$20 an acre. Today, that land is selling for anywhere between $400 and a thousand dollars an acre. Not because it has any real agricultural value. The land values have gone up in this particular area out of all proportion to the inflation of the dollar, out of all proportion to the agricultural value, because the land has acquired a new value, in this case recreational value.

We find in this particular area of Illinois corporations acquiring land to develop little plots for people on weekends.

There seems to be a good deal of money made in the acquisition of land and sale of lots to small owners for recreational purposes, with, I might add, in this particular case, very little consideration given to the burdens on the local community for additional police protection, fire protection, and so on.

We have very little evidence, I guess, on the increases in land values. In this case, the land is being priced out of the reach of most individuals. Notwithstanding the fact in Illinois it is potentially the best recreational land in the State, it is being priced out of the reach of our State government to be used for public recreational purposes.

Could you tell us a little bit more about the trends over the years, and the influence of public policy in the other nonagricultural areas? Mr. GATES. You mentioned the question of timber ownership. Just before the end of the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the Bureau of Corporations was established. One of its first purposes was to make a survey of the control and ownership of standing saw timber in the United States.

They published their results in 1911. It was in line with the views of Gifford Pinchot, and he had a considerable part in shaping the plans for the study. But for the first time, we had an adequate understanding, as a result of that investigation, of the way the large timber holdings, what was then the Long Bell Co. and the Weyerhaeuser interests, and the Stephenson interest in Wisconsin and Michigan, and other large holdings, had been established.

Until 1891, there was no limitation on the amount of land that individuals could acquire almost anywhere, of timberland. Even after 1891, it was still possible to use various legislation that was designed for settlers, but could be abused by representatives of the lumber companies, to acquire choice Douglas-fir land in Washington, redwood land in California, or still valuable pine land in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The Bureau of Corporations' report, which is in effect an indictment of the whole history of the American treatment of public lands, and particularly with respect to the forest cover, it showed how out of these neglectful policies of the Government, large-scale monopolization had been established.

A monopolization still exists, for that matter, because the Weyerhaeusers still have the land they owned at the time the Corporation's report was made. Although there have been some changes in corporate structure, the ownership still is as largely concentrated as it was at that time.

When I was making a study of your State, Senator Stevenson, I learned that business leaders of Bloomington, which I think you must know pretty well, and the Chicago people invested in real estate downstate.

I had wished that the census of the United States would give some attention to the investments. The census works on the basis of counties. It is not interested in individuals. An individual like William Scully and his descendants, who owned around 200,000 acres of land, they are not interested in determining their ownership. All they are interested in is knowing the size of individual farms in, let us say, Logan County, where a large part of their Illinois land is centered. I remember there was an agricultural editor of the Bloomington Pantograph who gave a good deal of attention to the agricultural operations of the State. I remember some of the stories that he wrote about the investments of the Chicagoans in downstate real estate, that it was becoming almost a fad for persons of wealth and means to invest in land, and at their country club and club meetings they discussed with others their livestock, their corn and hog ratio, and other such esoteric issues.

Well, the point that I have been most interested in is the relationship between the original entries, or the original acquisition, of land by speculators of one sort or another, individuals, companies, land groups, foreigners, what not, and the ability of those groups, notwithstanding all of the restrictive and critical legislation, and there has been considerable, to hold that land and develop upon it until today we are getting an increasing knowledge of some of these large ownerships. In the 19th century, except where there was a good deal of hostility in a local community to large ownership, there was very little attention devoted to it. The one large ownership in Illinois that received attention was because it was owned by a man with English citizenship in the first place; in the second place because his attitude toward his tenants was that of an Irish landlord rather than of the American landlords, and he was in ill repute both with his tenants and with the papers in the community where his land was located because he insisted on the tenants making their improvements, and the improvements they made were slight. They were not sure how secure their investments were. They owned the improvements, but their meager resources prevented them from making anything but the the slightest improvements.

