA as follows, Instead of trying the more courageous but politically dangerous way of reforming the land system through administrative action. . . . Congress chose to remove the most criticized legislation. In doing so it eliminated much of the flexibility that had enabled persons in the High Plains to acquire control of 320 to 480 acres as conditions seemed to make necessary. . . . It was later to be charged that by making the land system more rigid through the repeal of the preemption and timber culture laws Congress made it even more necessary for ranchers and others seeking to gain ownership of economic unit to resort to fraud in a more systematic way than they had before 1891.22 Gates is absolutely correct. Although flexibility in land policy encouraged speculation and monopolization, it was absolutely essential for the agricultural development of western land and the action the government took under the GRA limited this flexibility. It isn’t clear that the “administrative action” Gates suggested as an alternative would have ultimately reformed the land system in a way that led to a different outcome unless Gates meant changing underlying economic forces at work. In time the government attempted to compensate for this lost flexibility by introducing new policies to accommodate the necessity of larger land holdings. During the early twentieth century it passed a series of land acts to fill the vacuum left by the GRA. These new polices were added to the revised DLA and the 1862 Homestead Act. The passage of the Kincaid Act, the Enlarged Homestead Act, and the Stock Raising Homestead Act as well as the revisions in the Homestead Act reinstituted flexibility in land holding.

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In 1904, the Kincaid Act was passed to facilitate settlement in northwestern Nebraska. A settler could obtain 640 acres with five years residency and one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre in improvements with the provision that the land must be unsuitable for irrigation. No commutation was allowed and if settlers had previously taken out 160-acre homesteads they could use the Kincaid Act only to make up the difference. The Kincaid Act was targeted toward livestock raising, but as Gates explains, “Kincaid Homesteaders lacking the capital for stock ranching, had turned to grain farming and soon met with disaster.”23 The Enlarged Homestead Act was passed in 1909 to settle people on nonirrigable land and was designed to promote dry farming. This Act provided 320 acres, which after five years of residence would grow something other than native grasses. One-eighth of the land had to be cultivated by the beginning of the third year. “Success of settlers on 320-acre dry farming tracks was spotty.”24 Technically speaking, the possibilities of dry farming were not well understood and so the enlarged homesteaders provided the litmus test for its applicability in semiarid plains. A favorite statement about dry farming is that it works best in wet years. The Stock Raising Homestead Act, passed in 1916, was yet another attempt to transfer land not targeted for government reclamation into private hands. The Act allowed for a settler to enter 640 acres of land that could not be irrigated. Three years of residence and improvements of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre were required. Commutation was prohibited under this Act. The intent behind the Stock Raising Homestead Act was that individuals would use the land to graze livestock, but as Gates explains: “[M]en with inadequate capital were trying to establish homesteads . . . and even sowing some wheat, as the only farming they could do since they had no the capital to buy livestock. . . . The promise of 640 acres of land [under the Stock Raising Homestead Act] wore thin . . . but still was sufficient to keep them on the land until they could gain title and sell to some rancher.”25 The Stock Raising Homestead Act provides a good example of the evolution of these policies toward a time when government management of grazing land would take hold. In the 1923 report of the GLO, the commissioner wrote: At the time when the present stock-raising homestead act was pending before Congress the proposition of establishing grazing “commons,” or districts, on the public domain in lieu of the measure under discussion was urged. . . . It was the view, however, of

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Public management would only be undertaken as a last resort. In addition to these specific acts, more general changes in the provisions of the homestead acts were implemented after 1912. The most important one involved the residency requirement, which was reduced from five to three years, but more importantly, now allowed individuals to be absent from the homestead for five continuous months of each year. By reducing residency requirement on homesteads from five to three years and allowing individuals, like my grandfather, to be gone for five continuous months of each year, this policy allowed individuals to work for wages while simultaneously trying to “prove up” on their homesteads.27 It was essential to be able to comingle homesteading with wage labor because self-sufficiency on homesteads was impossible, at least in the early years of acquisition. It was targeted at those who had taken out homesteads with the promise of government reclamation, which had not yet arrived, but it also enticed individuals to take out claims on land that was clearly marginal in providing a living. The outcome of these policies was that they extended agricultural development of arid land. In the period between 1910 and 1914 the success rate on all homesteads, which included Kincaid homesteads in Nebraska, was 40 percent. In Wyoming, between 1918 and 1920, the success rate was 42 percent. Between 1921 and 1923, 45 percent of stock raising homesteads went to final entry.28,29 Nonetheless, more homesteaders failed than succeeded at their attempts to “prove up” and gain title during this period. Of those who succeeded, many sold out once they had successfully gained title to the land. This may have been due to their inability to make living on the small plots to which they gained ownership or to the fact that they had never intended to make a living on the land in the first place, but attained it for the capital it might provide when sold. As well, substantial consolidation of land holdings took place in the western United States during the early twentieth century because large land holdings were essential for a viable agricultural operation. For example, between 1903 and 1910 in Nebraska, 9,071 final homestead entries were made but only 8,153 farms were created in the entire decade between 1900 and 1910.30 Moreover, in the decade between 1910 and 1920, Wyoming only experienced an increase of 4,761 farms despite the fact that the number of final homestead entries between 1915 and 1920 totaled 13,191.31

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In conclusion, a patchwork of policies were mixed and matched to extend basic agrarian expectations in the arid West. In the process, speculation and monopolization became increasingly difficult to distinguish from legitimate agricultural expediencies. And government management would slowly replace individualistic approaches to appropriating grazing land and implementing reclamation. Both the agrarian ethos and the market economy would change with the experience of agricultural development on arid land. Agrarian man became more obviously capitalistic, often looking more like a speculator than a noble farmer. Market capitalism became increasingly managed, an evolution essential to its success as an economic system. This co-evolution in the face of aridity is testament to both the complex process of institutional drift over time and the resilience and force of these foundational land institutions. The power of the arid West has been misunderstood. Its geological force might be timeless but in the course of the brief history explored here it is not the power of aridity that stands out, rather, it is the tenacity of our institutional fabric. What might it take to change that?

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Multidimensional Land What we call land is an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man’s institutions. To isolate it and form a market out of it was perhaps the weirdest of all undertakings of our ancestors. —Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation

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s the market economy evolved over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became increasingly evident that land policy based on an agricultural model was inadequate to coordinate the multidimensional uses of land. The diverse components of land as outlets for profit and rent could be disarticulated from one another and owned by different people, making the allocation of property rights complex and unwieldy and not amenable to a simple agrarian model. Moreover, economic imperatives of market capitalism lent themselves to excesses and indifference to the conditions of the land. Because land is, ecologically and biophysically speaking, an articulate whole, the separation of a part of the land for economic purposes might very well disrupt ecosystem health. Land is not just an amalgam of economic resources, and it does not simply perform an economic function. It has many other uses for society. Land agencies were established because of the challenges of these multidimensional aspects of land, which raw market forces did not navigate well. The Department of the Interior (DOI); the Department of Agriculture (DA); the U.S. Forest Service (USFS); the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which evolved out of the GLO; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS); and the National Park Service (NPS)—as well as the myriad of laws and regulations that govern them—were distilled out of the gumbo of multidimensional land. As the market economy expanded and matured, new governmental agencies provided the oversight for the increasingly complex problems encountered with land. These new arrangements essentially

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provided a response to the problematic aspects of the market economy as they pertained to land and in this sense should be viewed as an extension of the agrarian ethos, broadly construed, a counterbalance to raw economic forces. This ethos came to take up residence in a variety of government land agencies and the policies that defined them and in this way moves away from its more narrowly construed agricultural predecessor. Over time, as the market economy became progressively more intrusive and complex with regard to land use, these new government agencies negotiated, managed, and contained the economic forces at play. Like earlier and more narrowly defined agrarian land laws, these government agencies and policies did not fundamentally alter the underlying economic dynamic at work. Yet eventually, contradictions and limitations of public land management began to emerge especially in the post-World War II era. These problems signaled the end of an era when institutional fabric as it pertained to land could be stretched in the ways it had in the past. The ability of the agrarian ethos and the forces and imperatives of the market economy to cohabitate the same historical moment had begun to wane. Interpretations of public land and its history have tended toward two themes, both of which have failed to identify the significance of the institutional and material evolution surrounding public land. The first theme is that public land institutions, especially the USFS, exemplify the rise of conservation, and conservation should be viewed in contrast to conquest. It easily can be argued instead that conservation, especially the utilitarian variety promulgated by Gifford Pinchot, the first to head the USFS, did not stand in contrast to conquest but rather accommodated it. Rather than revolutionary, it was entirely evolutionary. Just as the New Deal and government-sponsored reclamation were natural corollaries to the expansion of the market economy, so too was utilitarian conservation. The second theme is that public land institutions moderated the plundering of resources by a few at the expense of the many, and by doing so, solved the most egregious problems of the market economy with regard to land. For example, J. Baird Callicott proposes that Pinchot “formulated a novel conservation philosophy that reflected the general tenets of the Progressive era in American history. Notoriously, the country’s vast biological capital had been plundered and squandered for the benefit, not of all its citizens, but for the profit of a few.”1 Callicott sees conservation as a way to protect the public interest from private excess. Although he correctly interpreted Pinchot, Callicott may not fully appreciate the significance of what Pinchot failed to recognize: The aberrant behavior of a few speculators and rent seekers was

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part of a much larger dynamic, a dynamic that was not fundamentally altered by the formation of public land institutions. The voice of private enterprise always has been heard with regard to the use of public land and this voice has been, and often is, indistinguishable from that of the speculators and rent seekers. In an economy characterized by the ideological predisposition to believe that private interest leads to public welfare, the distinction between the profit of the few and the benefit of the many is not culturally or economically clear-cut. More importantly, it wasn’t simply the excesses of the few that were the challenge to public land management; it was the dynamic of exponential economic growth. The creation of public land institutions did nothing to alter this dynamic. The coordination of multiple demands on lands and containing egregious ecological destruction has been the manifest challenge of public land institutions. Historically, this challenge has been coordinated by trying to give all constituents a voice, including those advocating for conservation and preservation. At best the institutions of public land, carved out of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provided a small window, mainly before World War II, where it appeared that the successful orchestration of the complexities and problems surrounding public land had been attained. This brief historical period reinforced the sense that the tensions and problems created by the force and maturation of the market economy on land could be navigated with an appropriate response. Thus, the creation and management of public land in its early stages may be seen as the extension and evolution of the agrarian ethos in light of a changing market economy. However, as the world has “filled up,” conservation and the multiple types of land use have become increasingly difficult to coordinate and the institutional dance of the agrarian ethos and the market economy has become increasingly untenable.

Forest and Watershed Land Much of the land in the eastern United States and in the mountainous regions of the West was forested. The value of the forests to the early settlers was limited because of its abundance relative to population, to poorly developed markets for wood, and to the more immediate need for cleared land for agricultural purposes. But as transportation networks developed and population increased, the value of “stumpage” increased and made forested land all the more desirable for its timber. As commercialization of timber

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increased over time, so did opportunities for speculation. But interestingly, speculation in timber did not require owning the land. Paul Wallace Gates explains that “stealing” timber on public land was well underway by the 1840s. Absentee speculators who could not watch over their property, were vulnerable to illegal encroachment by timber developers. Timber entrepreneurs also encroached on land that had not yet been put up for auction. The Lake States provide an illuminating example where white pine was harvested in this manner. Gates elaborates, “Timber stealing was rampant because there was little oversight and no punishment. Timber was often sold before land could be put up for auction.”2 By the 1880s it was apparent that white pine was being rapidly depleted in this region. This case exemplifies a broader problem. Established land laws and policies simply could not easily keep pace with the many ways the rapidly growing market economy had extended the economic uses of land. Provisions had not been made for a resource like trees as a separate entity apart from the land. Gates elaborates: “Timberlands were surveyed and offered at auction exactly like other land for $1.25 per acre.”3 Moreover, because squatting on lands not yet available for purchase had been sanctioned with the Preemption Act, a certain free-for-all quality about access to land prevailed. The lag in policy was partly the result of an inability to keep astride the rapid pace of economic development, but the entrenched western attitudes about the relationship of humans to the natural world exacerbated the slowness with which changes registered. John Locke’s natural right to property rests on the notion that the value of the natural world lies dormant without the hand of man, and the tendency to believe this may have predisposed people to discount the value of standing timber. To complicate matters further, the agrarian vision in the United States was forged in an environment where virgin forests represented a wilderness to be conquered. As Gates states: “The Western [now the Midwest] point of view about growing timber on public land was . . . that unimproved land on the edge of settlement had no value until it was improved by the labor of men.”4 During the early years of settlement of the United States, with few market outlets and the great need for agriculture, forests were a liability and not an asset to the settler; slash and burn was the method of clearing land. By the 1870s, sentiments had built sufficiently against the illegal and unsustainable harvesting of timber to force reforms in land laws. In 1878, the government enacted several pieces of legislation dealing with the use of land to harvest timber. But, as one might expect, embedded in this legislation was the mistaken belief that promoting small scale and localized use of timber would

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provide the antidote to speculation and illegal and unsustainable harvesting. Because farming required some access to timber if only for building shelters, outbuildings, fencing, and so forth, the economic interests of the timber speculators were considered at odds with providing settlers with convenient access to trees for purposes of sustaining small-scale agriculture. The Timber and Stone Act of 1878 allowed the purchase of “unoffered, unappropriated, and unreserved surveyed public lands in California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada, valuable chiefly for timber (or stone) and unfit for agriculture.” The Act limited the quantity to 160 acres at $2.50 per acre and stipulated that the land should not be used for speculation. The Act also declared “that it is ‘unlawful to cut or wantonly destroy, any timber growing on any lands of the United States . . . or remove, or cause to be removed, any timber from said public lands, with intent to export or dispose of the same.’ ”5 Clearly, the rhetoric of the Timber and Stone Act indicated that its purpose was to restrict timber operations to the realm of petty commodity production. Small timber producers could sell timber locally for development because the Act stipulated that once timber was harvested it was to be kept in the territories where it was cut. Ideally, the promotion of small business entrepreneurs would prevent big timber speculators and monopolists and railroad and steamboat owners from activities that would violate the “public trust.” Gates concludes that the Timber and Stone Act, in the end was simply “an easy way for timberlands to go into private ownership.”6 In addition to the Timber and Stone Act, The Timber Cutting Act, also passed in 1878, further sanctioned the ability to use timber for private gain legally. The act applied to western states and allowed for timber cutting to facilitate mining and agricultural development and only applied to mineral lands that could not be used for agricultural purposes.7 These changes in land laws brought more timberland into private ownership and formally acknowledged that land had multiple uses because the purpose of ownership was timber harvest. But because the laws did nothing to change the underlying economic dynamic at work, speculation and unsustainable timber harvesting proceeded much as they had before. By the latter nineteenth century there was another reason for changing land laws with regard to timber harvesting. People were gradually acknowledging that the depletion of forests would make a nonrenewable resource out of forests. Obviously, forests were a renewable resource, but in order to be renewable the rate of extraction had to be limited to the rate of regeneration. They also were beginning to understand that healthy forest ecosystems

