Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1936 (1942).
PREFACE With the executive withdrawals of all public lands from private entry in 1935, the opportunity for individual settlement on the public domain officially came to an end. For the future there remained only the consideration of the permanent national domain -- national parks, forest reserves, game reserves, grazing and mineral lands. The time is thus ripe for a synthesis on the history of the public lands of the United States.
This volume presents perhaps the first attempt to integrate American land history with the other forces that have shaped our civilization. It is not all political, economic and legal; considerable social history is inextricably bound up with public land settlement, which helps to make the whole story livelier and more interesting. This volume therefore constitutes not only a study in history and in public administration, but also a study in American democracy. Hence it is hoped that the research in this book will help to sustain within certain stipulated limitations that portion of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier hypothesis as stated in 1903:
"Whenever social conditions tended to crystallize in the East, whenever capital tended to press upon labor or political restraints to impede the freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions of the frontier. These free lands promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. ... In a word then, free lands meant free opportunities."1The author is deeply indebted to the Social Science Research Council for a grant-in-aid awarded in 1937 for the purpose of making a study of public reaction to the conservation movement in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions during the period, 1880 to 1920. Grateful acknowledgment is also made for the considerate assistance of the staffs of the following libraries: the Wisconsin State Historical Society Library, the Western Reserve Historical Society Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Washington Library, the Seattle Public-Library, the Bancroft Library of the University of California, and the Huntington Library not to mention numerous other libraries where less extensive research was carried on. The author also acknowledges with appreciation the helpful assistance of the staffs of the General Land Office in Washington, D.C., and of the many newspaper offices whose files were so generously opened to him.
Particular thanks are due to Elbert J. Benton, Dean of the Graduate School of Western Reserve University; John D. Hicks, professor of history, University of Wisconsin; Bertha E. Josephson, editorial associate of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review; and my father-in-law, Herbert H. Gowen, professor of oriental studies, University of Washington, all of whom carefully read the text and made critical comments and suggestions. A special debt of gratitude is also owed to a number of graduate students -- too numerous to mention individually -- who, enrolled in the author's seminars during summer sessions at the University of Washington and Montana State University, gave valuable assistance in uncovering much information from old newspaper and periodical files. An exchange of letters with the late Joseph Schafer, superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, and Murray Kane of New York City on the "safety-valve hypothesis" also proved very helpful. Finally, tribute must be paid to my wife for her generous and intelligent assistance in the checking and proofreading of this manuscript.
R.M.R.
Indianapolis, Indiana.