As a matter of fact, a large proportion of the farmers from New England, upper New York State, and other parts of the East, went out to the Middle West in this fashion.

Senator ANDERSON. I would only say that my own father came from Sweden, and part of the inducement for immigration of Swedes in 1880 was this possibility that they could get not only their quarter section but they could get another quarter section as a tree claim and Jim Hill would send the other 320 acres.

Senator BARRETT. Would the Senator let me remind him of this fact? It is true that under Lincoln we established 160-acre homestead law, but nobody considered that 160 acres was something so sacred that it could not be changed if conditions changed.

When the great Middle West was settled, particularly west of the Missouri, they changed that law and provided for an additional 160. Then they provided for a second addition of 320 acres under the Kincaid Act applying to western Nebraska.

When they came out to the mountain region they provided for a stockraising homestead of 640 acres.

So the whole process has been evolved whereby as conditions changed and more acreage was needed that the Congress saw fit to enlarge it from time to time.

Senator DOUGLAS. I shall try to develop that later if you insist on putting in flexible limits, that there should be flexible limits downward as well as upward.

I have inspected some of the orange groves of California and some of the orange groves around Phoenix, Ariz., and I can only say that they are far more fertile even than the rich lands of Iowa which were settled under the 160-acre provision.

I shall introduce statements from western chambers of commerce indicating that you can make a very good family living on far less than 160 acres in the case of certain crops. So if you bring in these areas of scant rainfall in western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming and eastern Colorado, and so forth and say that a wheat farmer needs more than 160 acres or that a cattle grazer needs more than 160 acres, I will say that a person who grows pecan nuts or oranges or grapefruits needs far less than 160 acres.

Furthermore, as we all know, this so-called 160-acre provision is in reality no 160-acre provision at all.

Senator ANDERSON. I was just going to come to that.

Senator DOUGLAS. I am going to come to that.

Senator ANDERSON. What is the provision on reclamation laws? Senator DOUGLAS. It is 160 acres, in effect, per person, not per

family. So the wife can also take out 160 acres.

Senator ANDERSON. Each minor child also.

Senator DOUGLAS. Yes, that is right.

Senator ANDERSON. A man who has 8 children and is married can take out 10 times 160 acres. That is, 1,600 acres.

Senator DOUGLAS. We should define a person or rather the owner to whom the provision applies as a family and limit it to 160 acres to a family. If you push me hard on the acreage figure I will stress that in an amendment.

Senator ANDERSON. The Congress believes in these families. They do not believe in the bachelor's estate.

Senator DOUGLAS. That Homestead law in any case sheltered us from the violence and turmoil of a land reform issue for many years. It also, by the simplest mathematics, provided the greatest good for the greatest numbers.

Since available new productive lands are always limited in supply, it was axiomatic that more citizens could be established on familysized farms than if great acreages were handed over to those known in the idiom of the day as "land hogs" before the term "giveaway" had won its place in our political dictionaries. It worked so well that it was preserved until worthwhile homesteads were exhausted, and the pattern became ingrown.

I suppose that was just a few years before Frederick Jackson Turner published his essay on the role of the frontier in, I believe, 1893.

In 1902, when the end of homesteading was already in sight because of the exhaustion of worthwhile lands, and the question of augmenting them by Federal irrigation of the deserts was under consideration, our predecessors on the basis of solid experience as well as conviction believed so strongly in this family-sized philosophy that they lifted the language of the Homestead Act virtually verbatim and wrote it into the original Reclamation Act with the support of President Theodore Roosevelt.

I want to pay tribute to a Senator whom I have never met in the flesh who, I think, rendered tremendous service to this Nation and was a supporter of this principle, Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada.

Senator ANDERSON. Did he do it as a Senator? He was a Representative when he did that.

Senator DOUGLAS. I believe you are correct, but whether he did it as a Senator or as a Representative, he started a wise policy. This should be an inducement to aspiring Congressmen and indeed, to all aspiring Senators, that if they espouse this principle, they will go higher.

Senator ANDERSON. There are those who are in the House who think they cannot get higher. I was a Member of that body as was Senator Barrett, and at that time and under those circumstances, we thought him the finest legislative counsel in the world.

