Brief of an act to encourage emigration, December 10, 1865
Brief of an act to encourage emigration.
Article 1. The essential clauses of this act refer to a Bureau of Emigration established by the government of the United States in the city of New York. The object of this bureau is to protect emigrants against all sorts of frauds and deceit, on their arrival in America; to furnish them gratuitously all the information they may need, and facilitate, at the least possible expense and delay, their settlement in this country.
Art. 2. American agencies of a private nature have been opened at different parts in Europe, having for purpose to introduce workmen for mills, workshops, mines, and other branches of industry. This article is connected with giving effect in the United States to all contracts through which the emigrant could be enabled to hypothecate his labor in America in reimbursement of the expenses of his emigration.
Art. 3. Is of no consequence, the insurrection having been completely extinguished.
The letter following (pages 4, 5) from Mr. Bowen, Commissioner of Emigration, relates to carrying out the regulations contained in the precedent act.
The law printed on page 6 was passed by the American Congress to insure the fullest proection to all classes of emigrants, during the course of the voyage to the United States.
An act to guarantee a home to actual settlers on the public lands.
This act concedes to every person who is head of a family, of twenty-one years of age, a lot of land of 160 acres, (about 165 hectares,) on condition such individuai becomes a citizen of the United States, engages to cultivate the land during five years, and pays 50 francs for surveying and registry fees.
The public lands to which this act is applicable embrace a superficies of 2,000,000 of square miles, (about 5,176,000 square kilometres,) extending from 24° to 49°, and mainly situate between the Pacific ocean and the river Mississippi. The territory embraces every kind of mineral land, down to the prairie lands, which are not less sought after.
This region is rich in precious stones, in gold, in silver, in copper, in iron, in tin, in quick-silver, in lead, in marble, in gypsum, in salt, and in petroleum.
The annual value of gold extracted in these regions, still almost uninhabited, is about 150 millions to 2 billions of francs; silver to 3 millions.
The fertility of the prairies is not surpassed by that of any country in the world; in many places the bed of vegetable soil reaches a depth of several feet, and occasionally this depth is even twenty-five feet.
The public lands are divided into sections of 15,528 metres square, and subdivided into sections, and these into quarter sections, forming a surface of about 64 hectares.
The American system of registration, which consists in dividing the soil into squares by means of marked lines running north and south, and east and west, is so simple that it has so far prevented any controversy relative to boundaries or titles to grants.
The American governmect grants a quarter-section to each citizen, as has been said before. This quarter-section may be selected in any part of the public domain. That which much enhances the value of these lands for those who should decide to occupy them, is, that occording to the provisions of law, two sections, (1,280 acres, or 517 hectares, 88 ares,) are reserved within each boundary of six miles square, (15 kilometres, 528 metres square,) to be sold, and the product devoted to the establishment of free schools, so that the moral and intellectual progress of the country may keep pace with its physical development.