The most influential member of the Committee is Thomas? Comrade Jefferson. Comrade Jefferson made several important instructions in dealing with the western issue:
Land should be measured in the way of New England.
Public land should be sold, and ownership and use rights should be transferred to private individuals.
The federal government should not tax land.
In the process of westward advancement, the newly acquired land must first become a territory, and then apply to join the United States, and its status is equal to that of existing States.
Be kind to Indians
Jefferson's view actually pointed out several key issues in the process of American westward advancement. Each is a big problem and needs to be discussed in a monograph.
For example, the new world will eventually join the United States on an equal footing, which is a very avant-garde idea. Because under this principle, European colonies are almost impossible to exist. Because the relationship between colonies and other States is unequal. So the United States stopped after hitting the Philippines, because they could not assimilate Filipinos, identify with them and accept them.
Then some people will ask, what are Indians? This leads to the issue of race.
Generally speaking, there are three policies towards ethnic minorities.
One is the platoon, the most typical one.
One is estrangement, and blacks are the most typical.
One is assimilation, that is, Indians.
The early Indian policy was that Indians were foreigners living on American soil. Finally, because of the need for land, the Indians in the east were driven away and squeezed into the midwest. At this time, Indians and their land were regarded as foreigners. In order to realize the so-called "protection" of Indians, Indians are excluded from normal land transactions, and only the federal government has the right to trade with Indians (thus avoiding Indians being deceived by "unscrupulous" businessmen). But the result, of course, is that the people put pressure on Indian tribes through the government to drive them away and seize land. (The tears mentioned in many answers happened at this time. )
After the civil war, the policy of the American government began to change. At this time, Yang Daping Railway began to be built. The American government began to regard Indians as people under its control, not foreigners. With the end of the plain war in the1870s, the United States began to assimilate the Indians on the reservation.
The main method is to break the social form of public ownership in India, introduce private land and change Indians culturally. Let Indian children go to western-style schools, give up their mother tongue, and ban all kinds of traditional cultural activities, such as dancing. Clothes and hairstyles are also westernized. In life, Indian land was forced to be privatized and distributed to individuals to learn from white farmers. After completing this westernization process, Indians can get the right to vote.
Like Phoenix, there is a road called Indian School Road, because there used to be a school for Indian children. )
(This is not an American patent either. If you have seen the rabbit fence, you will know that Australia was doing something similar to the aborigines. )
Basically, the whole process was a failure, because Indians had no experience in managing private land, and finally the whole process became a period when whites turned to steal Indian land and Indian culture as a whole lost. Because Indians are forced to accept the eating habits of white people, the obesity rate of Indians is very high, and now the incidence of diabetes is the highest. Long-term social pressure has caused a very high alcoholism rate. )
This process came to an end during the Great Depression, because white people could not prove their superiority at this time. During the New Deal, the federal government returned some land rights to Indians.
But in the mid-1940s and 1950s, the policy changed again. The idea this time is to try to cancel the reservation and let Indians enter the city and integrate into American society. It was completely opposed by the Indians. Now there is a saying that why the federal government did this is because uranium deposits have been found in many reserves. In the end, it still went away. In fact, most Indians have left the reservation by this time.
After the civil rights movement began, Indians joined it and started the "occupation" movement, and the poverty problem in the reservation began to be concerned by the society. 1988, India's gambling regulation bill was passed, allowing Indians to open casinos on reserves. It's kind of compensation.
The story goes on. At present, there are still many problems in American Indian policy, and the situation of Indians is still not good on the whole. It's unfair to wait for the preferential policy of opening a casino. Long-term wrong ethnic policies are deeply poisonous, and it is extremely difficult to change them.
Next, answer the economic question. Or, land policy.
Land is a kind of resource, which is used to create wealth, improve living standards and promote economic development. The responsibility of the federal government is to find the best way to use the land resources in the west.
This can be done on the assumption that the land in the west belongs to the federal government and is handled by the federal government. Because after independence, many States have large territories in the west. In the end, they all surrendered their territories, which was not easy in the early days of the founding of the United States, and the local power was enormous.
The next step is to develop the land.
Jefferson's principle was to privatize the land as soon as possible. His goal is to have land to the tiller and build a small-scale peasant empire composed of yeomen. But from the perspective of economics, this theory is consistent with the theory of modern economics. After all, private individuals can develop and utilize resources more effectively.
But there is a question of how to allocate land.
Finally, Jefferson's committee adopted the New England-style principles of land survey and distribution. This is also quite difficult, because in fact, southerners are in the majority in the Committee.
This is the land measurement and distribution system of that year:
(Source: National Atlas of the United States Department of the Interior: Public Land Survey System (PLSS))
Each large grid is a town, and each town has 6×6 = 36 sections, and each section is a mile wide land. In article 36, part of the land revenue must be used for local education. Something like that
Where is the focus of the problem?
Unit and price of land.
The land was transferred to private individuals for development. At that time, the decision-makers thought that if the land was transferred to private individuals for free, some people would hoard the land instead of developing it. Therefore, selling land to private individuals and spending money is equivalent to investment and will be seriously developed.
But how much is it? First of all, the purpose of the federal government is not to make money. And the price is too high for most people to afford. But it is too cheap to sell. Similarly, the unit area of land is too large for ordinary people to buy, and too small will lose the meaning of development.