Furthermore, they tended to oppose taxation for schools and roads, and the social facilities in those communities of the Scully holdings were in the 19th century distinctly lower than those in other parts of the State. I think that is no longer the case, but in the 19th century, there was considerable opposition, reaching a high point when the State of Illinois in the 1880's adopted a law the purpose of which was to ban alien ownership of land, and the Scully family-this was William Scully-then took out citizenship in Washington, which enabled him to get around the law.

The law probably would not have stood up in the test of the courts, anyway, but it was interesting that after Illinois adopted that law, most of the Western States, Kansas, Nebraska, and others, adopted similar measures designed to prevent prospective creation of estates by aliens. Of course, they could not have any effect on existing large ownerships that were held by the Scotch and English capitalists in the cattle country of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming.

We have a lot of information about the breakdown and improper use of the settlement laws of the 19th century by the cattlemen. In fact, this

is a part of our land history that is best known. We have statistics of the amount of English and Scotch capital that was invested in American land, and the amount of acreage that was acquired. That is pretty well known.

But the part that is less well known is the part of the absentee owners, whether they are in Chicago or elsewhere. There is very little in print about that, because it is not easy to find. You cannot get any information on that in the census records unless you go to the original census schedules, and that would necessitate doing all over again the statistical work that the Census Bureau has done. Nobody has done that.

Senator STEVENSON. Even the agricultural census is not a valuable source of information?

Mr. GATES. It is valuable. I would not want to give that as my impression, at all. It is a very valuable source. In fact, I think I have badly worn the census volumes, the agricultural census volumes, in the Cornell Library, I have virtually worn them out I have used them so much. But they are nameless, there are no names there in the first place.

To cite the simple illustration again—I don't want to harp on the Scully family, but the Scully family owned land from the 1850's in three or four Illinois counties. I could not get a bit of information on that from the census, because the census does not give anything about ownership, other than that a farmer is an owner of his land. It does not give anything about landlords, absentee landlords, at all.

Senator STEVENSON. Is Illinois unique in this respect because of our unique law which permits land trusts? Are you familiar with that law? Land is placed in the trust. Really only the title is placed in trust, but it does effectively conceal the ownership in Illinois of both urban and rural land. I think that law is unique.

Is this problem of ascertaining land ownership unique to Illinois? Mr. GATES. I think it would be. I have been concerned about this not only in Illinois but in quite a number of the Western States.

Now, the Scully family in recent years have made their records available. We have had one or two studies made, and another one is in the process of being made. But some of the landlords are still not anxious to open their records. This has slowed down investigations of this sort.

The only way you can accumulate that information is going to the counties. There are over 3,000 counties in the country. It may take a long time in an individual county to work up the story.

One of the things which has been helpful to me has been the publication of those county plat books, that I have used a great deal. They are exceedingly interesting. But they are always way behind, way out of date.

Senator STEVENSON. If the Congress were to commission a study of land ownership patterns in the country, would it be possible at this point in history, with such laws as the land trust law in Illinois and the secrecy which you have alluded to, to complete such a study and produce the information which could tell us who owned the land in rural America?

Mr. GATES. There is no limitation or restriction on the use of the county records. When I was doing my "Fifty Million Acres," which is

a study of land disposal in Kansas from 1854 to 1890, I worked the county records of 30 eastern Kansas counties.

I remember in one instance the local abstractors, who were using the county records at the same time I was, seemed to be somewhat miffed at the fact that I was using them. I had not introduced myself or made any statement as to why I was there.

I later heard that they thought I was working in behalf of the Torrance land law that Australia has experimented with, that might do away with the need for relying on the abstractor. I had no such intention, of course. I was simply concerned with the accumulation of data that the census did not provide for me, and of the history of some of these estates which I could find from the county deeds and the mortgage and tax records. The latter were not in all instances extant.

I don't see any reason why a study could not be made, and why it could not be made effectively, although it would take a considerable amount of time. It would be very useful.

Senator STEVENSON. Are we able to discover in the case of large corporations the extent of their holdings?

