the first Homestead Act became a law and the settler was granted one hundred and sixty acres on proving a period of actual residence and improvement. The operation of this law, together with the Timber Culture Act, the Desert Land Act, grants of land for educational purposes, grants to railways, canals, irrigation and drainage projects, have practically exhausted the available arable lands, and the present public domain consists of desert sections, national parks, and national forest reservations. The prospective settler must now comb the Western half of the continent for "smuggled" tracts or migrate to the mosquito infested tundra of Alaska, a region that does not yet figure in our agricultural reports to an appreciable extent.
Next to the land policy, cotton plays an important part in the national development, and due to it slavery was prolonged as an American institution. Short staple cotton had been known from the earliest settlement, for it was cultivated by the Southern Indians, but the great labor attending its preparation for the spinning wheel had made it unprofitable to grow even with slave labor. But in 1786 the long staple cotton was introduced into the South from the Sea Islands, and in 1793 Eli Whitney invented the saw gin which enabled a single man to clean 1,000 pounds of the fiber in a day. Immediately cotton was not only a commercial possibility, but became a highly profitable commodity. The invention of a remarkable series of textile machines in England, which was the home of the weaving industry, brought a great demand for the fiber, and the South, with a suitable climate, slave labor and Whitney's gin, was