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maintain biodiversity and watershed capacity as well as mitigate soil erosion. The problem was that the economic purpose of harvesting wood had never been about sustaining forests nor was it about broader ecological concerns. Rather it was simply a matter of making money from timber.8 The continuation of this form of laissez-faire capitalism as it applied to forestry was not viable unless suitable substitutes for wood could be found making forests irrelevant, and unless conservation of watersheds and soil, and retention of biodiversity were deemed inconsequential. Without oversight it was clear that the market economy would not account for these on its own or in a timely fashion. In economic jargon, the natural capital of the forest was being depleted. And both the Timber and Stone Act and the Timber Cutting Act, in their preoccupation with a petty commodity solution, were ineffective to counteract these tendencies. Ultimately, it became necessary to acknowledge that sustainable forestry practices and the ecological integrity of forestland would not be maintained without broader government oversight. The various commentaries of the land commissioners in the latter nineteenth century illustrate the confusion surrounding government land policy and the issue of timber. Although commissioners were aware of the ecological consequences of poor forestry practices, they tended to label these problems as aberrant speculative and monopoly behaviors. They failed to understand that speculation and the concentration of capital were logical outcomes of the market economy, and that trying to control these by creating a world of petty commodity production was a relentless uphill battle. As virgin forests rapidly disappeared and watershed degradation increased the institutional configuration surrounding forestry was rearranged to more fully confront these problems. In 1891, Section 24 of the Forest Reserve Act of the GRA was passed.9 Gates’ words about this piece of legislation are noteworthy: [The GRA] repealed the Preemption and Timber Culture Acts but without cutting off any rights already established under them even if not yet either carried to patent or applied for. . . . In addition, Congress, still troubled about prosecutions for depredations upon the public timberlands, declared that persons against whom action was taken need only offer for defense that the timber so cut was for use in the state or territory of origin for “agricultural, mining, manufacturing or domestic purposes, and had not been removed there from.” . . . It is a commentary upon the way legislation was achieved in the 19th century that in an act calculated either to

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forgive or to ease the defense of trespassers on government timberland Congress should add in the final section 24, the Forest Reservation Act, its first step in the conservation of the natural resources of the country.10 It is not merely a commentary on the way legislation was achieved but more importantly reflects the complexity and dynamic of institutional change. Conservation, in the sense of the Forest Reservation Act, was never intended to alter the economic impulse of the time. Rather, the intent was more modest, simply to smooth out the rough edges and provide a countermovement to the forces at hand. Seen in this light, the addition of the Forest Reservation Act to the other provisions of the GRA doesn’t seem out of line or contradictory. According to Gates, by the end of the nineteenth century the government had also set aside a substantial amount of land because of its natural beauty and that “Together with the adoption of the Forest Reservation Act they mark a turning point in public land policy.”11 These changes both do and don’t mark a turning point. The changes do acknowledge the need to rein in the forces of capital accumulation as they impinged on the forest ecology. Were it not for the creation of the forest preserves, the virgin forests of the United States might have disappeared completely and brought ecological ruin to many watersheds. In the end, this surely would have undermined the economy. But the Forest Reservation Act and the creation of the NPS did nothing to fundamentally change the basic economic forces at work. Some of the more egregious ecological infractions would be contained, but the sum of all demands and users would increase. Management of public land would become increasingly unwieldy as the unaltered dynamic of economic growth continued over the course of the twentieth century and with it the multiple demands on public land. In 1897, the Organic Act was added to the GRA. Charles Wilkinson refers to it as the “basic charter of the Forest Service for almost 80 years.”12 The Organic Act provided the necessary funding to manage the forest preserves. It also specified management tasks for foresters to protect against fire, sell timber rights, and generally to regulate the multiple uses of the preserves. Finally with the passage of the Transfer Act of 1905 the Forest Service came to reside in the DA with Pinchot as its head. Pinchot expanded the reserve holdings for watershed protection and moved to regulate grazing on forestland as well. In 1911, the Forest Purchase Act was passed, allowing for the purchase of land in forests specifically for watershed protec-

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tion. Thus, well before the post-World War II boom the ideal of multiple land use, including conservation, had been institutionally established and for this brief historical moment this arrangement seemed to accommodate and manage the needs of the constituents of public land use while assuring some basic conservation. None of this was in conflict with the sanctity of foundational land institutions.

Land Without Trees Much of public land in the West was arid and not forested, and, furthermore, it was ill adapted for a simple agrarian outcome. Any drive across Wyoming on Interstate 80 leaves no question about why that is the case. Lack of water, high altitude, and a short growing season make the sagebrush steppe, although a rich habitat for wildlife, appear as a desolate land for those with agrarian dreams. Although the agricultural development of arid land has already been discussed, it is instructive to review and extend some of the more salient points. The outcome of land policy on arid land was unique. On the one hand, land became concentrated into large land holdings, in part, because viable agricultural ranching required more than 160 acres in arid country, and land policies accommodated the need for individuals to acquire additional holdings in various ways. Obviously, the line between what was necessary for economic purposes and what was a matter of simple greed was not easily discernable, and speculation advanced full throttle. The rancher simultaneously became the incarnation of agrarian man on arid land and, in some cases, the equivalent of a feudal land baron as well. Government oversight of reclamation became increasingly necessary. Private ownership of some arid land, without trees and immediate access to water, was not desirable although it wasn’t without some economic benefit. Ranchers in the West often used land that was not owned to expand their grazing land. Such use of land without ownership was economically superior to ownership because tax burdens and the cost of purchasing and fencing could be avoided for the vast tracks of land necessary for grazing cattle and sheep. In the West, stockmen had a tradition of using much of the unsettled public land as a grazing commons during the mid- to latenineteenth century. Ranchers and stockmen who had grazed their stock on arid rangeland claimed that the Stock Raising and Enlarged Homestead Acts were breaking

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up the range. There was some truth to their concerns. The dissemination of land into private ownership with the Enlarged Homestead and Stock Raising Homestead Acts had actually resulted in the short grass prairie being plowed up to dry farm wheat, which was a failure in any but infrequent “wet” years. The result was great ecological degradation of land. In the end, many homesteaders simply were not successful in proving up, and a significant amount of land in the western United States reverted back to the public trust. Additionally, some land was so marginal it wasn’t homesteaded in the first place, even for dry farming. In summary, the collective outcome of these disparate factors was that much of the arid western land was not successfully disseminated into private ownership although it was used for grazing purposes. Left without oversight and property specifications, fragile arid land was easily overgrazed. Ironically, conservation and the interests of the larger ranchers converged in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West: Establishing grazing districts and grazing leases could contain the “tragedy of the commons.” With the increased demand for rangeland, it was necessary to find a way to limit access. If ranchers could obtain grazing rights, they would be able to continue to access public land for only a very minimal fee, thereby subsidizing their ranching operations with large stretches of public land. Unquestionably, the interests of large and powerful ranchers were best served. Governmentsponsored leasing seemed the best option because individual ranchers were not inclined to buy the land. The idea and possibility of the government managing this land and establishing grazing districts was heavily debated during the early twentieth century. Clearly, the precedent for managing public land already had been established on the forest preserves where grazing leases already were regulated. But the high desert and plains did not ultimately come under the jurisdiction of the USFS, because the land was essentially treeless but also as a result of political expediency. The USFS tended to be more conservative in its management of grazing on forest preserves, and this did not set well with the self-interest of western ranchers who successfully opposed management of treeless land by the USFS.13 In 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act was passed with the purpose of managing grazing on public land that did not come under the purview of the USFS. This Act was initially placed within the Division of Grazing of the DOI. Later, when the GLO was disbanded and the BLM created in its stead, oversight of grazing policy came to reside within the BLM, which was under the DOI.14

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Policies regarding grazing were determined in consultation with local grazing advisory boards made up mostly of local ranchers. Much has been made of the political power of the ranchers and their ability, through the advisory boards, to determine grazing policy to their advantage thereby managing the agency that was supposed to manage them. This wasn’t, and still isn’t, unusual in the context of the market economy in the United States, although the legal scholar Debra Donahue argues that “livestock interests’ powers differ in degree and kind.”15 There is no question that on balance the interests of the ranchers as opposed to conservationists were served with this arrangement. Under the Taylor Grazing Act, the advisory boards managed the ecological health of the rangeland indirectly; that is, by disseminating grazing permits which determined use rights. In this sense, although grazing was restricted by permit, the maintenance of the ecological integrity of the land was secondary to the economic interests of individual ranchers. From the perspective of the ranchers, allocating grazing permits was superior to a free-for-all or to owning the extremely large tracks necessary for grazing. Yet there is no question that this was not the optimal or ideal solution from the perspective of maintaining the ecological integrity of the land. Clearly, economic interests might overshadow more nuanced ecological concerns over time. Despite the support for the Taylor Grazing Act by western ranchers, considerable ambivalence existed. Western ranchers, more capitalistic and individualistic than farmers, resented the degree of government involvement. Although they had effectively wrestled a good deal of power out of the hands of the federal government with representation and power on the grazing advisory boards, many disagreed about the specifics and oversight of grazing policy. Gates explains, “[I]t was apparent the livestock people were not altogether in agreement, either that private ownership was superior to public management or that appropriations for range management should be so greatly restricted.”16 The Taylor Grazing Act was obviously preoccupied with the oversight of public land for purposes of grazing cattle and sheep. During the early to mid part of the twentieth century much of the land that came to reside in the BLM and under the Taylor Grazing Act was land not considered valuable for much else. Moreover, Donahue tells us that even within the specifics of the Taylor Grazing Act: “Discretion is supposed to be exercised in order to promote the highest use of public lands.”17 Thus, even in the initial formulation of the Act there was acknowledgment that there might be other

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uses for public lands that would be more valuable than grazing that could not have been anticipated at the time the Taylor Grazing Act was passed. Mineral extraction, recreation, and greater attention to conservation could all be deemed competitive uses but many of these multiple demands on BLM land did not really surface until the post-World War II period. In this sense, the attitude and tenor of the Taylor Grazing Act was cavalier about the fact that all of these potential uses could be successfully orchestrated.

Land Before Time The multidimensional nature of land use was extended further by the presence of minerals. Formal mineral law derived organically out of necessity early on but over time it would be reformulated as the market economy matured. Mineral law embodied different variations of the institutional dance of market forces and the response to these forces. There is no question it presents a complicated picture of institutional drift. Some of mineral law was explicitly changed to more directly accommodate the needs of the evolving market economy in coal, oil, and gas. More direct government management eventually prevailed. Other aspects of mineral law continued in its early formulation, which revolved around the idea that mining was an activity primarily dependent on the individual effort of the entrepreneur and the petty commodity producer who simply needed clearly specified property rights to do his work. Obviously the evolution of mineral development (e.g., copper, gold, and uranium) became increasingly consolidated and capital-intensive over time and simplistic mineral laws based on petty commodity producers would be challenged by the economic forces at hand. The evolutionary history of mineral law is exemplified in the western United States where most of the mining on public lands took place. As Wilkinson points out, “The California gold rush triggered the opening of all the American West, not just California. . . . Mining remained the dominant sector of most western societies for decades after the original gold rush.”18 The attitude about mining was in much the same spirit as that embodied in the Preemption Act, which sanctioned the settlement and use of the public domain before land could be surveyed and legally conveyed in fee simple to settlers. Individuals had liberal access to public land for purposes of mineral development. Wilkinson reiterates this point: “there was an implicit understanding that miners were welcome on the public lands.”19

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Wilkinson explains further how everywhere the idea of “ ‘first in time, first in right’ prevailed; a miner ought to have exclusive rights to a find that he had discovered, a principle also applied to the water necessary for mining.”20 If you staked your claim first the minerals and water were yours. As with timber harvesting, minerals were perceived as a separate value from the land itself and, in fact, land ownership was not essential to obtaining the rights to own and extract minerals. As land policy applied to minerals evolved, odd circumstances developed whereby on public land the government can own the subsurface rights and lease them to someone, or in the case of private land the surface rights can be owned by one person and the mineral rights owned by someone else. Thus, early mineral law envisioned land becoming disarticulated into its component parts as if it were not a whole entity, and as if many different users could be simultaneously and seamlessly accommodated. Despite considerable mining activity before 1872 it wasn’t until that year that the Hardrock Mining Law was passed. Initially, this law applied to all minerals including coal, oil, and gas. Wilkinson clarifies that the basic features of the law were that anyone could initiate mineral exploration and receive what is called pedis possession, which means the miners have “exclusive possession of the ground in the area where the prospecting is being conducted.”21 Wilkinson continues, “The discovery of a valuable hard rock mineral transmutes the fragile pedis possession prerogatives into a sturdy vested property right.”22 Furthermore, the miner will pay no royalties and if valid claims are terminated for some reason “full compensation must be paid to the owners.”23 This law reflected a clear belief in the value of labor and individual initiative in developing mineral resources. These were essential ingredients to mineral development in the nineteenth century, and would be the pivotal ingredient to establishing property rights to minerals. Initially, mining law reflected the perception that managing mining activity was simply a matter of establishing property rights for the individual miner. Originally oil, gas, and coal were included in the Hardrock Mining law, but in 1920 the Mineral Leasing Act stipulated that oil, gas and coal extracted on public lands be preceded by an application process. Thus, the management of these energy resources became distinct from the management of hard rock minerals. Royalties for the extraction of “fuel” resources were to be paid to the U.S. government along with provisions to protect “competing resources and the environment.”24