Senator DOUGLAS. I do not in any sense disparage the other body. But I know many Congressmen who give up their seats to run for the Senate. I never heard of a Senator who gave up his seat to run for the House.

Senator ANDERSON. That is because they get lazy and they do not want to run but every 6 years.

Senator DOUGLAS. I have a higher opinion of my colleagues than does the Senator from New Mexico.

Senator BARRETT. You are quite familiar with the lady from the State of Illinois.

Senator DOUGLAS. You are speaking of my wife. They said I ran on her coattails, that she had such a fine record in the House that I was elected to the Senate.

Senator ANDERSON. I do not believe the Senator ran on her coattails, but she was a mighty fine Member of the House. Senator DOUGLAS. Off the record.

26144-582

Senator ANDERSON. No, on the record.

Senator DOUGLAS. People have told me, "Paul, if only all the fine qualities of your wife could rub off on you.'

Getting back to my statement, that principle of aiding the familysized farm still stands today and has stood for the past half century, despite many attacks. It emerges as a time-tested cornerstone of reclamation policy until it emerges today as the only anchor of land reform in Federal law which I happen to recall.

I think it serves us well. I counsel you not to undermine it by a series of local exemptions. If we have enough of these, our anchor will be effectively pulled out and we will drift.

I believe that this clause in the legislation you supervise has done much to give us strength and to protect us from economic peril. And it is this conviction that is constantly driving me as a matter of broad principle and as a Senator from Illinois to come before you western statesmen to commend your attention to these basic facts lest they be lost sight of. They are in danger now.

I am quite mindful of the fact that this arouses certain conflicts in western areas. For example, in the lands the United States acquired from Spain and Mexico along the Rio Grande in what has now become New Mexico and Arizona and in California, an opposite pattern of land tenure was well established.

Senator ANDERSON. I wonder if the Senator would be willing to put the word "Texas" in there?

Senator DOUGLAS. I quite agree. What has now become New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California.

I might say, Mr. Chairman, that without waving the flag unduly, I think this is a conflict between the American principle and the Spanish principle: with the American principle of the family-sized farm with limitations of acreage or at least that the Government shall not give a special aid in subsidies to large estates, but will use its power to promote the family-sized farm; and the Spanish system which is based upon a feudal system of a few large landowners and large number of either tenants, or more commonly, farm laborers. What we are struggling to do is extend the American system into the regions which we took from Spain and which have been dominated by the "hacienda" system. It is an attempt to apply the American principles to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and to bring them more fully under the American system.

Senator ANDERSON. I just think the Senator ought to get his facts a little bit straight. I do not think he ought to get them completely straight. I do not know of a single proposal by a Representative of New Mexico since its statehood that has advocated the termination of the 160-acre limitation. I cannot think of a single man in the House or in the Senate that has advocated it. I do not know of a single irrigation project in New Mexico that has ever asked for it. I do not believe this is true, and I do not believe this is a conflict between the Mexican system and the American system.

I do think the Senator ought to check that before he makes such a statement.

Now as to Arizona, I am not so certain at all, but I do not remember a single effort made by a Representative of Arizona either in the House or in the Senate that has advocated the termination of the

160-acre limitation. I just do not believe there is one, and I do wish before the Senator indicts those States that he would come up with a little fact.

Senator DOUGLAS. The owners of large holdings in California, I might say, are the chief offenders in this respect, and I want to say that I have always found that the Senator from New Mexico has been as reasonable on this matter as on virtually every other matter before Congress.

I want the record to be clear that I am not including him in this general broadside that I am leveling. But certainly it is true that this has been a big issue in California. I remember the debates we had over this exemption provision for Texas. I have been in Texas, and certainly the biggest estates in Texas go directly back to the Mexican system of land ownership, and the Mexican system, of course, goes back to the Spanish system.

I had nothing in my heart reflecting upon present or past Senators or Representatives from New Mexico and Arizona. However, I think my statement still holds.

Senator ANDERSON. I was more concerned with the State, and I am sure that the irrigation projects in those States have tried to recognize the principle.

