This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...There were in these same four states 30,431 filings covering 6,953,357 acres. In fact in Montana alone there have been about 100,000 land entries since the last census was taken. Of course there will be some failures before these families prove up and get title to their claims. However, it costs from fourteen months to ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...There were in these same four states 30,431 filings covering 6,953,357 acres. In fact in Montana alone there have been about 100,000 land entries since the last census was taken. Of course there will be some failures before these families prove up and get title to their claims. However, it costs from fourteen months to three years of time and from seven hundred to a few thousand dollars to prove up on each of these claims before any sale may be made or even mortgage loan secured upon it. It is not likely, therefore, that any one will go to this expense of time and money unless he expects to live on the claim himself or that some one else will want it enough to reimburse him for what it has cost. In other words it is reasonable to expect that every filing for a complete homestead means ultimately a family, for though some claims will be abandoned, towns will spring up to supply the needs of those who remain and their population will more than keep up the average of a family for every homestead taken. It is estimated that for every hundred people who settled upon farms in a new country twenty-seven locate in towns to supply their needs. To be sure not all of those who file on land come from outside of the state. Many of them go from older towns where we have good churches and in so doing create a double problem. They weaken the home church and demand a new organization and privileges in the place to which they go. A pastor in a growing city, where we have a fairly prosperous church, wrote me: "When the three year homestead law was enacted, we lost about seventy members, most of them very active." This is but typical of what is taking place everywhere. Sometimes churches which had been self-supporting are thrown back again upon their Home Mission Boa...
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