James Baird Weaver Quotes
After the Republican party got into power it turned around and granted the public domain to corporations and opened it to private speculators .... in violation of the principle announced in the platform of 1852. The land grants were a mistake, to draw it mildly and we may as well all admit it now ; it was a great wrong to grant a single acre of the public domain to corporations.... Every acre of the public lands should have been held for homes for the people, under a well-guarded homestead law. That was the proper way to deal with the public domain; but instead of that it was thrown open to ruthless speculators, who have speculated in it until the poor people of this country to-day have to fight for standing room
The Republicans had won with Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
James Baird Weaver, 1833–1912, U. S. Congressman (Greenback Party, IA), Twice Presidential Candidate (Greenback Party and then The People’s Party (Populists), ~1888
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Wealthy men had purchased cheap land and moved into the area establishing large ranches and farms. The then very wealthy “newcomers” tended to do dominate the local politics and had much influence on national politics. They would employ the locals, but at very low wages.
Weaver thought that the huge Federal land holdings should only be used to give land to homeless people. With land, they could build shelter, plant food, and raise cattle. In modern times it is much more difficult to help the homeless for few people could survive on a parcel of land even if given.
Withdrawal meant not allowing certain public land to be sold or allotted to homesteading, commercial development, mining, industrial, ranching, or agricultural use. It was reserved as wilderness areas and/or national parks or forests.
This quotation electrified the crowd as few speeches at Democratic conventions ever had. The speech turned Cuomo into a national political figure and made him the front runner for the Democratic Presidential Nomination for the next 8 years. But he never chose to run despite overwhelming support and polls indicating he would be victorious in a general presidential election.
“Closing costs” are those costs associated with the transfer of the title to land and a home, the payment of taxes and the mortgage financing of home sales. In most states many of these closing costs are artificially high because of the lack of a competitive market consumer protection, conflicts of interest, and the nature of the home sales transaction.
While the economics of land is described accurately, immigrants from most of the world would never in their home country ever be able to earn enough in a few years to acquire that much land. So the prospect of land ownership was a fundamental selling point and was a major spur to immigration to America where land was and is plentiful.
The nobles of the city were in rebellion and fought the English Prince of Wales. When the city was taken, the poor people as well as the nobles were executed for their part in the “rebellion.” However, the poor had no say in the matter, and it was not they who ordered the city gates shut and decided to undergo a siege, which in this case was not successful. Limoges was a heavily walled city, well provisioned for a siege, but the English had miners who undermined part of the city walls and crashed them into the moat and allowed the English to walk in easily.
The major issue was whether Congress and the Federal Government could make laws and regulate the communities of people who had settled in the new territories. The argument that Young made was that unless a power was specifically enumerated in the Constitution as being granted to the Federal Government it was not. Most Constitutional scholars believe that there were powers implied by the enumerated powers such as the right for the Federal Government to regulate child labor or the safety of nuclear power plants which of course were never mentioned in the Constitution. At the same time anti Mormon sentiment led many to extend Federal Regulation to Mormons that had not been extended to other people/ Plural marriage was one of those major value issues. The Mormons were very innovative in setting up institutions like buying cooperatives and systems for medical care and welfare, and many of these threatened the then established economic principles of many men of power and wealth. See {614870} for John Taylor’s similar view.
The major revenue of the Federal Government had initially been import duties. (There was no income tax then.) The sale of the vast public lands turned out to be another Federal income source.
Incredibly enough, until this Supreme Court Decision, bigots would sell a home on the open market and write into the deed that the house may never be sold to a Black, a Jew, a Mormon, or any other person one of the owners did not like. This was actually enforced by American courts trying to preserve segregation in housing until 1948 and the 1956 decision stopped the practice but housing segregation persisted by other means.
DPs were “displaced persons” -- the euphemism for people who were no longer welcome in their country of birth. Congress, made up mostly of immigrants or the children of immigrants who were poor and downtrodden, were not enthusiastic about the United States absorbing many of the world’s DPs resulting from WWII.
This was a serious problem in major cities in the 1930s but became much worse over time as the cities grew and real estate values escalated. In modern times the problem even spread to affluent suburbs where the police, fire fighters, teachers, and other civil servants can often not afford to live in the community that they serve.
James Baird Weaver was a member of the United States House of Representatives and two-time candidate for President of the United States. Born in Ohio, he moved to Iowa as a boy when his family claimed a homestead on the frontier. He became politically active as a young man and was an advocate for farmers and laborers. He joined and quit several political parties in the furtherance of the progressive causes in which he believed. After serving in the Union Army in the American Civil War, Weaver returned to Iowa and worked for the election of Republican candidates. After several unsuccessful attempts at Republican nominations to various offices, and growing dissatisfied with the conservative wing of the party, in 1877 Weaver switched to the Greenback Party, which supported increasing the money supply and regulating big business. As a Greenbacker with Democratic support, Weaver won election to the House in 1878.
