THE LAST OF THE FRONTIER

Five statutes that received the signature of Grover Cleveland are documentary proof of the new problems and the changing attitude of the National Administration during the eighties. They indicate that the chief function of the National Government had ceased to be to moderate among a group of self-sufficient States and had come to be the direction of such interests as were national in importance or extent. On February 4, 1887, the Interstate Commerce Law was passed in recognition of a transportation system that had become national; and four days later the Dawes Bill, providing that lands should be issued to Indians in severalty, marked the disappearance of the wild Indian from the border. In 1889 a Department of Agriculture, with a seat in the Cabinet, and a law for the survey of irrigation sites in the Far West, mark the interest of a nation in the prosperity of its whole area and population; while laws of 1889 and 1890 admitting six new States extended the chain of commonwealths for the first time from ocean to ocean. A process that had been under way since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock had culminated in the occupation of the whole breadth of the continent.

The first continental railroad, the Union Pacific, chartered in 1862 and finished in 1869, was admittedly a national project. Its purpose was to bind the Pacific Slope to the East in a period when sectionalism was a menace to national unity. Its opening was the first step in the completion of an intricate system of lines extending to the Pacific. Direct federal aid was given to the road in the form of land grants, right of way, and a loan of bonds.

Other continental railroads were authorized in the later sixties. In 1864 a Northern Pacific, to connect Lake Superior and Puget Sound, made its appearance. In 1866 the Atlantic & Pacific was given the right to run from a southwestern terminal at Springfield, Missouri, to southern California. In 1871 the Texas Pacific was designed to connect the head of navigation on the Red River, near Shreveport and Texarkana, with Fort Yuma and San Diego. Additional lines with continental possibilities received charters from the Western States,—the Denver & Rio Grande, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa FÉ,—and received indirectly a share of the public domain as an inducement to build. Congress stopped making land grants for this purpose in 1871, but not until more lines than could be used for twenty years had been allowed.

All the continental railways were begun before 1873, were checked by the five years of depression, and were revived about 1878. When they began again to build there was associated with them a new project for an old continental route.

The interoceanic canal had been foreseen ever since the first white man stood on the Isthmus and gazed at the Pacific. Its construction had been stimulated by the gold discoveries and the California emigration of 1848-49, and had been arranged for in a treaty signed with Great Britain in 1850. No means to build the canal were found, however, and the project drifted along until De Lesseps finished his canal at Suez, and the new interest in continental communication in America resuscitated the canal at Panama. In 1878 a French company, with De Lesseps at its head, obtained a concession from Colombia. It began work in 1880, at once arousing the jealousy of the United States which was shown in the efforts of Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and procure for the United States a free hand at the Isthmus. Cleveland reverted to the policy of a neutralized canal in 1885, but interest on either side was premature, since no canal was built for thirty years.

The continental railways aroused keen interest in problems of transportation by their completion between 1881 and 1885. The Northern Pacific was finished under the direction of Henry Villard, a German journalist who had been a correspondent in the Civil War and had managed the interests of foreign investors after 1873. He gained control of the partly finished Northern Pacific and the local lines of Oregon through a holding company known as the Oregon & Transcontinental. In September, 1883, he took a special train, full of distinguished visitors, over his lines to witness the driving of the last spike near Helena, Montana. On the way out, they stopped at Bismarck to help lay the corner-stone for an ambitious new capitol of the Territory of Dakota. From Duluth to Tacoma the new line brought in immigrants whose freight made its chief business.

South of the Northern Pacific, the original main line of the Union Pacific ran from Omaha up the Platte Trail through Cheyenne to Ogden, with a branch from Kansas City to Denver and Cheyenne. Between the main line and the branch the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy constructed a road that reached Denver in May, 1882. Here it met, in 1883, the Denver & Rio Grande, a narrow-gauge road that penetrated the divide by way of the caÑon of the Arkansas River, and extended to the Great Salt Lake. The two roads together offered a competition to the Union Pacific for its whole length from the Missouri River to Ogden, and drove that road to extend feeder branches south to the Gulf and north into Oregon.

