Therefore, France may, in a sense,
be said to have given these acres to the support of the "children of
always"--since these plots alone have probably yielded many times the
purchase price of the entire territory.
To be sure, these white plots, as I would have them marked on a map of the
valley, have in many States been sold and occupied as the other plots,
with only this distinction, that the proceeds are inviolably set apart to
this sacred use, as certain parts of animals were, under Mosaic law,
reserved for public sacrifice. In one trans-Mississippi State, Iowa, for
example, of a total grant of 1,013,614.21 acres [Footnote: Iowa,
1,013,614.21 acres from section 16 and 535,473.76 acres by congressional
grant in 1841.] (less what the boundary rivers, the Mississippi and the
Missouri, had carried away in their voracious encroachments, and plus what
other natural agents had added), only 200 acres remained unsold in 1911.
As we view the policy from the year 1903 and from the midst of a populous
valley, in which land values have risen from one dollar and twenty-five
cents per acre to a hundred or two hundred dollars in most fertile farm
tracts, and to thousands in urban centres, we can but regret that these
lands themselves had not been held inviolate, and can but wish that only
their rentals had been devoted to the high uses to which the nation and
State had consecrated these lands.
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