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The reform in the Hardrock Mining Law embodied in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 is instructive in understanding institutional change. It implicitly acknowledged an important economic reality; that is, that fossil fuel resources were central to the economy and to national security and became more important over time as the economy became more tightly articulated around these resources. The Mineral Leasing Act came on the heals of a dramatic increase in energy development in the West and immediately after World War I. Increased government involvement in the oversight of the appropriation and development of energy resources reflected a sense that more direct government control was desirable and necessary for these essential resources and in no way contradicted or undermined the economic forces at work. Energy resources would still be developed with capitalistic motives and principles in mind but the government would retain some modicum of control. This was a logical shift in policy given the centrality of fossil fuel energy in a mature market economy. The Mineral Leasing Act acknowledged that the leasing process for energy development must be done in a way that accounted for other land use demands. Over time, this has become increasingly problematic for those developing energy resources as recreational use, ranching and conservation have increasingly become incompatible with energy development. Other minerals like copper, gold, and uranium remained under the Hardrock Mining Law, which itself has remained unaltered since it was enacted in 1872. Michael P. Dombeck, Christopher A. Wood, and Jack E. Williams make the following claim: The 1872 Mining Law is without question the most outdated natural resource law in the United States. It should either be jettisoned or updated to meet the needs of the twenty-first century. . . . Its antiquated approach to royalties is well known and for good reason—none exist. The result is a blatant giveaway of public resources. Since its inception, the law has allowed public lands as large as the state of Connecticut to be privatized for as little as $2.50 per acre. . . . The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 40 percent of all headwater rivers and streams in the western United States are polluted because of hard-rock mining. Every other use of natural resources on public land—timber, grazing, oil and gas, recreation—is subject to approval or rejection by field managers for environmental or safety reasons. Hard-rock mining is not.25

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The authors are absolutely correct. The Hardrock Mining Law has remained unchanged, and is thereby unresponsive to material changes that demand a more extensive intervention to manage mineral development in an advanced capitalist economy. The question here is why hasn’t the institutional dance and co-evolution of land institutions impinged on the Hardrock Mining Law. Patricia Limerick probably offers the best explanation for this. She states: “The nostalgic, romanticized figure of the small miner, the individualistic prospector exercising the right of free access to gold that was established in California, has been put to work on behalf of the power and profits of enormous international corporations.”26 Limerick is correct in pointing out that the law embodies nostalgia for the romanticized figure of the small miner and the sense that his hard work is the active agent in getting the minerals out of the ground. In this respect, the miner holds something in common with the noble farmer. And like the land law of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that retained the rhetoric of the noble farmer, mineral law has followed suit as it retains the language of the petty commodity producer of gold nuggets. Mineral law formulated in the language of the latter nineteenth century circumstances more or less reflected the state of mineral extraction then, but the magnitude of production of minerals escaped the domain of petty commodity production early and in a very marked way. Mining corporations, as Limerick rightly points out, have merely taken advantage of a deeply rooted habit of thought, encapsulated in the Hardrock Mining Law, to secure their vested property rights and a return on their formidable capital investment. The institutional inertia embodied in the Hardrock Mining Law has lingered because other reforms have stepped into the fray and modestly limited mineral extraction and its unsavory fallout. More specifically, some public land was simply withdrawn from consideration for development and placed into national parks. And over the course of the twentieth century further provisions were added to limit and more closely manage mining on public land. For example, the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) was passed in 1976. The FLPMA restricted mining in roadless areas and in the 1970s the USFS took a more active role in managing surface resources thereby managing mineral extraction. Communities affected by the legacy of pollution caused from mineral extraction have begun to hold corporations accountable for their pollution demanding that before they begin mining they bond themselves for the value of the clean up. Although the Hardrock Mining Law hasn’t changed, other government land laws have thereby changed to rein it in.

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Multiple-Use Mandate Land policies and public land institutions were able to coordinate the demand for multiple land use somewhat effectively before World War II because demands on public land were relatively modest. But as the demands increased in the post-war era, the limitations of the multiple-use mandate have become increasingly apparent. It has become increasingly difficult to simultaneously pursue conservation, biodiversity preservation, recreation, forestry, grazing, and mineral development. In this sense, the notion of multiple land use is antiquated. The mature market economy now presents material conditions decidedly different from those presented one hundred or even fifty years ago. To borrow terminology from Herman Daly, we must now consider public land policy from the perspective of a “full world,” which means we must deal directly with the issue of scale.27 The rise of multiple land use on public land emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early in the twentieth century, Pinchot articulated a multiple-use philosophy that considered not only the needs of present generations but also future generations. Pinchot believed that land should be managed so that the greatest good could be achieved. Wilkinson points out that the USFS “defends its goal of ‘maximizing net public benefits’ by explaining that the concept is the same as Pinchot’s ‘greatest good’ formulation.”28 Wilkinson continues: “During the era from 1910 to 1940 the Forest Service worked from the firm foundation set by Pinchot. . . . One reason for this long stretch of ‘smooth sailing’ was that there was little demand for federal timber . . . the actual harvest of timber from national forests remained inconsequential.”29 The timber companies apparently still did most of their harvesting on private land during this period and “The Forest Service thus could make its cut from ‘easy’ lands—highly profitable stands that would jeopardize few recreational or environmental values.”30 It was possible and relatively painless to orchestrate multiple land use during the pre-World War II era when all constituents could be accommodated. In the post-World War II era, conditions surrounding public land management changed as the demand for multiple uses of national forests and other public lands increased dramatically. Recreation and conservation became more pronounced as constituents in the multiple-use mandate. Recreation became so much a part of national forest use that the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 explicitly acknowledged it as a player in the use of forests. Under these new conditions, deciding on the maximum net benefit and an outcome where the greatest good could be attained was no

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straightforward matter. There is no doubt that the rhetoric of public land management policy centered on multiple use but the material reality was that in the post-war period multiple land use became increasingly difficult to accommodate as the market economy matured.31 The controversy of clear-cutting in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia brought the impossibility of Multiple-Use Sustainable Yield to light and led to the passage of yet another piece of legislation attempting to deal with the problems of multiple use: The National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA). Forests were to be managed in such a way that streams, watersheds, and biodiversity were protected. Although clear-cutting wasn’t banned, it was restricted. Moreover, multiple constituents were to be consulted in the process of deciding what uses would be given priority creating the sense that everyone had a voice. Wilkinson comments on the NFMA: “Unquestionably Congress wanted it both ways; it wanted to keep the annual cut at a production level, and it also wanted serious, substantial environmental protection. But the thrust of the legislation was plainly toward the protective side.”32 Each national forest was to come up with a plan to outline how it would achieve the mandates set out under NFMA. Wilkinson tells us that Mike Sullivan, vice president of the Industrial Forestry Association “was not far off the mark when he concluded ‘it is the most ambitious centralized planning effort ever undertaken in the free world.’ ”33 Without a doubt, this was an expected reaction by the vested interests to the threat of restraint, something at least some of the players were apparently not accustomed to. Obviously, the increased demand for public land use was becoming increasingly contentious. Land policy was not moving in an unexpected or new direction it was merely adapting to the changing conditions wrought by the pace and extent of economic development. Multiple land use was becoming progressively more difficult to manage; the multitude of agencies and regulations that emerged in the post-war era to manage public land is testament to this fact. They are all part and parcel of institutional stretching in an environment where it has become increasingly difficult to accommodate multiple land use, analogous in some ways to the accretion of land policies on arid land. The stretching of the institutional fabric is embodied in the NFMA where at least rhetorical legitimacy is given to the demands of many constituents with divergent interests, although there is no question that some constituents clearly have more power than others. In the pecking order of demands on USFS land, narrow economic uses dominate unless citizens groups actively demonstrate preservation is as valu-

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able as the traditional economic activity. This is never an easy matter because preservation, unlike oil and gas development, doesn’t have a price attached. Again, Wilkinson elucidates this point: “Since the early 1970s virtually every reform in public lands forest management has been sparked by citizens suits holding the Forest Service to its statutory obligations.”34 A similar history of institutional stretching surrounds BLM land. In 1976 the FLMPA was passed. According to Donahue, the passage of the FLPMA clearly directs that management of the public lands be “on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield unless otherwise specified by law”; that “the public lands be managed in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resources, and archeological values; [and] that, where appropriate, will preserve and protect certain lands in their natural condition”; and that “plans for the protection of public land areas of critical environmental concern [ACEC] be promptly developed.”35 Furthermore, it provides for “advisory councils” comprised of “persons who are representatives of the various major citizens interests concerning the problems related to land use planning.”36 Yet Donahue admits that the multiple-use provision is complicated: “No consensus on the term’s meaning exists among legal scholars, although the bulk of opinion seems to hold that the definition is ambiguous and ‘fuzzy.’ ”37 Of importance to note about FLPMA is that it stipulates that attention be paid to ACECs and that identifying these areas should be given priority. Donahue elaborates “Some, even within the BLM, view ACECs as an impediment to the bureau’s emphasis on production of energy and minerals, timber, and livestock forage. They argue that ACECs are ‘anti-multiple use.’ ”38 Donahue has correctly identified the pulse of the matter and the BLM seems to recognize the impossibility of what it is technically asked to do. Like the NFMA, the FLPMA reflected the changing nature and increasingly complex and divergent demands on public land that emerged over the course of the twentieth century. With the maturation of the market economy and the concomitant increase in recreation, environmental protection and the multiple demands for grazing, mineral, and energy development, the FLPMA’s multiple-use mandate has become increasingly untenable. Land may have the potential for multiple use but the actual use of land creates a

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situation where one person’s use unequivocally trumps another’s especially when conservation and preservation are put in the mix. Domebeck, Wood, and Williams said: In an attempt to satisfy competing interests and comply with their multiple-use mandate and other laws, historically the Forest Service and BLM employed planning processes that dissect and partition the land. Special areas are set aside for timber production, for mining, for livestock grazing. Other areas are designated for wilderness, recreation, cultural, and other values. . . . Although the successive political administrations maintain decidedly different objects for public lands management, they share a common feature: both recognize the land as the wealth of the nation, one for material exploitation and economic opportunity, and the other as a legacy to pass on to future generations.39 The pragmatic way to manage the mandate is to do what has been done; that is, to dissect the land. But over time as demand increases this has become increasingly difficult to do. In the 1970s the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed. The NEPA was yet another piece of legislation that attempted to more effectively deal with the unwieldy nature of the multiple land-use mandate and to more fully assure that the interest of all constituents, including future generations, would be met in the face of increased pressures to use resources in the present. Lisa Heinzerling and Frank Ackerman tell us: “Indeed, one of the explicit and primary objectives of the National Environmental Policy Act, which has been called our basic charter of environmental protection, is to ‘fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations.’ ”40 NEPA is responsible for mandating that Environmental Impact Statements be done for projects on public land that have the potential for profound impact. Public disclosure and citizen involvement are required by NEPA. In theory this sounds reasonable, but what it really means is that if constituents don’t make their voices heard their desires won’t get registered. The costs and benefits that can’t easily be monetized will get short shrift and this usually means preservation and conservation. The NFMA, FLPMA, and NEPA all are examples of the extension and stretching of the agrarian ethos, the belief, embodied in these mandates, that the market economy can be effectively managed and that public land can simultaneously meet

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the needs of all of the constituents vying for use, or nonuse, of some part of it. As the market economy has matured this institutional stretching has become increasingly untenable. The term public land is misleading because public land is conditioned both in its inception and its purpose by market imperatives. In this way, public land is both ancillary and accommodating to the market economy. More specifically, the creation of public land and the many laws and agencies which surrounded it represents an institutional arrangement which allowed for the management of the destructive and unwieldy forces of the market economy with regard to land (nature) and should therefore be viewed as the extension and evolution of the agrarian ethos. Public land was given its mandate early on: multiple land use. In a world where demand was modest, the mandate of multiple land use as the guiding principle of government management of public lands represented a solution to the problems created by multidimensional land, part of the co-evolutionary dance of the market economy and the agrarian ethos. This solution, however, has become increasingly ineffective, as the market economy has expanded. It has become a utopian ideal and one way to understand that we might be reaching the limits of our present institutional arrangements. The alphabet soup of agencies and laws to govern multiple land use are testament to this institutional stretching. In the end, it is the constituent who can amass the most resources, has the most political power, and can most easily monetize costs and benefits that usually wins in the battle for the use of public land. Despite the proliferation of laws to accommodate all voices for preservation, conservation, and recreation, there is not enough to go around. This is the conundrum and challenge of our historical moment and the result of the institutional drift of the market economy and the agrarian ethos.

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Wilderness Wildness, pushed to the perimeters of human settlement during most of the ten millennia since the Pleistocene, has now begun to disappear from the earth, taking the world’s otherness of free plants and animals with it. The loss is usually spoken of in terms of ecosystem or beauty of the world, but for humans, spiritually and psychologically, the true loss is internal. It is our own otherness within. —Paul Shepard, Coming Home to the Pleistocene

T

he agrarian ethos is an ethos of domestication. This habit of thought was initially forged out of our unique American experiment with economic liberalism in a place with a surplus of land. Yet in conveying the history of our institutional experience with land it would be misleading and incomplete to offer this as the only story. The co-extensive existence of a vast unsettled continent and an economy based on market principles and fueled by the Industrial Revolution created unique circumstances whereby a wilderness ethos also arose in the United States. The wilderness ethos represents a decidedly different co-evolutionary dance with our economic arrangements. Both Roderick Nash and Frederick Jackson Turner identified something of the unique experience with wilderness in the United States. In his cultural history of wilderness, Nash points out that the unique presence of wilderness in the United States became a source of national pride distinguishing the country from Europe. “If wilderness was the medium in which God spoke most clearly then America had a distinct moral advantage over Europe.”1 Turner insisted that confronting the frontier was foundational to the formation of the character of the United States as a nation and therefore part of its national heritage.2 Neither Nash nor Turner fully explore the co-evolution of the wilderness ethos and the market economy. A clear picture of this history is essential in clarifying our own historical moment and the prospects for wilderness preservation in the future. 85

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A detailed discussion of the definitions and philosophical debates about wilderness is not the purpose here. Nonetheless, a few words of clarification as to the context of this discussion are necessary. The question of the social construction of wilderness is left to the philosophers. Wilderness and the existence of what is wild is taken as an objective fact. It is a place where the domesticating hand of man has been mostly absent, and where the processes of self-determination of the wholeness of the nonhuman world are manifest and resonate apart from man. Wilderness is where wildness resides; it is the antithesis of domestication. There is no question but that the contrast between what is wild and what is not varies over time owing to the intensity of domestication. For example, Holmes Rolston states, “any real wilderness needs to be evaluated on the basis of degree. . . . Early hunter–gatherers with transmittable culture were not much different in their ecological effects from predators and wild omnivores among whom they moved.”3 Yet even for hunters and gatherers there was the perception of a distinct essence, that we call wilderness. David Foreman reminds us that, “vast tracts uninhabited by humans were a familiar concept to many primal cultures.”4 Before discussing the formation and interplay of the wilderness ethos and the market economy in the United States it is essential to first discuss the sensibility toward wilderness. So attuned are we to the forces of domestication, that we easily forget that domestication is not the only, or even most profound, connection to the natural world. We have a deeply rooted affinity to that which is wild: a wilderness sensibility. Some understanding of this inclination is the important preamble to discussing the development of the wilderness ethos in the United States.

