ABSTRACT
In America men have never had to "stand—striving for places of habitation". On the contrary, the United States has always had, until very recently, more land than it could use and fewer people than it needed. It is partly to the credit of the government that America is, as yet at least, a nation of small freehold landowners. Even in colonial times the attempt to transplant the feudal system of land tenure to this country was scarcely successful. The federal government of the United States, in dealing with the public domain, never attempted to establish a system of subject tenures; but in the first period after winning independence it regarded the public lands somewhat in the light of a financial asset. American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area.
