The Homestead Act, which celebrated its 150th anniversary the weekend of May 17-18, offered free land to men and women willing to farm it. The law helped America become an economic superpower.
Fergus M. Bordewich’s op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on May 18, 2012 discusses how the Homestead Act transformed the country.
“One hundred and fifty years ago, on May 20, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill that transformed the country. The Homestead Act offered 160 acres of free public land to settlers who would build a home on it and farm it for at least five years. Anyone 21 years old who was either a citizen or declared the intention to become one could stake a claim.
“The law, declared Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, was “one of the most beneficent and vital reforms ever attempted in any age or clime.”
What we need to do as a society is to help the 99 percent non-rich to become owners of income-generating equity, without harming the property interests of existing owners. The answers are to be found in implementing a Just Third Way free market system that economically empowers all individuals and families through direct and effective ownership of the means of production. The just can practical approach is the Capital Homestead Act (CHA) (www.capitalhomestead.org), which takes its lead from the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act offered the landless white citizens of America part-ownership of the country by giving them 160 acres of frontier land, free, if they produced on it income for themselves and their families for a period of five years. The slogan of the Capital Homestead Act is “Own Or Be Owned.” The Capital Homestead Act’s summary can be found at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm and at http://www.cesj.org/about/programs/declarations/ monetaryjustice.htm.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303448404577407800849985834.html