Wilderness Sensibility A wilderness sensibility provides a window into the exploration of the human condition and the human soul. In this sense it is a universal intuition and response evoked by contact with wild places that cannot be replicated with other experiences. This sensibility tells us that we are not somehow programmed to completely supplant the world that is wild with that dominated by human artifacts. An undomesticated world provides an avenue of exploration of our humanity that is as important as the experience with material progress and manipulation. John Collier talked about the inclination to a wilderness sensibility being deeply rooted: “Solitary departures [into wilder-

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ness] which ‘primitive men’ knew were the preconditions of maturity, and which The Christ, The Buddha and Zarathustra knew. . . . [S]uch lonely entries to Wilderness, and communications from out of Wilderness, actually formed the soul of mankind.”5 Perhaps one of the most incisive explorations of the importance of the wild for human beings comes from the human ecologist Paul Shepard. Shepard says that a profound and significant change in our consciousness was initiated by the transition to settled agriculture: The virtual collapse of hunting and gathering, the central activity of the ancient culture, would surely have affected the very heart of human existence. The great mystery of domestication is therefore not so much how men achieved control of plants and animals, but how human consciousness was reorganized when cynegetic life was shattered—that is, the mental, social, and ecological complex based on hunting.6 In Shepard’s analysis, domestication “amputated” an organic connection to the natural world that had become encoded in our genome during our long evolution during the Pleistocene.7 Shepard states: “Although we define ourselves in terms of nationality, race, profession, and so on, it is evident that the context of our being in the past is wildness—to which, one might say, our genes look expectantly for those circumstances that are their optimal ambience, a genetic expectation of our genome that is unfulfilled in the world we have created.”8 This genetic expectation is expressed in the way we are programmed to mature through our connection with a rich and varied natural environment. Shepard points out: “The individual growth curve . . . is a biological heritage of the deep past.”9 He argues that the disconnection from wildness creates problems for individual ontogeny because a natural world that is wild, provides a “second grounding,” enabling the child to separate from the mother.10 This second grounding facilitates the process of individuation and maturity providing an external “model of order” that literally resonates within us. The process of maturing requires that we find our place in a larger world that is ambiguous and multilayered. Maturation means understanding the wisdom of balancing connectedness and difference, a process facilitated by interaction with a world that is not domesticated—over a long process of maturation. Shepard elaborates, “Beneath the veneer of civilization . . . lies not the barbarian and animal, but the human in us who knows the rightness of birth in gentle surroundings, the necessity of a rich nonhuman environment,

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play at being animals . . . the cultivation of metaphorical significance of natural phenomena of all kinds.”11 The domesticated world simply does not offer the same palate for exploration as a wild place. It does not resonate in us in the same way. In contrast, domestication moves us from a numinous earthly realm to finding the divine in heaven. And although there is a fulfilling human experience in the manipulation of the natural world, there also is a profound loss. Shepard tells us the loss is evident in the retention of neotenous characteristics, a thwarted maturity that manifests itself in many perverse ways in modern civilization. Shepard is not the only person to highlight the importance of a connection between nature and mankind distinctively different than that of domestication and manipulation. Lewis Mumford also spoke of this importance in the context of our prehistory: Man’s own nature has been constantly fed and formed by the complex activities and interchanges and self-transformations that go on within all organisms; and neither his nature nor his culture can be abstracted from the great diversity of habitats he has explored. . . . Man’s life would be profoundly different if mammals and plants had not evolved together, if trees and grasses had not taken possession of the surface of the earth, if flowering plants and plumed birds, tumbling clouds and vivid sunsets, towering mountains, boundless oceans, starry skies had not captivated his imagination and awakened his mind.12 Indeed, Mumford seems to say that the very seeds of human progress, certainly found in imagination and the awakening of the human mind, owe everything to the richness of the earth in its wildness. Will we be so inspired by a completely domesticated planet? David Abrahms similarly points out: The human mind is not some otherly essence that comes to house itself in our physiology. Rather it is instilled and provoked by the sensorial field itself induced by the tensions and participations between the human body and the animate earth. . . . By acknowledging such links between the inner, psychological world and the perpetual terrain that surrounds us, we begin to turn inside-out, loosening the psyche from its confinement within a

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strictly human sphere, freeing sentience to return to the sensible world that contains it. Intelligence is no longer ours alone but it is a property of the earth.13 In a sense our connection to what is wild frees us from the isolation and burden of becoming God. This sensibility engenders both humility and awe with regard to the natural world. A sentient exchange with the natural world awakens the human soul, leaving us with a profound sense of connectedness to this earthly realm. Wilderness clearly evokes a sensibility in us that is part of the full exploration of what it means to be human. The process of maturation, the development of imagination, and a sentient grounding of the human soul are all nurtured by contact with a varied and multilayered natural world. Obviously, the inclination of domestication is to groom out wildness. Unquestionably, the intentional manipulation of the world, domestication, is also an expression of what makes us human. Marx writes eloquently about our relationship to the natural world in this sense: It is just in his work upon the objective world that man really proves himself as a species-being. This production is his active species life. By means of it nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species life; for he no longer reproduces himself merely intellectually, as in consciousness, but actively and in a real sense, and he sees his own reflection in a world which he has constructed.14 Thorstein Veblen mirrors a similar idea with his notion of the “instinct of workmanship” and the “instinct of idle curiosity.” Eric Roll interprets Veblen in this. He tells us that these instincts “are driven by that ‘sense of economic or industrial merit’ inherent in all men.”15 Thus, both Marx and Veblen highlight the human inclination toward domestication, which is a distinct orientation to the natural world.16 They both are critical of the ability of domestication under the conditions set forth in market capitalism to be the rewarding and humanizing experiment that it ought to be. That aside, there is no question that domestication itself is an expression of our species being. In the history of the United States, the co-evolution of the agrarian ethos and market capitalism constitute our parochial experiment with domestication. Yet our history simultaneously encouraged the development of a wilderness ethos. Here we tapped into a different sensibility about our

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complicated relationship to land and by extension the natural world. The wilderness ethos comes out of our history of domestication but it is not an ethos of domestication.

Co-Evolution of the Wilderness Ethos and the Market Economy The evolution of the market economy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries extended the process of domestication rapidly and beyond the imagination of our European ancestors. The United States offered a unique set of circumstances whereby these dramatic forces of economic development were set in motion on a relatively unsettled continent. Arthur A. Ekrich states: “Probably no people have ever so quickly subdued their natural environment, marching across an entire continent and exploiting its resources.”17 The dramatic changes in the economic dynamic of nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be thought of as nothing less than a fundamental alteration in the material dynamic of civilization. Tension between civilization and wilderness ensued in the United States that would not have been apparent in previously domesticated places on earth. In response, there was a conscious vocalized reflection on what was being lost under the frenzied encroachment of civilization. This concern has been expressed by many Americans and in a multitude of ways. The writing of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, William O. Douglas, David Brower, Olaus Murie, and the new generation of nature writers all provide examples of the passion and depth of this concern. Historian Donald Worster tells us: “Thoreau confronted an ecological system that was being radically remade by the invading species of civilized man.”18 Worster also points out that Muir referred to those who wanted to dam Hetch Hetchy as “temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism.”19 Leopold clearly identified this force when he said, “Man’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope.” He connects these changes directly to the economy and to the processes of economic globalization: “For the first time in the history of the human species, two changes are now impending. One is the exhaustion of wilderness in the more habitable portions of the globe. The other is the world-wide hybridization of cultures through modern transport and industrialization.”20 Douglas similarly observed: “Man is crowding everything but himself out of the universe.”21 Obviously, these reflections indicate a palpable

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anxiety about the pace and extent of these forces and what they mean for the existence of wilderness and our contact with it. Amidst these dramatic market forces, manufacturing eclipsed farming and eventually the nature of farming itself changed. Increasingly, work became rationalized and adulterated for the sake of greater control over the production process. Moreover, the living conditions created by the market economy and the Industrial Revolution were also altered and urban enclaves replaced the countryside as the locus of population. Finally, the force of the industrial revolution under the direction of market principles allowed for the amassing of huge wealth in the hands of the upper classes, a group of individuals that had the ability to escape the urban centers, a luxury not open to the working class who were involved in the day-to-day toil of economic survival. By virtue of the privileged position given to them by the benefit of economic development, the upper classes had a unique vantage point with regard to the stark contrast between civilization and wilderness that was rapidly unfolding during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States. William Cronon claims that “The very men who most benefited from urbanindustrial capitalism were among those who believed they must escape its debilitating effects. . . . The frontier might be gone, but the frontier experience could still be had if only wilderness were preserved.”22 In a sense, the upper classes in the United States came to embody the promise of progress. By being freed from day-to-day toil, they had an enhanced opportunity to escape the mundane economic demands of the day-to-day existence that industrial life had created. They benefited from economic development in a way that allowed them to tap into wilderness in a way the working class could not. In this, however, there also was dissonance because a conscious understanding of the direct relationship between the largess of their material circumstances and the loss of wilderness was impossible to avoid. The wilderness ethos distilled out of this dissonance, taking the particular form it did. Theoretically, there are many possibilities for confronting the forces of “ravaging commercialism” that was the most proximate cause for a diminishing wilderness. However, the world is not a theoretical proposition, thus the preservation of wilderness was the result of the unique circumstances found in the Untied States. The class structure, an undeniable part of the economic landscape, informed the particular form wilderness preservation took: that of setting aside, while leaving in tact the underlying economic bedrock. The wilderness sensibility and ethos was not cultivated in the working class living in crowded urban areas. The working class had very little contact with wilderness. To be sure, nature was tapped to soothe the ills of civilization

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for the working class during the nineteenth century. The unadulterated forces of economic progress could be moderated in their effect by using nature as a palliative for the travails of civilization for those living in urban enclaves and toiling with industrial life. Leopold captured this when he reflected on the multiple meaning of nature to the worker: “To the laborer in the sweat of his labor, the raw stuff on his anvil is an adversary to be conquered. So was wilderness an adversary to the pioneer. But to the laborer in repose, able for the moment to cast a philosophical eye on his world, that same raw stuff is something to be loved and cherished because it gives definition and meaning to his life.”23 Nonetheless the soothing effects of nature were introduced to the working class in ways that were consistent with nineteenth-century economic arrangements and familiar agrarian sensibilities. Nature was not introduced in the form of wilderness. Absentee owners concentrated their energies on the creation of escape valves for the working class like urban parks, places that had been tamed by the hand of man. Talbot points out that the bourgeoisie who were not at liberty to make the workplace less alienating; created “parks and sylvan ‘model’ towns and villages where the myth of romanticized nature could be played out . . . [where the] ‘facts of production’ that entail alienation from nature are concealed by romantic mystification of nature, which banishes any imaginary opportunity for a non-alienating relation to nature to the realm of leisure, so that the alienating relation to nature implicit in capitalist production remains unchallenged.”24 Thus, interjection of nature in the form of urban parks into the sphere of consumption and leisure was a safe way to ameliorate class tension and the alienating effects of wage labor. Nature was accessed in a familiar domesticated form, one distinctively different than that accessed by the privileged. Because of these unique conditions, the preservation branch of conservation has been accused of being an elitist indulgence. Baird Callicott observed that in the tradition of Muir “some of the human satisfactions that nature affords are morally superior to others” and for Callicott this “may only reflect aristocratic biases and class privilege.”25 Critics of wilderness preservation have claimed it is “undemocratic and un-American” because it is seen as an elitist indulgence. Cronon echoes similar sentiments but goes further: “The irony, of course, was that in the process [of setting aside], wilderness came to reflect the very civilization its devotees sought to escape. Ever since the nineteenth century, celebrating wilderness has been an activity mainly for well-to-do city folks.”26 In some ways, these critics are correct. Not until the post-World War II era in the United States, when a middle-class elite

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with access to transportation emerged, did contact with wilderness extend significantly beyond the upper classes to the middle classes. It is ironic that the sensibility and responsibility of retaining something of an undomesticated planet in the face of the rapid pace of economic development came to reside primarily with the class who had gained the most from that development but these are the circumstances of our history. Economic development offered the upper class—and later the elite middle class—a greater opportunity to explore their humanity in the context of wilderness. Because the upper class was not inclined to question basic economic institutions the only way a wilderness sensibility could be institutionally accommodated was to set aside pristine places, ceteris paribus; this is precisely how the wilderness ethos became manifest. Some of these places were bought outright like the Tetons and the great camps of the Adirondacks. Other places were never privately owned but set aside in the form of national parks, like Yosemite and Yellowstone. And then of course, some wilderness came to be preserved by virtue of lying temporarily unused within the boundaries of public land and later set aside as one of the constituents of multiple land use. We would be mistaken to dismiss wilderness preservation on the grounds that it is an elitist indulgence. Cronon is correct, wilderness did come to “reflect the very civilization its devotees sought to escape.” Yet this is not “a flight from history,” and “a serious threat to responsible environmentalism” as he argues. Rather it is simply the legacy of a particular historical moment. The presence of wilderness amid the great economic unfolding of this time and place gave an age-old sensibility a new vitality and urgency. The wilderness ethos embodied a concern about domestication itself, the meaning and limitations of progress and the place of humans on the earth but the circumstances under which it arose also limited and framed the institutional response to wilderness because it concentrated this cultural attitude among individuals who simultaneously had a great stake in continuing the processes of domestication at play.27 The strategy of setting aside wilderness as an adequate response to preserve wilderness is limited and time-bound. There had been a time in our history when it was possible to indulge in and accommodate the wilderness sensibility by setting aside wilderness areas, without questioning the underlying growth dynamic in the economy. The wilderness ethos took residence in this very specific form but preserving wilderness on the one hand and partaking in unending economic growth are increasingly incompatible revealing the limitation of this historically specific form of wilderness preservation. Leopold made a “plea for the preservation of some tag-ends of wilderness,