Farther south the Atchison, Topeka & Santa FÉ stretched the whole length of Kansas and followed the old trail to Santa FÉ and the Rio Grande, and thence to Old Mexico. Its owners coÖperated with the owners of the Atlantic & Pacific franchise, and the Southern Pacific of California, to build a connecting link between the Atchison, Topeka & Santa FÉ at Albuquerque and the Colorado River at the Needles. From this point the Southern Pacific traversed the valleys of California. In October, 1883, trains were running from San Francisco to St. Louis over this road.

railways

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railways

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THE WESTERN RAILROADS AND THE CONTINENTAL FRONTIER, 1870-1890

The Southern Pacific of California met the other continental lines at the Fort Yuma crossing of the Colorado River. The Texas Pacific had got only to Fort Worth before the panic of 1873. It now built across Texas toward El Paso. Subsidiary corporations owned by the Southern Pacific men built the line between El Paso and Fort Yuma, and enabled a through service to start to St. Louis in January, and to New Orleans in October, 1882. Yet another Southern Pacific line was opened through San Antonio and Houston, tapping the commerce of the Gulf shore, and running trains to New Orleans in February, 1883.

The opening of great lines in the United States in the early eighties was part of a similar movement throughout the world. In Canada, Sir Donald Smith, later raised to the peerage as Lord Strathcona, was beginning the Canadian Pacific from Port Arthur to Vancouver, while on the Continent of Europe the first train of the "Orient Express" left Paris for Constantinople in June, 1883. In November, 1883, the American railroads, realizing that they were a national system, agreed upon a scheme of standard time by which to run their trains. Heretofore every road had followed what local time it chose, to the confusion of the traveling public.

Most of the continental railways had extensive land grants, of from twenty to forty sections per mile of track, but whether they had lands to sell or not they were vitally interested in the settlement of the regions through which they ran. Each encouraged immigration and colonization. Their literature, scattered over Europe, was one factor in the heavy drift of population that started after 1878. Six new Western States were created in the ten years after their completion.

The youngest American Territory in the eighties was Wyoming, created in 1868, and the youngest State was Colorado, admitted in 1876. After Colorado, the political division of the West embraced eight organized Territories: Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington along the Canadian line, Wyoming and Utah in the middle, Arizona and New Mexico on the Mexican border. Besides these Territories there was the unorganized remnant of the Indian country known as Indian Territory, and attracting the covetous glances of frontiersmen in all the near-by Western States.

Agriculture was the main reliance of the wave of pioneers that poured over the plains along the lines of the railroads. In the valley of the Red River of the North, wheat-farming was their staple industry. As the Old South had devoted itself to the staple crop of cotton, so this new region took up the single crop of wheat, bringing to its cultivation great machines, white labor, and a modified factory system. South of the wheat country, corn dominated in Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, and went to market either as grain or in the converted form of hogs or stock. In Texas the cotton-fields pushed into new areas. The farm lands completely surrounded the Indian Territory, in which a diversified agriculture was known to be both possible and profitable.

Across the United States, from Canada to Mexico, the advance line of farms pushed from the well-watered bottoms of the Mississippi Valley into the plains that rise toward the Rocky Mountains. Near the ninety-seventh meridian the rainfall of this region becomes insufficient for general farming in ordinary years. But the solicitations of land-sellers brought settlers into the sub-humid region, while for a few years in the eighties the rainfall was greater than the average. Permanent climatic changes were imagined by the hopeful. A Governor of Kansas stated, in 1886, "with absolute certainty, that great areas in the Western third of Kansas are becoming more fertile," while an Eastern Senator, who was generally well informed, believed in 1888 that "the whole Territory of Dakota is as capable of sustaining population as Iowa."

Between the farming frontier and the mountains the cattlemen expanded the grazing industry, with profits that were enlarged because of the markets that the railroads brought them. The "long drive" from Texas to Montana became a familiar idea on the border, while the cowboys in their lonely watches developed a folk-song literature that is typically American. Between the cattlemen and the sheepmen there was permanent war, for the sheep injured the grass they grazed over. Although both industries were trespassers on the public lands the herders resented the appearance of the flocks as an intrusion upon their domain.

Kansas City rose suddenly to prominence as the meeting-place of the railways of the West and Southwest with those of the East. Near to the line that divided steady agriculture from the nomadic life of the plains it became a convenient market for both. Here the packers developed the traffic in fresh beef that the new railways with their refrigerator cars made possible. The cities of the East, in need of more fresh meat than the local farmers could provide, found their supply on the plains of the Far West.

Beyond the plains, the mountain regions changed less from the advent of the railways than any other section of the remote West. They had attracted population to their camps during the Civil War, and now they grew in size and permanence. But only such regions reached permanent importance as had valleys to be irrigated and fields to be cultivated. Without agriculture no important region has flourished in the West.

