Proceedings & Collections - NSHS - Vol. IV

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SENATOR P. W. HITCHCOCK.*

March 4th, 1871--March 2nd, 1877.

Mr. Hitchcock moved that the senate take up Bill 680, "To encourage the growth of timber on the western prairies."
This with him had become a pet measure. The bill was his own. Grand in conception, economic and benevolent in design and bold in fancied execution. An effort to supply a defect of nature, to modify the rigors of climate, to add health, comfort and gain to the citizens, was worthy of a fair and honest experiment. Mr. Hitchcock stated the object of the bill as follows:

It provides that any person who shall plant, protect and keep in a healthy growing condition for five years, one hundred and twenty acres of timber, the trees thereon not being more than eight feet apart each way, on any quarter section of the public lands of the United States, shall be entitled to a patent for the whole of the quarter section at the expiration of five years on making proof of such fact by not less than two credible witnesses; but only one quarter in any section is to be thus granted.

By amendments from the committee on Public Lands, the number of acres was reduced from 120 to 40, and the space between trees extended to 12 feet.
Mr. Harlan of Iowa moved an amendment extending the time of cultivation to ten years and sustained it with an argument.

MR. HITCHCOCK: There is clearly no time to discuss a measure of this importance at this period of the session. I had hoped and intended to prepare some remarks on this question, which I thought, and still think, deserves the careful consideration of the Senate. I am surprised at the style of the remarks made by the senator from Iowa. It is evident that he does not desire the passage of the bill at this time. But, Sir, preferring that the bill shall pass, even with this amendment rather than it shall fail entirely, I will accept it.

*For the record of Mr. Hitchcock as territorial delegate, see ante, page 100.

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An effort being made to limit the privilege of the bill to such only as had less than 160 acres of land, Mr. Hitchcock said:

   The senator from Mississippi totally misapprehends the object and intention of this bill. The object of the bill is to encourage and develop a growth of timber west of the Missouri River.
   It will take capital, it will take money, to plant, cultivate and protect forty acres of timber for ten years, as the bill now provides. A man without capital can get his land now without money under the homestead law.
   The object of this bill is to encourage the growth of timber not merely for the benefit of the soil, not merely for the value of the timber of itself, but for its influence on the climate.

The bill was passed as thus amended and was operative for twenty-two years.

COLORADO.

On the 24th day of February, 1875, the senate proceeded to the consideration of a bill for the admission of Colorado, as a state. Mr. Hitchcock, having the bill in special charge, and the session being within eight days of its close, was anxious to see it passed without amendment, which might cause its defeat in the House of Representatives for want of time.
Feeling that sufficient population and ample material resources existed, but that no very recent census had been taken, his ingenuity was tested in the condensation of statistical estimates and historic facts. Knowing the temper of the senate, when time was short, and each one anxious to pass special measures, he combined directness with brevity, as in his opening speech.

Mr. President, at this period in the session, with the calendar filled with a long list of bills which have received favorable action at the hands of the different committees and which are pressing for the formal and favorable action of the Senate, I believe that no extended discussion of this bill is needed or would be justifiable.
There is, I apprehend, and can be, but one possible objection and but one possible question to be considered and but one point upon which opposition can be made to the present admission of Colorado. That question is in regard to her