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as museum pieces, for the edification of those who may one day wish to see, feel, or study the origins of their cultural inheritance.”28 There was resignation in this. That’s all that preservation had done, bound, as it was to advocate for wilderness and yet not question the wisdom of challenging “modern transport and industrialization.” Leopold did not think it possible to question the forces of progress, only to moderate them. The wilderness ethos embodied in preservation seen as setting aside, was similarly reflected in the language of the Wilderness Act of 1964: “In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas with the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition.”29 Setting aside wilderness has preserved islands of wilderness, but it has not provided an adequate response to the relentless drive toward domestication. Day to day, fewer people have any opportunity to come in contact with anything but a wholly domesticated world and this is not so much a result of a lack of economic resources but owes more to the fact that there is simply less wilderness relative to the artifacts of domestication. We stand at a different point in our history now where preserving museum pieces, if possible, may be inadequate to the preservation of a meaningful amount of wild earth. The wilderness ethos is not as adaptable as the agrarian ethos. Absence of the hand of man is not easily reconciled with continued economic expansion. It simply cannot be sustained for long while basic economic institutions remain unchanged. The possibilities for co-evolution with the market economy are more clearly limited than with the agrarian ethos. The progressive domestication of the planet destroys the presence of what is wild and with it the material conditions that are necessary to the wilderness ethos. This is not a positive change for humanity but may well be the outcome of our present institutional drift. In the face of this it is important to maintain a conscious and deliberate understanding that the human interchange with the natural world is not simply about a relentless and mindless drive to reshape the earth; it also is about humility and restraint and respect for healthy human ontogeny. Shepard warns, “Programmed for the slow development toward a special kind of sagacity, we live in a world where that humility and tender sense of human limitation is no longer rewarded. Yet we suffer for the want of that vanished world, a deep grief we learn to misconstrue.”30 The wilderness ethos captured and institutionalized the wilderness sensibility during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a way that did not demand a re-evaluation of basic economic institutions. We simply set

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aside islands of wilderness and left the economic dynamic at work, unaltered. But the effectiveness of this strategy to preserve wilderness might be quickly running its course. It is understandable that confronted with this problem our tendency might be to declare wilderness dead, or simply conflate it with the problem of domesticating well. Yet our particular history has graced us with an entrenched wilderness ethos, an attitude that is not easily wiped from our cultural landscape. Ours is a history that acknowledges that limiting domestication is as much a part of the exploration of our humanity and our human condition as is our ability to manipulate the natural world to change our material reality. Progress is not simply a matter of material development and growth. Questions of domesticating well are not to be conflated with questions of domestication itself.

Postindustrial Society and the Problem of Wilderness The loss of wilderness presents us with a unique postindustrial problem. Most of our postindustrial environmental problems can be framed as problems pertaining to the “conditions of production.”31 Maintaining the conditions of production is ultimately essential for the functioning of the economy. If “natural capital,” to borrow a term from ecological economics, is severely impaired, this will lead to economic crisis and so we have the economic imperative to preserve “natural capital.” This is what Pinchot had in mind. But wilderness and its preservation lie outside this domain because it is difficult to make the argument that lack of wilderness threatens the conditions of production unless by chance in association with other environmental problems. For example, the loss of wilderness per se does not present the same tangible threat as global climate change although they might be connected.32 Moreover, the process of domestication may unfold or continue by tinkering well, hence all the hype and hope for a new green economy, but from the perspective of wilderness, this matters little. It is entirely possible to have a completely domesticated yet “green” planet. The encroachment on what is wild may be done with windmills rather than oil rigs, although there is no doubt windmills are, ecologically speaking, a better source of energy. Wilderness preservation is not, in the end, assured by better technology. Thus, the imperative for wilderness preservation has an odd material dimension to it. Unlike other degradations of the environment associated with domestication, the loss of wilderness may not impinge directly on our material survival. John Collier describes this conundrum precisely:

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This is a remarkable and prescient statement about the nature of the problem for wilderness and the profit-pursing imperative. The tension between a wild continent and the force of our industrial, capitalistic form of domestication provided unique historical circumstances that gave rise to a wilderness ethos. These same conditions, however, framed the institutional arrangements to accommodate wilderness, engendering the “setting-aside” approach to preservation. We have now come to a point where material conditions have changed sufficiently that setting aside wilderness as a strategy to preserve it cannot be the only strategy for wilderness preservation. It is an inadequate response to the forces at hand. The co-evolution of the market economy and the wilderness ethos has a much more limited marriage than the ethos of domestication. The fear is, and the material conditions seem to indicate, that in this increasingly tenuous institutional arrangement the wilderness ethos will simply be subsumed by the ethos of domestication. Thoreau’s dictum, “In wildness is the preservation of the world” is worth remembering. And to preserve what is wild it is necessary to recognize that the wilderness sensibility, stripped of its institutional trappings, harkens to a universal concern about domestication, a concern that cannot be adequately accommodated by setting aside islands of wilderness especially in the context of our present economic dynamic. A conscious awareness of this fact is essential especially because wilderness loss will not register as a crisis. The question is simple. What is the magnitude of loss by continuing with a process that will completely domesticate the planet? How do we orchestrate a balance between what is wild and what is domesticated in the context of an economy that makes profit of domestication? Unfortunately, value in our world is dominated by an economic framework that pigeonholes all that is supposed to be of value into cost–benefit

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analysis effectively trying to create market value where there is none. Within the dominant framework wilderness has been left to the inadequate attempts to put a price on its “existence value.” Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling deftly analyze the situation: “The basic problem with narrow economic analysis . . . is that human life, health, and nature cannot be described meaningfully in monetary terms; they are priceless.” Here we are “in the realm of the priceless, where market values tell us little about the social values at stake.”34 And so we are. The question is how to register value in a world with an economistic emphasis. At the very least we should understand the institutional drift at play and what that portends for wilderness and the human condition.

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Epilogue Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. —Thomas Jefferson, Government by the People, 1816

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detailed interpretation of the nuanced interplay and co-evolution of the agrarian ethos, the wilderness ethos and the market economy over time has been the resolute purpose of this inquiry. The history of this co-evolution reveals something about the institutional configuration of our relationship to land and the complex history of its domestication. Indeed the interplay of market capitalism and these habits of thought have been an intimate, co-evolving and mutually reinforcing affair. Thus, these dominant institutions, although not immutable, have nonetheless been sustained over a long stretch of our history and are a foundational part of our institutional fabric. The agrarian ethos has been an amazingly adaptable cultural attitude and “countermovement” to the market economy. Its mark of distinction has been its versatility and extension. Over time, it has moved beyond a narrowly agrarian orientation. Yet we also understand through our historical analysis that this versatility is not infinite as the case of the multiple land-use mandate on public land reveals. The wilderness ethos appears as a different habit of thought co-evolving with the market economy. It is more narrowly expressed and does not have the versatility that is the hallmark of the agrarian ethos. Nonetheless, it is distinctive and pronounced part of our history. It is clear that institutional change is a complex matter. Veblen referred to institutional change over time as “drift” implying that there is no teleological

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purpose to the way institutions evolve. We also know from Veblen that the process of institutional change is often out of sync with material conditions. Thus, the process of institutional change at any point in time may be insufficient to the material circumstances at hand. It is unclear what role human intentionality can play in this process of institutional change. I want to believe that with sufficient understanding of our historical moment and how we come to it we can intentionally influence change. My hope is that the perspective and insight cultivated in these pages has helped in some measure to sharpen an understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls we confront in reshaping our institutional arrangements concerning land and by extension environment. We find ourselves at a point in history when material circumstances are changing rapidly. In the litany of “intractable” problems we now confront, the profound changes taking place in our relationship to the earth are among the most formidable and challenging. These rapid changes owe to an accelerated pace and intensity of domestication, what we euphemistically and expectantly refer to as economic growth. Perforce we were set on a path that cultivated both an agrarian and a wilderness ethos each co-evolving with the market economy. The American psyche surely resides here with these attitudes about land. These two distinct habits of thought now embody a complex institutional tension in the face of the challenge of our present material circumstances. If history is our guide the ethos of domestication is likely to be extended in the face of changing material circumstances although this extension may not be timely. It is easy to imagine that green technology and green growth and the prescripts for a return to a more modest community-based market economy will mark the co-evolution of this habit of thought and the market economy in the twenty-first century. These are the twenty-first century variants of Jefferson’s agrarian ideal and offer an appealing and familiar response to the problems of profit-driven domestication. The wilderness ethos has always been a less versatile and a more historically prescribed habit of thought. It does not have the adaptability of the ethos of domestication in the face of an ever-expanding market economy. The co-evolution of the wilderness ethos and the market economy has specifically allowed for the preservation of islands of wilderness. In the future, economic growth itself must be questioned if we are retain wildness on this planet. The most likely outcome of our present material change and institutional drift is that the ethos of wilderness will be conflated or simply subsumed by the ethos of domestication and the latter will continue its long legacy of cohabitation with market forces. As wilder-

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ness is progressively destroyed the material foundation for the cultivation of the wilderness ethos is undermined. Yet if wilderness is important to the expression and healthy development of our humanity this change marks a diminishment of the human experience. Some 30 years ago, E.J. Mishan commented: Even if it would be said of economic growth that it expands unambiguously the options open to the consumer, it would not follow that men should be regarded as being better off. For one thing these options refer only to the amounts and varieties of goods available to the average person in his capacity of consumer. In other roles . . . the individual may not be faced with more options as a result of continuing economic growth.”1 Herman Daly similarly asks us to contemplate whether we have entered a period of uneconomic growth where the costs of growth outweigh the benefits. He asks that scale be limited to that which is necessary for a “good life.”2 Although what is and isn’t necessary for a good life is not an easy question to answer, it is nevertheless at the heart of sustainability. We know from our history that the good life involves economic development because no one would seriously make the argument that we would be better off living as hunter–gatherers. But it certainly is not clear that postindustrial market society, with all of its economic development, has unequivocally offered up the ingredients for a good life. For one thing, tremendous poverty has been coincident with our course of economic development. The deprivation suffered by the many poor of the world does not need to be elaborated. But even for those of us with the luck and good fortune of having been born privileged by world standards, economic development has not unequivocally enhanced our human experience. As the dynamic of exponential growth plays itself out we are offered increasing crowds, reduced space, exposure to more pollutants and toxins, greater economic insecurity and more of life spent negotiating the complexity of a material impulse that weighs heavy on most of us. We are burdened with many problems that seem to have no solutions and are often removed from our day-to-day lives. Although we might have greater possibilities for reflection, we have less time to reflect. And for most women and many men, life in the twenty-first century demands the frustrating imperative of endless multitasking, the bane of modern life. Thoreau’s words were prescient and resonate with most of us: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”3

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Nobel Laureate Robert Solow provides an interesting discussion about sustainability that bears on the discussion here. He states that “it [sustainability] is an obligation to conduct ourselves so that we leave to the future the option or the capacity to be as well off as we are . . . There is no specific object that the goal of sustainability, the obligation of sustainability, requires us to leave untouched.” Solow then speaks directly to the issue of wilderness and states: “What about wilderness or unspoiled nature? I think we ought, in our policy choices, to embody our desire for unspoiled nature as a component of well-being. But we have to recognize that different amenities really are, to some extent, substitutable for one another, and we should be as inclusive as possible in our calculations.”4 So the question we have to ask is whether Solow is correct. Is wilderness fungible? Can a good windmill bequeathed to your children substitute for the cry of wolves? Can the needs of imagination, human ontogeny, and the organic soul be just as easily met with the drone of milk cows as the magic of wild places? I realize Solow is attempting to make the concept of sustainability more workable and in doing so he plays fast and easy with wilderness, but is it true that life won’t be qualitatively diminished with the complete domestication of the planet. Perhaps it does well to look at our history for some perspective. Our history tells us that the experience with our economic development and a wild and unsettled continent resulted in a well-entrenched wilderness ethos, a habit of thought that led to policies that specifically said wilderness was not fungible. For many years it was possible to cordon off areas of wilderness while allowing economic growth to proceed mostly unfettered so there was little conflict in the institutional dance of the market economy and the wilderness ethos. But the world is filling up with all the material manipulations of civilization and so by default we are faced with the end of wilderness, not as a rational decision about whether or not wilderness is or isn’t fungible, and our obligation to future generations, but as an unintended consequence of our institutional drift. Michael Pollan argues that the wilderness ethic is problematic for solving our contemporary problems with nature. Yet it seems to me our contemporary problems with nature might be well served by a wilderness ethic precisely because we are more inclined to question the agenda of unending economic growth when we concentrate on wilderness. Pollan tells us that: “The metaphor of divine nature can admit only two roles for man: as worshipper (the naturalists role) or temple destroyer (the developers). . . . But the drama is played out. . . . Nature is dead, if by nature we mean something that stands apart from man and messy history.” Pollan suggests that perhaps

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the wilderness ethic should be replaced with a new ethic: “What if now, instead of wilderness, we were to look to the garden for the makings of a new ethic?”5 Thus the solution for our present institutional deadlock with regard to our relationship to the earth is to simply declare wilderness dead and offer sound domestication as the post mortem strategy? There is no question that we have a long-lived habit of thought centered on domesticating well. This has been one of our dominant cultural responses and attitudes toward our use of land and earth in the face of a dynamic market economy, but we should remember that our history also has pointed us in another direction. A wilderness ethos helps to enlighten us about the true meaning of progress, which is a matter of nurturing our humanity and sometimes that means there are some things that must be left as they are. The problem is that it will now take conscious and fundamental institutional change to preserve wilderness and that’s why it is easier to look to the garden for the way forward. This might be the natural course of our social and economic evolution but if so our humanity will be ultimately diminished by it. The garden ethic may inform us how to domesticate well but that is all it will do. A garden ethic will make it more likely that we will move forward without altering our fundamental economic institutions. Bill McKibben talks in revolutionary rhetoric of moving forward: “We need something else: an economy that not only doesn’t require endless growth to sustain it, but begins doing with less; one that not only stops pitting jobs against the environment, but begins to question what jobs mean and how much money they should pay. An economy that begins to decouple the region from the globe, increasing its self-reliance and sustainability.” Yet behind McKibben’s revolutionary discourse is something familiar. He continues: “Smaller local economies make sense because they’re not disrupted at the whim of a corporate board—but also because they all but demand lighter living, less emissions, fewer products.” Finally his proposition that “Perhaps the necessary shape of that journey is clearest in the area of agriculture,”6 first appeared very radical but is now a variation on an old theme: a small is beautiful agrarian nostalgia, a new (or not so new) reinvigorated agrarian ethos. I am certainly not condemning small-scale sustainable agriculture and localized economies, but in the shadow of globalization, efforts in this direction seem decidedly nostalgic and more importantly inadequate as a countermovement to the raw forces and dynamic of advanced market capitalism. This is nostalgia for the past and an inadequate response to the future, a retreat to an antiquated but deeply rooted agrarian ethos that muddles the challenges of what we now need to change. I am not sure how community

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agriculture can challenge the world of corporate finance but unless it can we had better rethink our menu of strategies. History tells us that it isn’t so easy to go from where we stand now to community-based economies of the petty commodity variety. Remembering wilderness and the drawbacks of domestication is crucial because it forces us to more directly confront foundational economic institutions and to think more clearly about all that makes for a good life.

