But of charity in the ordinary sense of the care of
the destitute there was no significant increase because there was
no peculiar need. Here again the fact that the free land could
be easily reached is the final explanation. There was no need
for the unemployed workman to become a pauper. He could take
advantage of the Homestead Act*, which was passed in 1862, and
acquire a farm of 160 acres free; or he could secure at almost
nominal cost farm-land which had been given to railways as an
inducement to build. Under the Homestead Act, the Government gave
away land amounting to 2,400,000 acres before the close of the
war. The Illinois Central alone sold to actual settlers 221,000
acres in 1863 and 264,000 in 1864. It was during the war, too,
that the great undertaking of the transcontinental railway was
begun, partly for military and partly for commercial reasons. In
this project, both as a field of labor and as a stimulus to
Western settlement, there is also to be found one more device for
the relief of the labor situation in the East.
*This Act, which may be regarded as the culmination of the long
battle of the Northern dreamers to win "land for the landless,"
provided that every settler who was, or intended to be, a citizen
might secure 180 acres of government land by living on it and
cultivating it for five years.
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