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Local Government and Rainfall: The problem of Local Government in the Northern Great Plains*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Herman Walker Jr.  and
Peter L. Hansen
Herman Walker Jr.
Affiliation:
Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Department of Agriculture
Peter L. Hansen
Affiliation:
Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Department of Agriculture
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Extract

The westward movement of settlement—into the semi-arid, treeless Great Plains beyond the 100th meridian—carried along with it traditions of local government familiar further east. Settlers organized their newfound lands into the counties, townships, and small school districts to which they were accustomed in the states of their origin. Local-government customs evolved in humid, populous areas were thus transposed to a region destined by weather and other physical conditions to remain a place of sparse population.

Predilections in government organization were fortified by a mistaken supposition that agricultural enterprise could be successfully organized and conducted according to the fashion of the East. The homesteading law generally in effect until 1909 (allowing but 160 acres to a settler) reflected this supposition. Moreover, the rectangular survey, with its gridiron of 36-square-mile sections, constituted a ready-made invitation to organize the congressional township as a governmental unit and to make much the same area the basis for school districts.

Over the years subsequent to the original peopling of this region, circumstance and harsh experience have forced a revision in predominant beliefs concerning its nature and capabilities. Adjustments in agronomic enterprise and population have perforce occurred, often painfully and distressfully. It remains to be seen what adjustments must correspondingly occur in the organization and functioning of local government, for the basic facts of a region must find reflection in the trials, tribulations, and performance of its overlying governmental institutions.

Type
Rural Local Government
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 40 , Issue 6 , December 1946 , pp. 1113 - 1123
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1946

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References

1 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Goodman, A. B., “Westward Movement of Local Government,” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics (1944), pp. 20–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 A local census taken in 1935 showed only 535 persons employed in mining and 219 in manufacturing in the 10 counties for which figures are given. County Reports of Federal Expenditures, March 4, 1933, to June 30, 1939, Report No. 10, Vol. I, North Dakota (Office of Govt. Reports, 1940, mimeo.).

3 Statement based on tabulations of expenditures for FERA, WPA, Emergency Crop and Feed loans, Drought Relief loans, Rural Rehabilitation loans and grants, and AAA payments, derived from the following source references: Security, Work and Relief Policies (Nat'l Resources Planning Bd., 1942); County Reports of Federal Expenditures, March 4, 1933, to June 30, 1939, Report No. 10, Vol. I, North Dakota (Office of Govt. Reports, 1940, mimeo.); and the Annual Reports of the AAA and the Farm Credit Administration. The total national outlay was approximately $11,950,000,000, of which some $44,000,000 was spent in the 14 counties of this area, containing less than one-tenth of one per cent of the nation's population. These figures do not include expenditures pursuant to the submarginai land retirement program, under which upwards of 10 per cent of all land purchased was in this area.

4 For a discussion of the natural hazards of wheat production here, see Ward, Ralph E., “Adjusting Wheat Acreage in the Northern Great Plains,” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics (1944), pp. 344–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 One man who long ago did not share this supposition was Major J. W. Powell, whose acute observations about the West have brought him just posthumous fame. Speaking a word of warning to the 1889 North Dakota constitutional convention, he said: “They will have a series of years when they will have abundant crops; then for two or three years they will have less rainfall, and there will be failure of crops, and disaster will come on thousands of people…. There is almost enough rainfall for your purpose. But one year and another you will need a little more than you get.”

6 This density figure includes both urban and rural inhabitants. For rural areas alone, the density is, of course, even less.

7 Earlier, before 1891, a settler could get up to 480 acres by availing himself of the preëmption, timber culture, and homestead acts; but Congress in 1891 repealed the two former. It was not until 1912, when the great rush of settlement was over and all but the poorest land taken up, that Congress extended to North Dakota the 1909 act providing for 320 (later 640) acre homesteads.

8 By the end of 1940, some 3,000,000 acres of the area were in state and federal ownership. Forty per cent of this had been acquired after 1932, in large part through the submarginai land retirement program.

9 The acute lack of public revenues resulted in such things as teachers' salaries of $40 a month, seven-month school terms in many districts, and avoidance of jury trials in some places in order to save expense.

9a See 1941 Annual Report of the Chief of the Soil Conservation Service. It goes without saying that many other programs not discussed here were also put in operation in this area, such as soil conservation districts, shelter-belt plantings, farm debt adjustment and moratoria, rural rehabilitation and resettlement.

10 Ch. 237, Laws of 1939, as amended by ch. 296 of 1945. This departure was carried further by ch. 134 of 1941, which empowered the counties to refuse to sell or lease tax-deed lands to the highest bidder when (a) the prospective purchaser or lessee would impair the fertility of the tract or an adjoining tract, or (b) the tract would become part of an operating unit deemed too large or too small, or (c) the value of adjacent county-owned land would be reduced. See Penn, Raymond J. and Taylor, Morris H., Management of Public Land in North Dakota (Bulletin 312, N.D. Ag. Exp. Sta., Fargo, 1942)Google Scholar; and Taylor, Morris H., “Selective Selling and Leasing of County Land in North Dakota,” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics (1943), pp. 238–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See Engelbert, E. A., “A Decade of County Government Reorganization in North Dakota,” in this Review, June, 1942, pp. 608–515.Google Scholar

12 A recent act of the legislature aims to compel the poorest of the counties to accept one of the optional forms of government. (Ch. 150, Laws of 1945. Proposed constitutional amendment.)

13 In 1945, the 10 counties for which recent Agricultural Census figures are available harvested over 41,280,000 bushels of grain, and had a bovine population of 332,557 head. Compare this with the 1940 figures of 14,280,000 bushels and 167,181 head, respectively, when this area was just beginning its recovery from the bad days of the 1930's.

14 This is illustrated by the enormous diminution of gross county and school district debt between 1939 and 1945. Over the state as a whole, of which the southwestern quarter is a sensitive reflector, the total has been scaled down from $25.77 millions to $7.05 millions. North Dakota Taxpayer, issue of March, 1946 (North Dakota Taxpayers Association, Fargo). Another illustration is found in changes in county ownership of tax-forfeited lands. Recent surveys of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics have gathered figures on this for seven of the counties (Adams, Bowman, Dunn, Grant, Oliver, Sioux, and Stark). Five of these have generally followed a policy of trying to return their land to private owners. In these, county ownership has been reduced since 1940 by 91.5 per cent (from 310,000 to 26,300 acres).

15 “Local Government in Southwestern North Dakota,” by Hansen, Goodman, and Taylor (mimeo., May, 1943, North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station, Fargo). Pre-1940 figures given in this article, unless otherwise cited, are from this study.

16 “Tax Delinquency and Tax Title Procedure in North Dakota,” by Melville C. Williams and Peter L. Hansen. Unpublished study by U.S.D.A. in coöperation with North Dakota Agric. Experiment Station (Washington, D. C., December, 1940).