Notes Preface 1. The caption identifying the map read: “Map to Accompany Applications for Wm. Krall Ditch, Krall Ditches ‘A’ & ‘B’ and the Pikl-Urbanian Ditch; Applicants: Wm. Krall, Robt. Krall, Ignatz Pikl, John Urbanian. Sublet, Wyoming, October 24, 1918.” 2. Eventually there would be two trials. The first took place in November 1920, the year my grandfather was shot. The second trial took place in January 1922. 3. Kemmerer Republican, November 19, 1920. 4. Kemmerer Camera, November 17, 1920. 5. National Archives, Land Entry Files, Serial Number 06657, Patent Number 908020.

Introduction 1. Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. 1944. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 131 2. Ibid., 178 3. There are obvious corollaries between the speculation and rent-seeking behavior with regard to land in the nineteenth century and our current speculative housing bubble and the financial speculation built on it. There also are corollaries in our assessment of who might be responsible; the financiers are greedy and irresponsible, whereas the common man, with overextended mortgage responsibilities and a depreciated 401K, is seen as the victim. Yet, like the speculator and the noble farmers of the nineteenth century, both are participating in the same dynamic.

Chapter 1 1. Jefferson, Thomas, “Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781–1785.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover, (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 678.

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2. Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), 128. 3. Worster, Donald. The Wealth of Nature. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 100. 4. Kemmis, Daniel. Community and the Politics of Place. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 21. 5. Jefferson, Thomas. “Government by the People, July 12, 1816.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 291. 6. Griswold, A. Whitney. “The Agrarian Democracy of Thomas Jefferson.” American Political Science Review XL (1946): 673. 7. Locke, John. “Of Civil Government.” (1690) Classics of Western Thought: The Modern World, ed Edgar E. Knoebel (San Diego and Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 71. 8. Ibid., 154–55. 9. Wood, Ellen Meiskins. The Origin of Capitalism. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999), 84. 10. Ibid., 86–87. 11. Henry, John F. “John Locke, Property Rights, and Economic Theory.” Journal of Economic Issue. 33 (1999): 617. 12. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. 1945. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 634. 13. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution. (London: Weindenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 151. 14. Jefferson, Thomas. “Confidential Message Recommending a Western Exploring Expedition.” ( January 18, 1803 The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 398–399. 15. Jefferson, “Second Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1805. The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 412–13. 16. Thomas Jefferson was not alone in this perspective. Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams articulated similar views as did Teddy Roosevelt a century later. 17. Wallace, Anthony F. C. “ ‘The Obtaining Land,’ Thomas Jefferson and the Native Americans.” Thomas Jefferson and the Changing West. Ed. James P. Ronda. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 31. 18. Jefferson, Thomas. “Bill to Abolish Entails” 1776. The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 88–89. 19. Pattison, William David. Beginnings of the American Rectangular Land Survey System, 1784–1800. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.), 3.

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20. Until this time surveying had been done piecemeal and inadequate surveys abounded, presenting serious problems for states in specifying land ownership. In the northern colonies, townships were mapped out using rectangular surveys of sorts, although base and meridian lines might not extend north and south. In the South, a system of meters and bound dominated. The passage of the Northwest Ordinance standardized the surveying of land and placed the task of surveying government lands that were to be sold under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Eventually, this included nearly all of the United States. 21. Clawson, Marion. Uncle Sam’s Acres. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1951), 45–46. 22. Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia. 1781–5.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 678–79. 23. Heilbronner, Robert and Aaron Singer. The Economic Transformation of America: 1600 to Present. Second Edition. (San Diego and Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers Inc., 1984), 80–81. 24. Ibid., 81. 25. Kemmis, Daniel. Community and the Politics of Place. 20–21. 26. Jefferson, Thomas. “First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 386. 27. Dorfman, Joseph. The Economic Mind in American Civilization, Volume 1 and Volume 2. (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), 315. 28. Roll, Eric. A History of Economic Thought 1938. (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin Inc., 1944), 129. 29. Eisinger, Chester. “The Influence of Natural Rights and Physiocreatic Doctrines on American Agrarian Thought During the Revolutionary Period.” Agricultual History 21 (1947): 13–23. 30. Hofstadter, Richard. “Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition.” Journal of the History of Ideas II (1941): 391–400. 31. Roll. A History of Economic Thought, 135. 32. Jefferson, Thomas “Prospectus on Political Economy, April 6, 1816.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 369. 33. Roll. A History of Economic Thought. 144. 34. Ibid., 148. 35. Hofstadter. Journal of the History of Ideas. 396. 36. My interpretation of J.B. Say with respect to his influence on Jefferson is that he was a popularizer of Adam Smith. 37. Jefferson, Thomas. “Report on the Privileges and Restrictions on the Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries, December 16, 1793.” The Complete

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Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943). 216–17. 38. ______. “Domestic Manufacture.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 374–75. 39. Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer’s Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897. (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1945), 439. 40. Jefferson, Thomas. “First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 385–86. 41. Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer’s Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897. 349. 42. Commons, John R. Legal Foundations of Capitalism. 1924. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), 21. 43. Jefferson, Thomas. “Notes on the State ofVirginia.” The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 678. 44. Commons. Legal Foundations of Capitalism. 164. As the judicial interpretation of property expanded to meet the reality of the late nineteenth century, the problems of monopolization and concentration of capital were increasingly becoming a matter also demanding legal and legislative resolution. 45. Veblen, Thorstein. Absentee Ownership and the Business Enterprise in Recent Times. 1923. (New York: Sentry Press, 1964), 37. 46. Ibid., 60. 47. Surrette, Jerry used the term “runaway potential of capitalization” in a conversation with the author in March 2001. 48. When I speak of property I am not concerned with personal property but rather with productive property, which is not static. It evolves with changing technological and economic circumstances. therefore, it is different in the era of petty commodity and handicraft production than it is in the era following the Industrial Revolution and the full “flowering” of laissez faire capitalism. 49. Marx distinguishes between the world of petty commodity production and the world of advanced market capitalism by using the notation C-M-C to describe the first, and M-C-M to describe the second. Marx claims in C-M-C people sell in order to buy, but in M-C-M, people buy in order to sell (Marx 1867 [1979], 146–66) Dudley Dillard correctly claims that Veblen’s distinction between business and industry, where the former comes to dominate the latter, and similarly captures this fundamental change in the economy (Dillard 1988, 209–21).

Chapter 2 1. Veblen, Thorstein. Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times. 1923. (New York: Sentry Press, 1992), 130–34.

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2. North, D.C. Growth and Welfare in the American Past. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1966), 125–32. 3. Again, the similarities between this nineteenth-century dynamic and the current housing and financial bubbles are unequivocal. Speculative bubbles are not aberrations but disequilibriums that reveal the basic logic of the system. They are a predictable and immutable force in a market economy manifesting themselves in different ways depending on the particular stage of economic development. Certainly during the nineteenth century one of the avenues of speculation was in land. 4. Treat, Payson Jackson. The National Land System, 1785–1820. 1910. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1967), 379–80. 5. Clawson, Marion. Man and the Land in the United States. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 65. 6. Treat. The National Land System, 1785–1820. 40. 7. Robbins, Roy. Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776–1936. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1962), 54. 8. Jefferson, Thomas. “Confidential Message Recommending a Western Exploring Expedition,” [1803]. In The Complete Jefferson, Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearch, Inc., 1943), 399. 9. As noted by David Wishart (1995, 120-39) in his study of the Cherokee, land also was taken from Native Americans who were engaged in agriculture. He notes that the motivation in this case was to extract rent. Although the Cherokee were agricultural, it was clear that their spiritual attachment to the land meant that land was not anything they could sell. Moreover, conceding Cherokee land claims would have set a dangerous precedent for all those tribes who had little agricultural inclination. This study does not preclude the role of imperialistic and purely racist motivations in taking Indian land. Moreover, one can interpret this as the American variant of primitive accumulation. 10. For example, the government sold very large tracts of land in private land sales to the Ohio Scioto companies and to John Cleve Symmes even before the Land Ordinance of 1787 became operational. But these companies were responsible for surveying these lands, which the government perceived beneficial at a time when there was substantial frustration over the ability to complete the surveys initiated under the Land Ordinance. Government surveys, which took place during this early period, were limited to external lines of township of 640 acres. In Treat’s words: “The surveys under the Ordinance only covered the external lines of the townships, the section lines were not run” (Treat, The National Land System 1785–1820. 92). The selling in larger plots may also have been motivated by a desire for township planning that seemed especially rational on the frontier. After the Ordinance of 1785 the government determined townships and 640 acres (sections) were to be sold. Treat states that this was a compromise between the northern and southern settlement practices in that township planning was encouraged through the sale of townships but individualistic settlement could take place by the selling of smaller

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plots of 640 acres. The influence of the northern settlement practices on the Land Ordinance had a certain logic. The northern system had the advantage of clear titles (before settlement) and compact and systematic settlement, which could simultaneously push the frontier westward while giving the settlers optimum chances for survival since they would have each other to depend on. “In the South the lack of proper surveys, careless manner of recording titles, and the use of natural boundaries caused constant confusion and endless litigation”(Treat The National Land System 1785–1820. 25). Thus the experience of the South informed the government of the need to convey clear titles. 11. Treat. The National Land System, 1785–1820. 92. 12. Ibid., 386. 13. Robbins. Our Landed Heritage. 91. 14. Gates, Paul Wallace. History of Public Land Law Development. (Washington, DC: Public and Law Review Commission, 1968), 236–37. 15. Robbins. Our Landed Heritage. 54. 16. Clawson, Marion. Man and Land in the United States. 68. 17. Treat. The National Land System. 381–82. 18. Robbins. Our Landed Heritage. 25. 19. Clawson, Marion. Man and Land in the United States. 68. 20. D.W. Allen (1991, 1–23) argues that settlement on land not yet available for sale helped to mitigate the military costs to the government associated with surveying land where conflicts with Native Americans were substantial. It is quite ambiguous whether, on balance, squatting was a benefit or a cost to the government. 21. Turner, Fredrick Jackson. The United States 1830–1850: The Nation and Its Sections. (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958), 20. 22. Clawson. Man and Land in the United States. 45. 23. Other factors also worked to tip the scales in favor of preemption. In particular, the threat that western migration presented to easterners subsided as transportation networks increased in the 1820s and 1830s because they allowed for huge increases of immigrants from Europe beginning in the 1830s, thus quelling the fears of easterners that labor costs would increase as a result of westward migration. 24. This effectively eliminated married women from access to free land. 25. Gates, Paul Wallace. “The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System.” American Historical Review 41 (1936): 659. 26. Gates goes on to explain that more revenue was generated in cash sales after the passage of the Homestead Act than had occurred before: $223 million versus $186 million, respectively. 27. Gates, Paul Wallace “The Homestead Act: Free Land Policy in Operation, 1862–1935.” (New York: Arno Press, 1979). (First published in Land Use Policy and Problems in the United States, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963). 30. 28. Fred Shannon, a land policy historian, offers observations regarding the Homestead Act, which could serve to illuminate its economic meaning, but in the

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end he fails to understand the significance of his observations. He states: “It is most essential to understand that the failure of the Homestead Act to assure settlement of farmers on small plots of land and to diffuse speculative and monopolistic activity was the result, more than anything, of the provisions of the act itself.” Shannon continues: “There were no provisions at all for getting day laborers and tenants to the places where the lands were to be had. . . . For that matter, what was the industrial worker going to substitute for experience when he turned to farming. . . . Almost, if not entirely, as bad was the failure to provide for the cancellation of patents if the homesteads were ever sold, transferred, or mortgaged to anyone but the government. . . . Again, the Homestead Act failed to stop the public auctioning of lands and other cash sales (in certain areas), railroad grants, or gifts to states which could be held for cash sales or, worse yet, turned over to private speculators.” Shannon concludes: “In fact, as Paul W. Gates has amply demonstrated, the new law was merely superimposed on an accretion of heterogeneous measures of earlier generations. So as to make even more confusing an already ‘incongruous land system.’ ” (Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer’s Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897. (New York: Farrar and Rhinehart, Inc, 1945), 54–56) 29. Smith. Virgin Land. 156. 30. Ibid., 205–6. 31. Other factors also tipped the scales in favor of passage of the Homestead Act. Technological innovations and the increased use of steam power and transportation, made it much easier to cross the Atlantic and increased immigration, which quelled fears that western migration would cause labor shortages in the East and raise labor costs. Rather than an economic threat, the West was increasingly looked on as an arena of economic opportunity, thereby quelling the eastern opposition to free land. Finally, southern states were opposed to the enactment of the Homestead Act because they feared the effects of free land on the plantation system that depended on slavery. Furthermore, the South feared if the government gave land away it would necessitate raising taxes in other ways like the enactment of tariffs, which would hurt them. It is not fortuitous that the Homestead Act was passed almost immediately after the southern states succeeded from the union. 32. Allen, Douglas W. “Homesteading and Property Rights; or, ‘How the West Was Really Won.’ ” Journal of Law and Economics 34 (1991): 1–23. 33. Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 391. 34. It is interesting to note that the policy for free land advocated by the land reform movement was much more radical then the Act, which passed in 1862. The land reform movement advocated an end to cash sales and advocated “inalienable homesteads with restrictions on inheritance and provisions for reversions of the land to the government” (Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 392). Had it been adopted it would have fundamentally altered the nature of land in the economic system and been incongruous with other land acts; the variant, which was adopted, had no such revolutionary character. 35. Smith. Virgin Land. 159.

