ABSTRACT
The township and range land survey system was revolutionary in its intent and potential: equal blocks of land were divided to provide equal access to the land. The right to land, the primary form of wealth in the eighteenth century, meant the right to a job and economic independence. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate a natural right. Land sales to many large land purchasers and to private companies, which in turn raised the price of land sold to actual settlers, was a common way of disposing of land in the early settlements along the Atlantic and in the colonization of the interior. Railroad lands were subject to preemption laws, hence they had to respect the property rights of squatters and select alternative land to pay for the construction of railroad lines.