Mr. GATES. The Bureau of Corporations got that in 1911. They showed ownership maps of every one of the major timber companies as of that time. Some of them, like the Weyerhaeusers, bought a million acres from the Northern Pacific Railroad. There are alternate sections on the alternate section patterns that were granted to the railroad, but they were able to fill in by acquiring through dummy entrymen the Desert Land Act, or the Forest Purchase Act, they were able to fill in many of the sections, also, so that today a considerable part of their ownership is blocked out.

Senator STEVENSON. Would it be difficult, with the advent of agribusiness, to put together information on the extent of corporate holdings of agricultural land? Do you anticipate cooperation from the corporations?

Mr. GATES. I cannot comment on the support that you might get from the corporations. Business, generally speaking, today is more willing to open its records to historians than it was in the 19th century or in the early part of the 20th century.

The old notion that a businessman had of the historian was that he was interested in accumulating the dirt. They pointed to Gustavus Meyer and some of the nonprofessional historians of the 19th century who were concerned with monopolistic issues, and exaggerated the data, and perhaps were not very careful with their conclusions.

The historian, the professional historian, today is I think not at all interested in muckraking. In fact, one of my students once asked me why I did not pay any attention to the scandal theory of history. He mentioned Benjamin Franklin, and said that his private life was more interesting in some ways than his public life, why did I not give a little attention to that. Well, I said that was not basically important in a study of American history. I was much more interested in his public career.

But actually, business has generally changed its attitude. Most of the railroads have opened their archives. The first of them was the Illinois Central that opened its archives to me, when I made my dissertation on the Illinois Central Railroad. Then the Burlington Railroad, after its records had been used for a time by Richard Överton, went so far

as to donate its whole manuscript collection of material relating to its land policy to the Newberry Library in Chicago.

I think the businessman's attitude today is much different from what it was in the 19th century, but some of these new corporations that are moving into agribusiness may be more sensitive, especially in light of some of the things that congressional committees are doing. Senator STEVENSON. You flatter us.

Senator Hughes, do you have any questions?

Senator HUGHES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Really, I guess Dr. Gates, the primary interest I would have right now is a projection into the future. Can you make any logical projections from the history you have studied as to what the next 20 years hold?

Mr. GATES. I wish you would not ask me that. The only time I tried to do that was in the election campaign in 1938. I had been very active in the campaign in 1936. I had been much elated with the results. I thought on the basis of the same studies that I had made for 1936, now in 1938, that the Democrats were going to win, and win well. My predictions were wrong.

I went so far as to write a little story on it for a student newspaper called the "Aeropagus." The next day I decided to stay home and not go to class. I was fearful of the reaction I would have from the students.

I would prefer not to do that. I am not in the position to do that. Your agricultural economists and your socioligists are willing to and are equipped to handle questions of that sort. It does seem to me that the tendency is to move in the direction of corporate farming. The number of incidents that you see in the press of companies that are moving into that direction is rather startling it seems to me.

Senator HUGHES. Have you done any comparative studies in capital investment, that is, in relation to nonagricultural business?

Mr. GATES. No; I haven't. My work has been mostly devoted to ownership and not to efficiency of operation or returns. In fact, I know very little about the returns of these except where there are records. There are a few cases in Illinois where estates are in public hands, in semipublic hands, it was necessary for the estate management to file an annual report showing profits and losses, expenditures and balances and so forth and that was a very interesting series of documents. But I haven't gone into that aspect of it, no.

Senator HUGHES. Then one final question. It is not a question but I guess it is an appeal for advice. Could you advise the committee from your historical experience of any direction to proceed in our investigation that we are not covering?

Mr. GATES. I thought that Senator Gaylord Nelson came very close to some very fundamental issues in questions he asked the agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin. I suspect that in our farming management records at Cornell we have information about profits and losses. I know from talking with Stanley Black who is professor of agricultural economics and a very distinguished and extraordinarily able man in his field, that he has intimate detail on many farms because the farmers are cooperating with him in providing data or inputs, outputs, profits and losses, and so forth. He has intimate data about their operations.