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Chapter 3 1. Soil composition and drainage also contributed to the agricultural complexity of this region. 2. Gates, Paul Wallace. History of Public Land Law Development. (Washington DC: Public Land Law Review Commission, November 1968), 387–529. 3. Worster. Donald. The Wealth of Nature. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1993), 9–10. 4. Powell, John Wesley. Report on the Arid Region of the United States. 1878 ed. Wallace Stegner. (Cambridge, MA: the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962), viii–xi. 5. Worster, Donald. An Unsettled Country. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1994), 12. 6. Veblen, Thorsein. Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times. (1923) New York: Sentry Press, 1964. 135. 7. Charles Wilkinson. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West. Washington DC and Covelo, CA: Island Press. 1992. 231–3. 8. Ibid., 240. 9. Ganoe, John. “The Desert Land Act in Operation, 1877–91.” Agricultural History. 11 (1937): 156. 10. Ibid., 151. 11. Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 156. 12. Report of the Commissioner of the Government Land Office. 1925. 44. 13. Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 651. 14. Smythe, William E. The Conquest of Arid America. 1899, 1905. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1968), x–xi. 15. Gates, Paul Wallace. “Homesteading in the High Plains.” Agricultural History 5 (1977): 109. 16. ________. “The Homestead Act: Free Land Policy in Operation, 1862– 1935.” Public Land Policies. (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 40. (First published in Land Use Policy and Problems in the United States. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 640–43. 17. Ibid., 415. 18. Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 640–643. 19. Department of Commerce. Bureau of Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930; Volume I;1932, 52–7. 20. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development. 639–40. 21. Preemption was used in the late nineteenth century to gain valuable timber land, and by the 1890s concern about the management of forestlands was arising because of their importance for watersheds. Thus the impetus for the repeal of the Preemption Act was also driven by this dynamic. 22. Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 484–86.

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23. Ibid., 500. 24. Ibid., 504. 25. Ibid., 519. 26. Ibid., 8. 27. For example, in the basin where my grandfather homesteaded, virtually all of the homesteaders worked in the coal mines from November to April and then moved onto their homesteads in the spring and summer when work in the coal mines was slack. 28. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development. 499 and 520. In the period between 1905 and 1919, 27,125 original homestead entries were made in Nebraska for 11,935,471 acres. The average acreage per homestead was 440 acres. In the period from 1910 to 1914 (lagged five years from the original entries because this was the length of time allowed for proving up) 16,161 final entries were made on 7,201,560 acres of land. The average acreage per final entry was 440.3 acres. Acreage being much higher than 160 acres, indicates a fair number owed to the Kincaid Act although because 160-acre homesteads are not disaggregated from Kincaid homesteads the exact the amount owed to the Kincaid Act is unknown. The Enlarged Homestead Act also met with some success. In Wyoming between 1915 and 1917, 13,742 homestead claims were filed on 3,389,606 acres. The average claim was 246.6 acres. In the period from 1918 to 1920 (lagged three years), 7,999 claims went to final proof on 1,890,000 acres or 236.28 acres per final claim (Larson, T.A. History of Wyoming. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966. 414–15). 29. Unfortunately, it is impossible to disaggregate enlarged homesteads from 160-acre homesteads (although this period predates stock-raising homesteads) but the fact that the average acreage is greater than 160 acres indicates that some portion of claims were for enlarged homesteads. From 1918 to 1920, some 36,748 original entries on 14,024,263 acres had been made under the Stock Raising Homestead Act. Between 1921 and 1923 (lagged three years), 20,091 final entries on 6,760,169 acres had been made under this act (Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 520). Original entries averaged 381.6 acres per entry while final entries averaged 336,5 acres per entry. That acreage was smaller than 640 acres on average indicated that some individuals already had taken out 160-acre homesteads and land claims under the Enlarged Homestead Act as well and made up the difference with the Stock Raising Homestead Act. 30. Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 499. and Bureau of Census 1932, 52–57. 31. Larson. History of Wyoming. 52–57. and Bureau of Census, 1932, 52–57.

Chapter 4 1. Callicott, J. Baird. “The Wilderness Idea Revisited: The Sustainable Development Alternative.” In The Great New Wilderness Debate. ed. J. Baird Callicott

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and Michael Nelson. (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1988), 341. 2. Gates, Paul Wallace. History of Public Land Law Development. (Washington DC: Public Land Law Review Commission, November, 1968), 536. 3. Ibid., 536. 4. Ibid., 534. 5. Ibid., 551. 6. Ibid., 552. 7. Ibid., 552. 8. From the perspective of the individual entrepreneur, sustaining forests would have been an accidental result that would occur, even with well-specified property rights, only if the rate of return on timber was less than the discounted value of the rate of growth of the trees (Ackerman 1994, 21–26). 9. Knowledge about sustainable forestry practices and ecological results of deforestation for watershed protection had been understood for almost two decades before the passage of the Forest Reserve Amendment. 10. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development. 565. 11. Ibid., 567. 12. Wilkinson, Charles F. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West. (Washington, DC and Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1992). 13. Thus, many powerful western ranchers and stockmen opposed giving jurisdiction of grazing land to the Forest Service and they were a powerful political force as they dominated western politics. 14. For a time there was a push to rename the Department of the Interior, the Department of Conservation but many objected because conservation was not deemed to be its only purpose. 15. Donohue, Debra L. The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 74. 16. Gates. History of Public Land Law Development. 629. 17. Donohue. The Western Range Revisited. 194. 18. Wilkinson. Crossing the Next Meridian. 38. 19. Ibid., 40. 20. Ibid., 39. 21. Ibid., 44. 22. Ibid., 45. 23. Ibid., 33. This seems to anticipate the present conditions of NAFTA which require that companies be compensated if nations take action which affects their ability to garner profit. 24. Wilkinson. Crossing the Next Meridian. 53. 25. Dombeck, Michael P., Christopher A Wood, and Jack E. Williams. From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy. (Washington DC, Covelo, CA, and London: Island Press, 2003), 182.

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26. Limerick, Patricia Nelson.Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2000), 26. 27. Daly, Herman E. “Economics in a Full World.” Scientific American (September 2005): 100–107. 28. Wilkinson. Crossing the Next Meridian. 128–29. 29. Ibid., 131. 30. Ibid., 134. 31. In 1964, with the passage of the Wilderness Act, some areas of the forest preserves were specifically cordoned off thereby eliminating competition for use on these parcels. 32. Wilkinson, Crossing the Next Meridian. 144. 33. Ibid., 145. 34. Ibid., 147. 35. Donahue, The Western Range Revisited. 204–5. 36. Ibid., 77. 37. Ibid., 206. 38. Ibid., 208. 39. Dombeck, Wood, and Williams. From Conquest to Conservation. 164. 40. Acherman, Frank and Lisa Hwinzerling. Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing. (New York: The New Press, 2004), 180.

Chapter 5 1. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1967), 16. 2. Turner, Frederick Jackson, The United States 1830–1820: The Nation and Its Secions. (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958). 3. Rolston, Homes III. “The Wilderness Idea Reaffirmed.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. ed J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson. (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1998), 370. 4. Foreman, Dave. “Wilderness Area for Real.” The Great Wilderness Debate. ed J. Baird Callicott and Michael Nelson. (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1998), 403 5. Collier, John. “Wilderness and Modern Man.” Wildlands in Our Civilization. ed by David Brower. (San Francisco: Sierra Club. 1964), 116. 6. Shepard, Paul. “Ten Thousand Years of Crisis.” The Only World We’ve Got. ed by Paul Shepard. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 193. 7. ___________. Coming Home to the Pleistocene. ed Florence R. Shepard. (Washington, DC, and Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1998). Shepard elaborates on the roots of this genetic foundation which is “passed onto us not only through our parents and generations of humans, but from archaic ancestors: primate mammalian, reptilian, amphibian, ichthyia.” 19.

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8. Ibid., 131. 9. ___________. Nature and Madness. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. 1982), 16. 10. Ibid., 9. 11. Ibid., 129. 12. Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development.Volume 1. (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1967), 36. 13. Abrahms, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 262. 14. Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. 1844.” Marx’s Concept of Man. ed. Erich Fromm (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishng Co., 1982), 102. 15. Roll, Eric. A History of Economic Thought. 1938. (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1974), 448. 16. Both also admit, in different ways, that this process of the humanizing experience of domestication has been “perverted” under the organization of the market economy. For Marx the perversion of this process appears as alienation from the work process and the product of our labor and in the end leaves many people exploited and dehumanized. It is well to remember that approximately 1.2 billion people are not even properly nourished. For Veblen this perversion appears in the process where business sabotages industry so that our technological capacities are not translated into making life better for the masses. 17. Ekrich, Arthur A., Jr. Man and Nature in America. (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963), 6–7. 18. Worser, Donald. The Wealth of Nature. 1992. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 66. 19. Worster, Donald. American Environmentalism: The Formative Period, 1860–1915. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1973), 197. 20. Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: with essays on conservation from Round River. 1949, 1953. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 254. 21. Douglas, William O. My Wilderness: East to Katahdin. (Garden City and New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1961), 53. 22. Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. ed. by William Cronon. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1995), 78. 23. Leopold. A Sand County Almanac. 264–65. 24. Talbot, Carl. “Wilderness Narrative and the Cultural Logic of Capitalism.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. ed. by Callicott and Nelson. 328. 25. Callicott. The Great New Wilderness Debate. ed. by Callicott and Nelson. 341. 26. Cronon. “The Trouble with Wilderness.” in Uncommon Ground. 78–79. In a similar vein, it is not surprising that today developing nations accuse the U.S. environmental movement, which calls for preservation, of elitism.

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27. This is not to say that wilderness preservation would have fared better had it been in the hands of the working class. 28. Leopold. A Sand County Almanac. 265. 29. Wilderness Act of 1964. Return of the Wild: The Future of Our Natural Lands, edited by Ted Kerasote, the Pew Wilderness Center Washington, DC. Covelo. CA, and London: Island Press, 2001, 198. 30. Shepard, Nature and Madness. 14–15. 31. O’Connor, James. “The Second Contradiction of Capitalism.” Greening of Marxism. ed Ted Benton. (New York: Guilford Press, 1996). 32. Rapid changes brought about by global climate change threaten species extinction and the loss of intact ecosystems so there are very real implications for wilderness in this environmental problem. 33. Collier, John. “Wilderness and Modern Man.” Wildlands in Our Civilization. ed David Brower. (San Francisco: Sierra Club. 1964), 124. 34. Ackerman, Frank and Lisa Heinzerling. Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing. (New York: The New Press. 2004), 8–9.

Epilogue 1. Mishan, E.J. The Economic Growth Debate: An Assessment. (London: George Allen and Unwin, LTD., 1977), 29. 2. Daly, Herman. E. “Economics in a Full World.” Scientific American (September 2005): 100–107. 3. Thoreau, Henry David. “Economy.” 1854. The Portable Thoreau. ed Carl Bode. (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 263. 4. Solow, Robert. “Sustainability: An Economist’s Perspective.” Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings. ed Robert Dorfman and Nancy S. Dorfman. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1993), 181. 5. Pollan, Michael. Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. (New York: Grove Press, 1991), 176–201. 6. McKibben, Bill. Hope, Human and Wild: True stories of living lightly on the earth. (Saint Paul, MN: Ruminator Books: 1995), 186–99.

