Editing Homestead Acts (section)

== Issues and concerns ==
The Homestead Acts were sometimes abused, but historians continue to debate the extent.<ref>Richard Edwards, "Changing perceptions of homesteading as a policy of public domain disposal." ''Great Plains Quarterly'' 29.3 (2009): 179-202 [https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2228&context=greatplainsquarterly online].</ref><ref>Richard Edwards, Jacob K. Friefeld, and Rebecca S. Wingo, eds. ''Homesteading the Plains: Toward a New History'' (2017) p 13.</ref> In the 1950s and 1960s, historians [[Fred Albert Shannon]], Roy Robbins, and [[Paul Wallace Gates]] emphasized fraudulent episodes, and historians largely turned away from the issue. In recent decades, however, the argument has mostly been that on the whole fraud was a relatively minor element and that strongly positive impacts regarding women and the family have only recently been appreciated.<ref>Richard Edwards, "Invited Essay: The New Learning about Homesteading." ''Great Plains Quarterly'' 38.1 (2018): 1-23.</ref> Robert Higgs argues that the Homestead Act induced no long-term misallocation of resources.<ref>Robert Higgs, ''The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865–1914'' (1971), p. 92.</ref> In 1995, a random survey of 178 members of the [[Economic History Association]] found that 70 percent of economists and 84 percent of economic historians disagreed with the statement "Nineteenth-century U.S. land policy, which attempted to give away free land, probably represented a net drain on the productive capacity of the country."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Whaples |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Whaples |journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]] |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=139–154 |jstor=2123771 |title=Where is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions |date=March 1995 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700040602 |citeseerx=10.1.1.482.4975 |s2cid=145691938 |url=http://www.employees.csbsju.edu/jolson/econ315/whaples2123771.pdf}}</ref>

Some scholars{{who|date=June 2022}} believe the acreage limits were reasonable when the act was written but argue that no one understood the physical conditions of the plains.<ref name="Hansen" /> After a few generations, a family could build up a sizable estate.<ref name="Hansen">Hansen, Zeynep K., and Gary D. Libecap. [https://ssrn.com/abstract=460622 "Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s"], ''Journal of Political Economy'', Volume: 112(3). – pp.665–94. – 21 November 2003</ref>

According to [[Hugh Nibley]], much of the rainforest west of [[Portland, Oregon]], was acquired by the [[Oregon Lumber Company]] by illegal claims under the Act.<ref>See Nibley, Hugh. ''Approaching Zion'' (The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol 9), p. 469. Nibley's grandfather, [[Charles W. Nibley]] made his fortune in Oregon lumber, among other resources.</ref>

=== Racism ===
Several additional laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to address the concerns of [[African Americans]]. The [[Southern Homestead Act of 1866]] sought to address land ownership inequalities in the south during [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]]. It explicitly included Black Americans and encouraged them to participate, and, although rampant discrimination, systemic barriers, and bureaucratic inertia considerably slowed Black gains,<ref name=":1">{{cite book |last=Frymer |first=Paul |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vxm7rr |title=Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion |date=2017 |publisher=Princeton University Press |doi=10.2307/j.ctt1vxm7rr |jstor=j.ctt1vxm7rr}}</ref> the 1866 law was part of the reason that within a generation after its passage, by 1900, one quarter of all Southern Black farmers were farm owners.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Melvin L. Oliver |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_ZUtb3FkddoC&pg=PA15 |title=Black Wealth/white Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality |author2=Thomas M. Shapiro |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-415-91847-3 |pages=14–15}}</ref> Later Homestead acts only marginally benefited African Americans.<ref>{{Cite web |title=African American Homesteaders in the Great Plains (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-homesteaders-in-the-great-plains.htm |access-date=2024-10-22 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}}</ref>