Toward the end of the eighties the pressure of the population for more homestead lands brought about the opening of Oklahoma. Here, for over half a century, the Indian tribes had lived in full possession. After the Civil War the plains tribes had been colonized here too. Now, as the lands were awarded to the Indians in severalty under the Dawes Act, the old tribal holdings were surrendered and large areas were offered to white settlement. After ten years of ejectment and restraint the Oklahoma boomers were let into the country in 1889. Guthrie and Oklahoma City were created overnight, and in 1890 the Territory of Oklahoma received permanent organization.

Before the last continental railway was finished, the Territories were asking for statehood and were showing advance in population to justify it. When Villard aided in the corner-stone laying at Bismarck in 1883 there were already three clearly defined groups of population in Dakota and an ultimate division had been determined upon by the settlers. Repeatedly, in the decade, the Dakota colonists framed constitutions and signed petitions, and the Republicans in Congress sought to give them statehood. The Democratic House, which prevailed from 1883 to 1889, saw no reason for creating more Republican States, as these would likely be, and found pretexts for holding up the bills. Montana, less advanced than Dakota, and Idaho and Wyoming which were yet more primitive, joined the forces of the statehood advocates. Arizona and New Mexico did the same, and Utah had been a suitor since 1850. Washington, with a growing population on Puget Sound and in the Spokane country, was obviously not long to be denied.

For party purposes, the Democrats resisted the demands for statehood until the election of 1888 insured Republican control through every branch of the United States Government. Thereafter there was no point to resistance, and Cleveland, in 1889, signed an "omnibus" bill under which North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were admitted. Idaho and Wyoming, defeated at this time, were let in by the Republicans in 1890. The unorganized frontier was now all but gone, and the pioneers of these new States used Pullman cars and read the monthly magazines like any other citizens.

Arizona and New Mexico were excluded from the new States of 1889 and 1890 because a Republican Congress expected them to be Democratic, and both remained Territories for more than twenty succeeding years. Utah, with ample population, was kept where the Federal Government could control it because of the practices taught by its Church. The Mormons had made a prosperous Territory in Utah by 1850. They had flourished ever since, but their institution of polygamy frightened the United States and created permanent hostility to their admission. In 1882 the Territory was placed under a commission, and thereafter polygamous citizens were brought to punishment. In 1890 the Church gave up the fight and formally abandoned the obnoxious doctrine, but the surrender came too late to accomplish admission at this time.

land area

THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, 1789-1904
The large rectangle represents the total land area of the United States, excluding Alaska and the Islands

By 1890 the good agricultural lands of the United States were nearly all in private hands. Their occupation had been hastened in the last five years by facility of access and the efforts of the railways. With the disappearance of free lands a new period in America began, as was recognized at the time, and has become clearer ever since.

Out of forty-eight States comprising the United States in 1912, and including about 1,902,000,000 acres, twenty-nine with 1,442,000,000 acres had been erected in the public domain to which Congress had once owned title. By cession, purchase, or conquest this domain had been acquired between 1781 and 1853; it had been treated as a national asset and governed with what efficiency Congress possessed. By 1903 the United States had transferred to individuals about half its public land and nearly all its farm land. It retained many millions of acres, but these were mountain or desert, and were not usable by the individual farmer who had been the typical unit in the occupation of the West.

Already, by 1880, the statisticians had recognized that the period of free land was at an end, and had turned their attention to the abuses which had arisen in the administration of the estate. From the beginning, it had been difficult to compel the West to respect national land laws. The squatter who occupied lands without title had always been an obstacle to uniform administration. Evasion of the law had rarely been frowned upon by Western opinion, which had hoped to get the public lands into private hands by the quickest route. In the region where the laws had to be enforced, opinion prevented it, while the National Administration, before the adoption of civil service reform, was incapable of directing with accuracy and uniform policy any administrative scheme which must be so highly technical as a land office. The PreËmption, Homestead, and Timber Culture Laws were all framed in the interest of the small holder, but were all perverted by fraud and collusion. The United States invited much of the fraud by making no provision by which those industries which had a valid need for a large acreage could get it legally.

Among the special abuses that were observed now that it was too late to remedy them were the violations of the law and the lawless seizures of the public lands. The cattle companies took and fenced what they needed and drove out "trespassers" by force. Mail contractors complained of illegal inclosures which they dare not cross, but which diverted the United States mail from its lawful course. Yet such was the general land law that against all but the United States Government the possessors could maintain their possession. If the Government could not or would not interfere, there was no redress.