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Index Abrahms, David, 88–89 Ackerman, Frank, 82, 97 Age of Revolution, The (Hobsbawm), 9 agrarian, defined, 1 agrarian ethos agricultural production, 4–5, 103–104 arid land, 6, 49–51, 53, 57, 63 cultural attitude, 2, 24, 45, 99 defined, 2–3 domestication, 2, 3, 6, 28–29, 85, 89–90 government land agencies, 65–66, 82 land policies, 31, 45, 47 manufacturing and, 25 public land, 6, 67, 83 Thomas Jefferson and, 27 See also market economy; wilderness ethos agrarian ideal on arid land, 52, 57 connection to land, 29, 31–32 defined, 4, 31 and economic liberalism, 24 Henry Nash Smith on, 44–45, 47 and Homestead Act, 44–45, 47 Jefferson’s vision, 1–2, 9–10, 26, 29, 100 market economy and, 1–2, 10, 24, 44 Native Americans and, 35, 109n9 preemption, 41 agrarian man on arid land, 50

defined, 1, 5–6, 9 evolution of, 49, 63 and Homestead Act, 44 agrarian vision, 4 agricultural production agricultural markets, 36–37, 39 on arid land, 5–6, 50–52, 54, 62, 72 community agriculture, 103–104 development of, 35, 39–40, 44–45, 50–51 Jefferson’s vision, 9–10, 17–18, 35 land policies, 53–54, 56–57, 60 manufacturing influence on, 25–27 Native Americans and, 14 peasant proprietorship, 12 ranching, 72 small scale, 67–69, 103–104 as sound democracy, 9–10 surplus in, 19–20 water and, 49, 53–54 See also farmers/farming; Physiocrats alienated land, 24 Allen, D. W., 46, 110n20 arid land agrarian ideal on, 52, 57 agrarian man on, 50, 72 agricultural production on, 5–6, 50–52, 54, 62, 72 and homesteading, 49–50 raising stock on, 58–59 Austin, Benjamin, 22–23

125

126

Index

biodiversity, 69–70 Brower, David, 90 Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 65, 73, 74, 75, 81, 82 California gold rush, 75 Callicott, J. Baird, 66–67, 92 capital, defined, 28 ceteris paribus, 93 Cherokee peoples, 109n9 civilization policy, 14 Clawson, Marion, 16, 34, 39, 40, 41 coal, 76 Collier, John, 86–87, 95–96 Coming Home to the Pleistocene (Shepard), 85 commercialism, 57, 90, 91 commodity production, 1–2, 4, 12, 24, 52, 69, 70, 75, 78, 108n49 Commons, John R., 26, 27–28 community agriculture, 103–104 Community and the Politics of Place (Kemmis), 18 commutation, 43, 61 Conquest of Arid America (Smythe), 57 conservation, 6, 66–67, 71–73, 75–79, 82–83, 92 credit, extension of, 36–37 Cronon, William, 91, 92 Crossing the Next Meridian (Wilkinson), 49 Daly, Herman, 79, 101 Department of Agriculture (DA), 65, 71 Department of the Interior (DOI), 65, 73, 114n14 depletion of forests, 69–70 Desert Land Act (DLA) of 1877, 43, 55–59 Dillard, Dudley, 108n49 divine right, 15–16

DLA. See Desert Land Act of 1877 doctrine of prior appropriations, 54–55 Dombeck, Michael P., 77, 82 domestication, 86–89, 94–97, 100, 116n16 Donahue, Debra, 74, 81 Dorfman, Joseph, 19 Douglas, William O., 90–91 dry farming, 61 Dupont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel, 19 ecological consequences of forests, 70, 72–73, 114n8 economic development agrarian vision of, 4, 5 of arid land, 72 benefits of, 91, 101 and economic independence, 23–24 fossil fuel resources, 77 and Homestead Act, 44 manufacturing in, importance of, 25 minerals, 75, 76 and natural law, 24 for upper class, 93 and Thomas Jefferson, 10, 24–29 economic growth, 100–101 economic liberalism, 16–19, 23–25 Eisinger, Chester, 20 Ekrich, Arthur A., 90 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 90 Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, 59, 61, 72–73, 113n28 entails, practice of, 15 Environmental Protection Agency, 77 Erie Canal, 40 Evans, George Henry, 44 evolutionary economics, 3–4 See also institutional economics exchange economy, 33 exchange value, 24 extension of credit, 36–37

Index

127

Farmer’s Last Frontier, The (Shannon), 23 farmers/farming on arid land, 51–52 dry farming, 61 Jefferson’s views on, 1, 2, 9–10, 13–14 and land speculation, 32–33 manufacturing and, 91 miners compared to, 78 Native Americans as, 13–14 and timber, 69 See also agricultural production; noble farmer Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, 78, 81 fee-simple ownership, 15–16, 36, 37, 43, 75 feudal land relations, 15 first in time first in right principle, 76 Foreman, David, 86 forest land, 67–72, 79, 114 See also timber Forest Purchase Act of 1911, 71–72 Forest Reserve Act of 1891, 70–71, 114n9 fossil fuel resources, 77 Franklin, Benjamin, 19 free trade, 21–23

Government Land Office (GLO) agricultural development and, 56 evolution of, 65, 73 and Homestead Act, 45–46, 59 squatters and, 41 and Stock Raising Homestead Act, 61–62 government reclamation. See reclamation GRA. See General Revision Act (GRA) of 1891 Graduation Act of 1854, 46 grazing permits, 74 grazing rights, 73, 114, 114n13 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi), 65 Greeley, Horace, 44

Ganoe, John, 55 garden ethic, 103 gas, 76 Gates, Paul Wallace, 38, 42–43, 46, 50, 58–61, 69–71, 110n26, 113n28 General Revision Act (GRA) of 1891, 56, 59, 70 GLO. See Government Land Office global climate change, 95, 111 gold rush, 75 “Government by the People” ( Jefferson), 99

Industrial Forestry Association, 80 Industrial Revolution, 2–4, 24–25, 27–28, 52, 85, 91 institution, defined, 3 institutional economics, 3–4, 100 See also evolutionary economics irrigation. See reclamation

Hamilton, Alexander, 34 Hardrock Mining Law of 1872, 76–78 Heilbroner, Robert, 17 Heinzerling, Lisa, 82 Henry, John, 12 Hobsbawm, Eric, 9, 13 Homestead Act of 1862, 32, 42–47, 58–59, 110n28, 111n31, 111n34 homesteads, 49–50, 62, 113n28, 113n29 human progress, 88–89 hunting and gathering lifestyle, 11, 14, 35, 86–87, 101

Jefferson, Thomas agrarian ideal, 1–2, 9–10, 26, 29, 100 on agricultural production, 9–10, 17–18, 35

128

Index

Jefferson, Thomas (continued) on agriculture taxation, 20, 21 Alexander Hamilton versus, 34 on citizenship and farming, 10 civilization policy, 14 and economic development, 10, 24–29 on economic liberalism, 16–19, 23–25 entails, practice of, 15 on farming, 1, 2, 9–10, 13–14 fee-simple ownership, 16 on free trade, 21–22 “Government by the People,” 99 on Industrial Revolution, 4, 27–28 laissez-faire capitalism, 18, 21–23 and land ownership, 10–11, 16 and land speculation, 34 letter to Benjamin Austin, 22–23 Louisiana Purchase, 14 on manufacturing, 17–18, 22–23, 25, 27 on market economy, 18, 25 and Native Americans, 13–16, 35–36 and “natural law,” 24, 27 and the Physiocrats, 16, 19–20 on property rights, 11–12, 14 rectangular surveying, 16 and Adam Smith, 21–24 and taxation, 20–21 Kemmis, Daniel, 10, 18 Kincaid Act of 1904, 59, 61, 113n28 labor division of, 24 domestication and, 89 John Locke on, 11–14 and mineral rights, 76 and right to property, 11–14, 28, 33, 35, 68

timber and, 68 laissez-faire capitalism, 18–23, 24, 49, 54, 55, 70 Land Ordinance of 1785, 35 land ownership fee-simple ownership, 37, 43 and mineral rights, 76 John Wesley Powell on, 52 and ranching, 72–75 speculating and, 4, 5, 32–33 Thomas Jefferson on, 10–11, 16 transferring ownership, 16 See also public land land policies 1785–1820, 34–38 1820–1841, 38–41 1841–1862, 42–47 agricultural production and, 53–54, 56–57, 60 on arid land, 5–6 economic role of, 42, 110n26 eighteenth-century, 32 extension of credit, 36 flexibility in, 58–60 grazing policy, 73–74 for minerals, 76 multiple-use mandate, 79–83 and Native Americans, 35–36 surveying land, 36 water resources, 53–57 in the West, 50, 53, 57–58 See also public land land speculation. See speculation, land leasing, government sponsored, 73 Leopold, Aldo, 90, 92, 93–94 Limerick, Patricia, 78 livestock raising, 61 Locke, John, 11–14, 68 Louisiana Purchase, 14 man-nature connection, 87–89

Index manufacturing agricultural production and, 25–27 and economic liberalism, 25 farming vs, 91 and free trade, 22–23 Jefferson on, 17–18, 22–23, 25, 27 market capitalism, evolution of, 27–28, 31, 41, 49–50, 63, 89–90, 99 market economy agrarian ethos and, 99 agrarian ideal and, 1–2, 10, 24, 44 of arid West, 50–52, 63 expansionary propensity of, 25 government land agencies influence on, 66 Homestead Act and, 45, 47 and institutional economics, 4 land-based, 4–7, 24, 32 manufacturing and, 18, 23 natural order of, 21 Powell, John Wesley on, 52–53 preemption and, 41 property rights and, 19 and providence, 19 speculating and, 33, 44, 46, 111n34 Thomas Jefferson on, 18, 25 and timber, 67–72 wilderness ethos and, 3, 6–7, 90–95, 99 Marshall, Bob, 90 Marx, Karl, 89, 108n49, 116n16 material conditions, 3 maturation, 87 McKibben, Bill, 103 Mead, Elwood, 54–55 mercantilist protectionist, 20 middle class, 91–93 mineral law, 75 Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, 76–77 minerals, 75–78, 114n23 miners/mining, 75–76, 78

129

Mishan, E.J., 101 monopolization, 59, 103–104 Muir, John, 90, 92 multiple-use mandate, 79–83 Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960, 79–80 Mumford, Lewis, 88 Murie, Olaus, 90 Nash, Roderick, 85 National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 82 National Forest Management Act of 1976, 80 national forests, uses of, 79 National Park Service, 65, 71 Native Americans, 13–16, 35–36, 46, 109n9 natural capital, 95 natural law, 19, 24, 27–28, 36, 115n7 natural order, 20, 21 natural resource law, 77 natural rights of property. See property rights natural world, 87–88, 89–90, 115n7 nature, 92, 102–103 See also wilderness nature-man connection, 87–89 noble farmer, 4–5, 32–33, 44, 47, 63, 78, 105n3 See also farmers/farming North, D.C., 33 Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 35 Notes on the State of Virginia ( Jefferson), 9, 26 oil, 76 Organic Act of 1897, 71 parks, urban, 92, 116n26 peasant proprietorship, 12

130

Index

pedis possession, 76 petty commodity production, 1–2, 4, 12, 24, 52, 69, 70, 75, 78, 108n49 Physiocrats, 16, 19–20 Pinchot, Gifford, 66–67, 71, 79, 95 Polanyi, Karl, 2, 65 Pollan, Michael, 102–103 pollution, 78 postindustrial society, 95–97 Powell, John Wesley, 51–53 preemption, 38–41, 42, 110n23, 112n21 Preemption Act of 1841, 38–39, 58, 60, 70–71, 75–76, 112n21 preservation, 80–81, 91, 93–94, 96, 103, 116n26 primogeniture, 15 productive property, 27–28, 108n44, 108n48 produit net, 19–20 property ownership. See land ownership property rights, 114n14 divine right vs, 15–16 and labor, 11–14, 28, 33, 35, 68 and minerals, 76, 114n23 for Native Americans, 13–14 natural right to, 13–16, 18–19, 68 philosophical basis of, 11–12, 14 practice of entails, 15 transferring ownership, 16 water resources, 53–57 providence, 19 public land and agricultural ideal, 2, 6 defined, 83 environmental concern of, 81, 82–83 grazing rights, 73 and Homestead Act, 46 leasing of, 73 management of, 6, 66, 67, 79–80 multiple uses of, 79 plundering, 66–67

policies on forest ecology, 71 in post-war era, 79–83 and private enterprise, 67 revenue generation, 34 set aside, 91, 93 squatting on, 39–41 and timber, 68 wilderness preservation and, 91 See also land ownership ranching, 72–75 ravaging commercialism, 90, 91 reclamation, 53, 55–57, 59, 62, 66, 72 Reclamation Act of 1902, 57 rectangular surveying, 16, 37 See also surveying land rent-seeking behavior, 4, 32–33, 105n3, 109, 109n3 Report on the Arid Region of the United States (Powell), 51–52 residency requirement, 62 revenue generation, 34–35 Robbins, Roy, 38, 39 Roll, Eric, 19–20, 89 Rolston, Holmes, 86 Russell, Bertrand, 12 safety valve theory, 45 Say, J. B., 21 set aside, 91, 93, 96 settlement and Homestead Act, 43–44 speculation vs, 38–39 Shannon, Fred, 110n28 Shannon, Fred A., 23, 25, 45 Shepard, Paul, 85, 87–88, 94, 115n7 Singer, Aaron, 17 Smith, Adam, 18, 21–24, 27–28 Smith, Henry Nash, 10, 31, 44–45, 47 Smythe, William, 57 Solow, Robert, 102

Index specialization and trade, 23–24 species-being, 89 speculation, land on arid land, 50–51 defined, 4–5 and Desert Land Act, 56 extension of credit, 37 and farming, 32–33 and Homestead Act, 43–44 policies flexibility, 59 rent seeking and, 4, 32–35, 105n3, 109n3 settlement versus, 38–39 squatters, 39–40 and Thomas Jefferson, 34 timber and, 67–69, 79 transportation on, effects of, 40 squatters/squatting, 39–41, 110n20 steam power, 44–45 Stegner, Wallace, 51 Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916, 58–59, 61–62, 72–73, 113n29 Sullivan, Mike, 80 surveying land, 16, 36, 107n20, 109n10 sustainability, 102, 103 Symmes, John Cleve, 109n10 Talbot, Carl, 92 tax on agriculture, 20–21 Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, 58–59, 73–75 Thoreau, Henry David, 90, 96, 101 timber, 67–69, 79, 112n21 See also forest land Timber and Stone Act of 1878, 43, 69, 70 Timber Culture Act of 1873, 58, 59–60, 70–71 Timber Cutting Act of 1878, 69, 70 trade and specialization. See specialization and trade

131

Transfer Act of 1905, 71 transportation, 40 Treat, Payson Jackson, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 109n10 “Treatise of Civil Government” (Locke), 11 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 41, 85 upper class, 91–93 urban parks, 92, 116n26 urban production, 12 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), 65–66 U.S. Forest Service (USFS), 65, 73, 79 use value, 24 utilitarian conservation, 66 Veblen, Thorstein, 3, 27–28, 32, 53, 89, 99–100, 108n49, 116n16 Virgin Land (Smith), 31 wage labor, 12, 47, 62, 92 Wallace, Anthony C., 14 water reclamation. See reclamation water resources and agricultural production, 49, 53–54 for mining, 76 as property, 53–57 state agencies and, 55 watershed land, 67–72, 112n21, 114n9 Western rancher, 50 wilderness defined, 86 garden ethic vs, 103 in postindustrial society, 95–97 preservation, 91, 93–94, 116n27 set aside, 93–94, 96 Wilderness Act of 1964, 94 wilderness ethos domestication, 85, 87–89, 100–101

132

Index

wilderness ethos (continued) market economy and, 3, 6–7, 90–95, 99 sustainability, 102–103 See also agrarian ethos wilderness sensibility, 86–90, 91–93 wildness, human progress in, 87, 88–89

Wilkinson, Charles, 49, 54, 71, 75–76, 79–81 Williams, Jack E., 77, 82 Wishart, David, 109n9 Wood, Christopher A., 77, 82 Wood, Ellen Meiskins, 12 working class, 91–93, 116n27 Worster, Donald, 10, 51, 52, 55–56, 90

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