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present population. Upon that point the Committee on Territories believe from the best information which they were able to obtain that Colorado to-day contains a population of one hundred and fifty thousand. Of course this must be based to a great extent on statistics and estimates, as no official formal census of the Territory has been taken for the last five years.
   The population of the Territory, by the census of 1870, was about 40,000. There are some comparative estimates which can be made from the statistics of the Territory at that time, and statistics since that time which go to show the ratio of the increase of population. For instance, the revenue of the postal department in 1870 was twenty-nine thousand and some hundred dollars. The revenue of the same department for the year 1874 was $102,000, nearly four times the revenue derived from the postal service in the year 1870.
   I think there is no better, no surer test than that. The increase in the population is represented perhaps as accurately by the increase of revenue of the postal service as in any other way. So in other respects. At the time the census of 1870 was taken there was not in the territory a single line of completed railroad, and now there are 735 miles built at an estimated cost of about $30,000,000. So that it is probable that no territory has been admitted with the aggregate of wealth, the aggregate of business, the aggregate of commercial importance that Colorado has at the present time. Since the original constitution was adopted twenty-four states have been admitted to the Union. Of these, Texas, Maine and West Virginia were separated from other states or admitted as independent sovereignties, as in the case of Texas. Consequently twenty-one states have been admitted from a territorial condition since the government was founded.
   Of these twenty-one, but two were admitted as states which had at the time of their admission a greater population than Colorado now has, and these were Michigan and Wisconsin, each of them having, I think, a population of about 200,000; Minnesota having a population of about the same amount that Colorado now has, and the others, such states as Illinois and Ohio, having only about one third the population which Colorado now has. Situated in the center of the continent, extending from the 37th parallel of latitude on the south to the 41st parallel of latitude on the north, and from the 25th meridian of longitude on the east to the 32d meridian of longitude on the west, embracing an area of 106,000 square miles; with a vast mineral wealth hidden away in the recesses of her lofty mountains and her lovely

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valleys; with a climate, wonderful for its healthfulness, with a soil capable by irrigation of producing an agricultural product sufficient to support a population of at least two millions of people; settled with inhabitants, hardy, brave, enterprising, loyal, and intelligent, Colorado is ready to throw off the swaddling clothes of a territory and assume position as a sovereign and independent state.

Objection seemed to spring up all over the senate, to various provisions of the bill. Mr. Sargent of California protested against allowing 5 per cent upon all sales of public lands made prior to the admission of the State.

MR. HITCHCOCK: The honorable senator from California, in the name of economy, proposes to strike out two words. the usual words which have been in other enabling acts, and which have allowed other incoming states to obtain 5 per cent on the proceeds of those public lands, which had been sold during their territorial existence.
Now I think it would not be very becoming in the United States to select Colorado as a conspicuous instance of economy. As a matter of economy, I am sure it is better that this bill should pass in its present form than that the Territory of Colorado should continue to be governed at the expense of the United States.

   The State of Nevada put in her assertion that she had not received the same 5 per cent. fund, but was promptly answered, that she had not a sale of lands prior to her admission; but did receive it on subsequent sales. Mr. Edmunds desired six months to intervene between the forming of a constitution and its adoption.
   Mr. Hitchcock could see this in no other light than an effort to postpone the admission of the State; but the amendment was, however, adopted. Numerous others were offered, and but a few passed.
   After keeping up a very prolonged and successful running debate, with such antagonists as Sargent of California, Stewart of Nevada, Edmunds of Vermont, Hamilton of Maryland and Bayard of Delaware, Mr. Hitchcock's labors were consummated in the passage of the bill, and in 1876 Colorado became the Centennial State.

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COLORADO EXPENSES.

In the first session of the 44th Congress on a bill to allow $20,000 for certain Colorado expenses, in reply to the venerable senator (Mr. Morrill of Vermont) Mr. Hitchcock said:

Mr. President, I have heard of saving at the spigot and spending at the bunghole; I have heard of such things as men being "penny wise and pound foolish," and I think if we want to make a conspicuous example of that kind of economy, this senate should, after having so recently voted to endorse and assume the payment of $15,000,000 of bonds to pay for paving the streets of this city, to pay attorneys for defending the officers of this government, and to pay reporters for reporting those proceedings, vote to strike out this section. I think that would be an eminently proper thing for this senate to do. But, sir, I think that this senate can afford, probably without ruining the government, to make this appropriation of $20,000 to pay the expenses of the members of the convention to frame a constitution for the State of Colorado. Colorado is just becoming of age, she assuming the responsibility not only of self-government, but of bearing her equal fair share in the government of us all; and I believe that ordinarily prudent policy dictates that we should not receive her in a niggardly manner.

NEW MEXICO.

