The things we do!

The controlling motive at the start, I repeat, was revenue. But gradually
the people, seeing great tracts of land held unimproved for speculation,
seeing the domain of free land narrowing while the pressure of want was
beginning to make itself felt east of the mountains, as in Europe, and
feeling concerned, as some men of vision did, at the passing of the
world's great opportunity for the practical realization of man's natural
right to the land without disturbing the system in force in older settled
communities, the people strove to effect the subordination of revenue to
the social good of the frontier and the country at large. By the middle of
the century this many-motived feeling had expression in a party platform;
that "the public lands-belong to the people and should not be sold to
individuals nor granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred
trust for the benefit of the people and should be granted in limited
quantities, free of cost, to landless settlers." [Footnote: Free-Soil
Democratic Platform, 1892, p.


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