In 1923, I took an interested part in the formation of the Rio Grande Conservancy District. The 160 limitation was not written into it. It was a State project. I subsequently acquired 1,700 acres with others in order to change the land from an opponent to a proponent conservancy.

At all times, I have been completely willing to divide the remaining portion which is 540 acres, if anybody wants to divide it smaller. Under the reclamation law I was well within the limitation.

Senator DOUGLAS. Senator, I think you are going to wind up on our side.

Senator ANDERSON. I feel that the 160-acre limitation has not been under attack in the areas that derive their laws from the old Spanish laws.

Senator DOUGLAS. Grants were made under Spanish law, and in some cases, those have continued. In other cases, they have been purchased.

Senator ANDERSON. The grant in New Mexico was made under old Spanish laws originally. I think the Senator would have a very difficult time trying to tie the King ranch to a Mexican grant. He would have a most difficult time trying to tie a large grant to my State. That land was acquired by returning Civil War veterans who signed in advance the rights to purchase their land, and General Maxwell put them all together into a land grant that had indefinite boundaries that included a great portion of Colorado and New Mexico. He subsequently added the Beaubien land grant to it.

I wondered whether the distinction between the legal system that we inherited from Spain is part of the cause of the trouble. I do not wish to make any great point of it.

Senator BARRETT. Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could make a short statement. I do not think the Senator intended to be unfair, but I think his statement of the issue is not at all accurate.

Let me say at the outset: We had a project in Wyoming that was built right after the end of World War II. Upward of 100 veterans were brought into our State to settle on the Riverton project. They had a little nest egg to start with. That was a requirement of the Bureau of Reclamation. They spent it by building a little home on their land. After they settled on that project for a matter of a few years they found that they could not make a living on 160 acres. It was necessary to resettle those veterans and to provide homesteads for them in Idaho and in New Mexico and Arizona at great loss and sacrifice to those veterans. The veterans that remained on the project got 320 or even 480 acres of land.

The Senator from Illinois voted for the bill that resettled those veterans all over the country and also gave the remaining veterans additional acreages.

I say that because I presented the bill on the floor of the Senate, and it went through unanimously, so I am safe in saying that the Senator raised no objection to that bill.

Here is the issue: It is not a question of whether or not we are going to abandon the family-sized farm. The question now is: Are we going to give the small farmer the opportunity to get enough acreage whereby he can support a family on the farm? Do you want to give him 160 acres and let the fellow go broke as happened hundreds of times in the Western States, or do you want to give the fellow a fair chance to make out on a homestead?

That is the whole thing in a nutshell, and that is exactly what this bill does.

Senator DOUGLAS. Mr. Chairman, I have been trying to outline some of the background factors that have led to the pressure for larger holders getting reclamation water. I have merely stated that the old pattern inherited from Spanish times has been one of these factors. I stand on that, and I ask permission to submit for the record a summary of the history of some of the largest estates in these areas, indicating where the land came from.

In particular, I would like to submit data on the history of the King Ranch about which a book has recently been published, a history of the Di Giorgio holdings in California, the history of the Haggin holdings in California and certain other of the big estates which now exist.

I am willing to abide by what the facts reveal as to how these lands were accumulated,

Senator ANDERSON. That material will be received.

(Senator Douglas later submitted the following data.)

SUPPLEMENTARY MEMORANDUM ON SPANISH OR MEXICAN LAND GRANTS AS A FACTOR IN LARGE-SCALE LAND OWNERSHIP IN THE SOUTHWEST

The history of particular estates is not easy to trace from the several reports that are readily available. It largely confirms my impression, reported to the committee, concerning the King Ranch, but only to a minor extent in reference to the Haggin and Tevis holdings, now the Kern County Land Co. In the case of the Di Giorgio holdings, the available data does not reveal that any rest on Spanish or Mexican grants.

I believe that even the cursory review I have made since the hearings, however, completely confirms the general conclusion that in the southwestern portion of the arid and semiarid West, large landholdings based upon Spanish or Mexican land grants frequently have influenced the pattern of land settle