The other bill, which passed the House on the 6th day of July, 1888, declares the forfeiture to the United States, and restoration to the public domain, of all lands heretofore granted by Congress to railroad corporations not earned within the time prescribed by the law making the grant. The justice of this measure no man can deny.

The effect of this bill is to forfeit the following grants and restore the land to the public

be disposed of under the Homestead law,

Name of Railroad.

Gulf and Ship Island..........................

domain to namely:

Estimated number of acres which will be forfeited by the House Bill.

652,800

Coosa and Tennessee......

Coosa and Chattanooga..

140,160

144,000

464,480

St. Vincent extension St. Paul and Pacific (now St. Paul,

*Lands certified to State for this road prior to May 23, 1872, amounting to 440,700.16 acres, were confirmed to State by act of that date (17 Stat. L., 159), for sole use and benefit of the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad Company. The lands so confirmed may not be subject to forfeiture.

If these two measures shall receive the approval of the Senate much will have been done to retrieve the fatal error of giving over to corporations and monopoly a vast portion of the most valuable wealth any nation ever possessed-the wealth that gives independent homes to the people!

In another generation the history of the public domain of the United States will be written. The historian in reviewing the successive generations which will have controlled this public domain through more than a century--the grandest possession, the noblest trust ever committed by Providence to any peoplewill exult in the long periods when unselfish patriotism and far-seeing statesmanship hoarded the public lands, and held them in reserve for freeholds of the American people-freeholds, the strongest bulwarks for free institutions that human wisdom can suggest-and will deplore the period when vast millions of acres of this public wealth were, given over to sordid avarice in great landed estates.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TERRITORIES.

Hon. WILLIAM M. SPRINGER,

Chairman of the Committee on Territories, National House of

Representatives.

THERE are eight organized territories in the United

States, comprising 859,000 square miles in area. The population of these territories is estimated, by the Secretary of the Interior in his annual report to Congress for the year ending June 30th, 1887, as follows:-Arizona 90,000, Dakota 568,400, Idaho 97,250, Montana, 130,000, New Mexico 160,000, Utah 196,500, Washington 142,391, Wyoming 85,000, making the total 1,469,041 inhabitants.

In addition to the organized territories there is the Indian Territory, comprising 69,000 square miles. in area, which is now settled chiefly by Indians and half-breeds, the eastern portion being occupied by what are known as the five civilized tribes, and the western portion by various semi-civilized tribes. That portion outside of the five civilized tribes will, in the near future, be organized into a territory to be known as Oklahoma.

We have also, that vast, and in the main, unin