John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[103] both before and after he became city editor. He was a consistent and persistent writer of editorials on every aspect of the subject, but as it has been accepted as the established policy of the nation under a succession of Republican presidents, from Lincoln to Roosevelt, it can hardly be considered necessary at this time to summarize, much less to repeat, the arguments for or against it. But there was a cognate discussion carried on with great warmth for the same decade in behalf of land reform and the emancipation of labor, in which Dana took a leading part. I do not understand that this discussion had reference to land tenure, or to any special form of taxation, but rather to the disposition of the public lands owned by the government. Dana's idea was that Congress should pass such laws as would put it in the reach of every citizen to acquire a quarter section, or one hundred and sixty acres, of public land as a homestead by free gift from the government, on the sole condition of actual settlement, improvement, and cultivation, and that the government should besides encourage the construction of railroads into and through the unimproved lands in the Far West, by giving the companies having them in hand such liberal land grants as were proper and necessary. But, on the other hand, he strenuously opposed all bounty land bills, for the ostensible purpose of rewarding military services to the republic. He resisted such measures as “a great outrage on the rights of the people for the benefit of speculators and land sharks.” He contended that the soldiers would neither get the lands, nor anything like their value, but that while the tree might be shaken in their name, “the fruit would be gathered and devoured in Wall Street and in similar patriotic localities.” A further argument was that such measures would tend to interfere with a railroad to the Pacific, an “enterprise” which he considered as “by far the most important in its ”