These abuses had been noticed for many years, and were specially advertised in the early eighties by the enormous holdings of a few British noblemen. The problem of absentee landlordism was exciting Ireland in these years. When Cleveland became President his Commissioner of the General Land Office, Sparks, turned cheerfully and vigorously to reform, and denounced the discreditable condition the more readily because it had appeared under Republican administration. He held up the granting of homestead and preËmption titles for the purpose of examination and inspection, and demanded the repeal of the PreËmption Law. He was successful in recovering some of the lands that had been offered to the railways to aid in their construction.

The railway land grants were notorious because the railways had rarely been done on contract time, and had in theory forfeited their grants. The estimated area offered them was about 214,000,000 acres, and the question arose as to the extent to which forfeiture should be imposed upon them. The spectacular completion of their lines and their efforts to bring a population into the West, and the vast size of the corporations that owned them, had aroused a hostile opinion that supported the Democratic Administration in its efforts to save what lands it could. Some fifty million acres were restored to the domain by this fight, but the restoration only emphasized the fact that most of the good lands were gone.

Out of the demand for the reform of the public lands grew a new interest in the condition of the lands that were left. The Department of Agriculture was created at the end of Cleveland's term, and Governor Jeremiah Rusk was appointed as its first Secretary by Harrison. Rusk accepted cheerfully his place as "the tail of the Cabinet," asserting that as such he was expected "to keep the flies off," and set about rearranging or organizing a group of scientific bureaus. Since most of the remaining lands could not be used without irrigation, the surveys undertaken by Congress started a new phase of public science, and led ultimately to the rise of a positive theory of conservation.

The problems of national communication, Western settlement, and public lands resulted from the completion of the continental railways, while the railways themselves gave a new significance to transportation in America. During the years of the Granger movement the doctrine had been established that railroads are quasi-public and are subject to regulation by public authority. In the Granger Cases in 1877 the Supreme Court recognized the right of the States to establish rates by law, even when these rates, by becoming part of a through rate, had an incidental effect upon interstate commerce. The problem had been viewed as local or regional during the seventies. Most of the States had passed railway laws and had proceeded to accumulate a volume of statistical information upon the railway business, that was increased by such public investigations as the Windom and Hepburn Reports and by lawsuits that revealed the nature of special favors and rebates.

Before the States had gone far in the direction of railway regulation it was discovered that no State could regulate an interstate railway with precision and justice. The great systems built up by Villard and Gould and Vanderbilt and Huntington dominated whole regions and precipitated the question of the effectiveness of state action. The continental lines, necessarily long and traversing several States, emphasized the inequality between the powers of a State and the problem to be met. Their national character pointed to national control.

In Congress there were repeated attempts after 1873 to secure the passage of an Interstate Commerce Act. In continuation of this campaign a committee headed by Senator Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, made a new investigation in 1885, and reported early in 1886 that supervision and publicity were required, and that these could best be obtained through a federal commission with large powers of taking testimony and examining books. The committee was convinced, as the public was already convinced, that the problem had become national.

The Supreme Court reached the same opinion in 1886 when it handed down a new decision in the case of the Wabash Railway Company vs. Illinois. Here it reversed or modified its own decision in the Granger Cases. In 1877 it had ruled that railways are subject to regulation and that the States under their police powers may regulate. It now adhered to its major premise, but declared that such regulation as affected an interstate rate is exclusively a federal function. In effect it determined that if there was to be regulation of the great systems it could only be at the hands of Congress.

The regulation of interstate commerce was not a party measure. It had its advocates in both parties, and found its opponents in the railroad lobby that resented any public interference with the business of the roads. The railway owners and directors were slower than the public in accepting the doctrine of the quasi-public nature of their business. It was a powerful argument against them that their size and influence were such that they could and did ruin or enrich individual customers, and that they could make or destroy whole regions of the West. Enough positive proof of favoritism existed to give point to the demand that the business must cease to discriminate.

The Interstate Commerce Act became a law February 4, 1887. It created a commission of five, with a six-year term and the proviso that not more than three of the commissioners should belong to one party. It forbade a group of practices which had resulted in unfair discrimination and gave to the commission considerable powers in investigation and interference. The later interpretation of the law deprived the commission of some of the powers that, it was thought, had been given to it, but during the next nineteen years the Interstate Commerce Commission was a central figure in the solution of the railroad problem. The work of this commission, like the work of irrigation and agriculture, was technical, calling for expert service, and aiding in the process that was changing the character of the National Administration as one function after another was called into service for the first time.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE