Land and Homesteading Flashcards
Metes and Bounds
method of subdividing lands using compass points and directions, typically using physical features of the local geography
Land Ordinance of 1785
Created the Public Land Survey System
*Also called Rectangular Survey System
*standardized system for Federal land surveys
*eased boundary conflicts
Public Land Survey System
standardized system for Federal land surveys
*eased boundary conflicts
Township
The major unit of the PLSS system; 36 square miles
Section
1 square mile=640 acres–the minor unit of the PLSS
system.
*Quarter sections=160 acres
Preemption
individual’s right to settle land first and pay later
*Basically “squatters rights”
*essentially an early form of credit
Homestead act 1862
Homestead Act signed by Abraham Lincoln (May 1862)
*Homesteaders had to live on and “improve” the land for 5 years,
*Must build a 12-by-14 dwelling and grow crops.
*No race or gender requirements
*By 1900 ¼ of black farmers owned their farm
*Around 10-12 percent of claims to women
Opened lands in 33 states,
*Centered on states north of Texas and west of
the Mississippi River
*Percentage of Each State Claimed
*Nebraska: 45 percent
*North Dakota and South Dakota: 41%
*Montana and Oklahoma: 34%
*Colorado: 33%.
Title
The legal concept of ownership
Deed
Legal document that transfers ownership of property
Homestead act: Politics
Yeoman Farmer” ideal: (Jefferson)
*Northern factories owners feared a mass departure of their cheap labor
force
*Southern states worried that rapid settlement of western territories
would give rise to new states populated by small farmers opposed to
slavery
*Why would small farmers oppose slavery?
*Homestead Act passed during Civil war—Southern delegation absent
Squatting
pervasive, insistent, unstoppable, and enjoyed considerable
public sympathy” –from Homesteading the Plains: Toward a New History
*Unlike modern development, the process often occurred in reverse
order: people move in, laws and surveys catch up later.
Minimum efficient scale
Scale at which long-run average costs are minimized.
*Too small: fixed costs dominate and average costs are high
Public Domain
Land owned by the United States government. Public
domain consisted of nearly 1.44 billion acres of land.
*51 percent of public domain transferred to private owners
Land Runs
Occurred when previously restricted land (usually former Indian
lands) opened for homesteading on first-come basis
*Biggest: Oklahoma Land Rush of April 22, 1889
*“Sooner” and “Eighty-Niner”
*Lots of fraud/cheating
*replaced with sealed-bid auctions
Externality
the economic concept of uncompensated environmental effects of production and consumption that affect consumer utility and enterprise cost outside the market mechanism
National Monument
Antiquities Act (1906)
*Power to president to create national
monuments from Federal land
*Purpose is to protect natural, cultural,
or scientific resources
*Signed by T. Roosevelt (18 monuments)
*Tradition among Presidents
*All but 4 since 1906 have used power
(Nixon, Ford, Reagan, H.W. Bush)
*Obama: 26—most ever
*Trump: reduced Bears Ears by 85%
Antiquities act
Power to president to create national
monuments from Federal land
*Purpose is to protect natural, cultural,
or scientific resources
*Signed by T. Roosevelt (18 monuments)
Morrill Land Grant Acts
Morrill Act (1862)
*Land to each state for colleges
*Required to teach Agriculture, Engineering, and Military Tactics
*“accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil.”—Senator Morrill
*Morrill Act (1890)
*Aimed at former Confederate states
*Must show race not an admissions criterion or to designate separate land-grant institution
*Many of the historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)
Common Pool Resource
public and private good in that is shared (non-rivalrous) but also scarce, having a finite supply
Free riders
Someone who enjoys the benefits of a good but
does not pay
Panic of 1837
Many Bank Runs: Several Banks in New
York City ran out of gold and silver
*Bank Run: When many depositors try to
withdraw money because they believe the
bank may become insolvent
Specie
money in the form of coins or gold
Financial crisis
n event where some financial assets suddenly lose a
large part of their value
*Stock market crashes, real estate crashes, bond defaults, etc.
*Caused by speculative lending practices (especially in land)
*Made worse by sharp decline in cotton prices
*Accelerated by the “Specie Circular” (1836)–Presidential Executive Order
(Jackson) that required specie (gold or silver) for public land sales
Speculation
Purchase of an asset with the hope that its value will
quickly increase
*Note: can also speculate on price declines via short sales
Bank Run
When many depositors try to
withdraw money because they believe the
bank may become insolvent
Deposit Insurance
government
programs that protect the value of
deposits even if banks fail
Price Bubble
inflated prices for assets that are inconsistent with
fundamental values
*Intuition: the price of a stock should be based on future cash flows
*Examples: Dutch tulip bubble, panic of 1837 (land, cotton, slaves), comic book
speculation, dot-com bubble, mortgage securities, many others…
Fractional Reserve Banking
Banks only hold a small percentage of
deposits in currency
*Bank runs are prevented today by Federal
Deposit Insurance (FDIC) and other
banking regulations
Forced Rider
Someone who must pay for a good but does not
benefit.