At first, the unit area of land was relatively large and the price was relatively high. However, with the opposition of the people, especially the deepening of democratization, the number of voters without real estate has increased, and the price and unit area of land have been declining. As long as we observe several landacts during this period, we can see this trend.
Because such political forces are basically intentional or unintentional, land distribution in the western United States is such a process. Rich people bought the biggest and best land first, and then less rich people bought smaller land with less money. After the civil war, the remaining inferior land was distributed cheaply and democratically to those who could afford it. The rest is really unwanted.
(But in fact, today, most of the land in the western United States has not been divided and is still under the protection of the federal government. )
It is not enough just to sell land. As I said before, land is sold for development.
At that time, Americans were followers of John Locke and thought that land was a godsend, but you had to develop it to have it.
Therefore, there was a special clause in the principle of land distribution at that time, that is, although you bought the land, you were only the nominal owner of the land, and the land was yours after several years of continuous development (usually seven years). (For example, during the civil war, because of the construction of the Pacific Railway, the government gave half of the land along the railway to the railway company, but the condition was that it must be developed within nine years, otherwise it would be recovered. )
In this way, some strange phenomena were born, and the famous one is squatting.
Many people, instead of honestly waiting for the federal government to sell land, went to the federal land development. When the government surveyor came to sell the land, he said that I had developed the land and created value. You can only sell me the land, and I can only pay so much.
Most people occupy the land in this way.
Some people took advantage of another loophole. In order to get more land, they build houses on their own land, find people to live in it, which is considered as development, and then buy a piece of land immediately. ...
There is also an American thinking that the public resources of the federal government belong to everyone and everyone can develop and benefit from them. The most typical is gold panning, grazing with cowboys. In fact, they are directly plundering public resources for their own use, but as long as they join their own indiscriminate labor, they are justified. This idea can be seen in the so-called militia conflict in Nevada grazing a few days ago.
But in fact, there are many problems in the above land distribution methods. There are too many ways to exploit legal loopholes, especially in the west where the legal system was too incomplete at that time.
On the other hand, it is this method of land measurement and division.
As mentioned above, this method is based on the New England model. However, the land features of New England are not applicable to many areas in the west. In the midwest, because of the lack and uneven distribution of water resources, the land that is so neatly divided is actually unequal. Because there is no water resource, a lot of land is not suitable for traditional farmers to cultivate, and there are not enough pastures to graze. Where there is water, it should be subdivided into several places to make full use of water resources.
This is the result of political belief overwhelming science.
For example, because of the demand for land development, the more trees are cut down in the United States, the more land can be obtained and the more policies are encouraged. In some areas, large-scale fires have occurred because of serious logging, which is called environmental disaster.
So slowly, the trend of land distribution began to return to a larger area of land division in some areas. /kloc-I began to realize the protection of natural resources at the end of 0/9. For example, the United States Forest Service was established and national parks appeared.
If these methods are unsuccessful, what are the relative successes of the western development of the United States?
This is the market.
What matters is not how much money the government pays and how many units sell the land to private individuals. It is important to push the land to the market, which will determine the price and suitable area of the land.
Along with the market is the land tax.
With the land tax, it is impossible to sit on the land and not develop it. Owners will have a stronger need to transfer land to those who have the desire to develop. When the owner receives the property tax valuation, the value is calculated with reference to the fair market price.
Texas, for example, has not only the value of land and buildings on it, but also the value of agricultural products and mining. The value of agricultural products and minerals is not how much agricultural products or minerals you produce according to all your land, but how much it can produce. In other words, it is not taxed according to your past income, but according to your future normal income. In this way, if all your land can be cultivated and you don't plant it, you still have to pay taxes according to the output value of cultivation.
In this case, farmers in the western United States can't be self-sufficient farmers as Jefferson imagined, but should develop their land value as commercially as possible. Agriculture in the western United States will soon enter industrialized agricultural production, with great capital investment. The original fragmented land is rarely integrated by truly capable agricultural enterprises for commercial production. By 1900, the United States exported half of the world's grain exports.
Agricultural companies such as Miller and Lux in California were once the top 20 enterprises in the United States, controlling more than 50,000 square kilometers of land (directly owning more than 5,000 square kilometers). But after the boss died, the company closed down immediately and the land returned to the market, because future generations were unable to manage such a large land.
(This is not to say that the United States did not speculate on buying land and other appreciation. For example, in the suburbs of big cities in the United States, you can often see many small plots of farmland. Many farmland were bought by speculators waiting for urban expansion and land appreciation. They also need to find someone to farm the land, which will at least be much better in cash flow. Similarly, a large number of rental houses are also the choice of real estate speculators while waiting for the house to appreciate. )
The above are some ideas about the development of the western United States. Mainly rely on memory, not how to verify, there must be many mistakes. After all, only amateurs know a little.
In addition, finally give a picture of the average income in various regions of the United States:
Source: American Economic History by G.M. Walton and H. Rokov. Mei Sen, Ohio Southwest/Sengage Learning Center, 165438+ Version 0, 20 10.
It can be seen that the per capita income of the United States has converged in various regions, and the regional differences are decreasing. This is no small achievement. Among them, the top line is the west (Pacific region, no way). The central and western regions, the central line, have been around the national average since the civil war. Historically, it is the south, including the south-central and southwest regions. Therefore, the western development cannot be generalized. If there is such a period of rapid development, it should be twenty years since the Civil War in the Midwest.
In other words, the traditional American west is not poor at all in history.