Having in charge a bill for the admission of New Mexico, as a, state, at the winding up of a long discussion, Mr. Hitchcock very successfully punctured New England's vanity in the following manner:

Mr., President, the State of Rhode Island, the very years which the senator quotes, at the last two elections, polled how many votes?
The State of Rhode Island polled in the year 1872, 13,442 votes, about 3,000 less than were polled by New Mexico, in the last year, with no contest; yet the State of Rhode Island is represented on the floor of the other House by two members. Therefore, by the senator's own argument, the injustice we do here is that we do not give the Territory of New Mexico two members instead of one in the other House. Very much has been said in regard to the agricultural resources of New Mexico. The honorable senator from Maine said he thought there was not more than one out of an hundred acres of arable land. Even if there were

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but one acre out of an hundred, it is far greater in proportion than in the states of New England.
The valley of the Rio Grande, running all the way through the center of the Territory, I venture to say has greater capacity for agricultural production, and will produce more in one year, than the whole territory of New England will or has in a century.

INDIAN WARFARE.

The Senator's conclusions respecting warfare with Indians partook of the deductions of experience and actual knowledge.

Mr. President, I want to tell the honorable senator that, the men to fight Indians are the men who know the Indian character, the men who are on the ground, and there are plenty in the immediate vicinity of these Indians, who not only are acquainted with the Indian character, but have had military service in the field heretofore.
Recruits from your regular army are enlisted in the streets of your great cities; they are men who have never seen Indians, and they are men unaccustomed to ride.

UNION PACIFIC.

In the last elaborate speech of his senatorial term is found the following extract:

Mr. President, it is my fortune to reside upon the line of the Union Pacific Railroad. It was my fortune to see the first spadeful of earth ever thrown upon the grading of that road, and to be somewhat familiar with the history of its construction, with the method of operation, and with the beneficent results which have come to the country and the world from that construction and operation. The construction of a railroad across the continent from ocean to ocean, marked an era in the material prosperity and development, not of this continent only but of the world. Existing for a quarter of a century or more only in the brain of enthusiastic dreamers, it remained for the statesmen who controlled the destinies of the country in the dark hours of her struggle with armed rebellion to crystallize that dream into a practical enactment; and it remained for the daring enterprise of the capitalists and business men of that time to carry out the enactment to a glorious consummation.
Like everything human, no matter how excellent, it had its imperfections. It was marred and scarred by the connection with it in its early history of sordid men, who

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saw nothing in it better than a means of adding to their wealth and their gain; and like everything human that is successful, it had no sooner become a success than it became, and still is, the object of continued bitter and persistent attack.
During the process of its construction the country rang with plaudits of the magnificence of the enterprise and approval of the courage and energy with which it was prosecuted. No sooner was it completed than the country rang, as it still rings, with denunciation of it as a mighty fraud and swindle. I assert, Mr. President, and I do so without the fear of successful contradiction, that assuming that not one dollar of the principal or interest of the bonds which were advanced by this government to this railroad had ever been or ever would be paid except by the transportation which this company affords to the government, and saying nothing of the vast and almost measureless secondary consequential advantages which this country has received, and is receiving, and is destined to receive, this country has received every year, in transportation alone, twice the amount of the interest which she has paid upon these bonds; that she has received a fund which so far exceeds the interest she has paid upon these bonds that it will, prior to the time when the bonds become due, amount to a much greater sum than the amount of the bonds.

Sustaining his views of the subject he quoted at length from Senators' speeches when the original Union Pacific bill passed, and also from a House report showing that transportation over the plains before 1862 was costing the government from five to seven millions annually, whereas the annual interest on bonds would be one million per year.

REFORM SCHOOL.

The last matter of business accomplished by him twenty-four hours before the expiration of his term, was the passage of an amendment to an appropriation bill.

MR. HITCHCOCK: I have been for six years a member of the District Committee, and I am somewhat familiar with the appropriations which have been made in the name of charity to this district, and I believe of all the appropriations made there are none that have produced more beneficent results from a small expenditure than the appropriations which we have made annually for the reform school.

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They have out there to-day a farm of 150 acres. There are about 200 boys kept on that farm, at a very small expense. They need more land in order to employ the boys wisely and well. They need it in order that they may get a front upon the east branch, so they may obtain ice. They need it to prevent neighbors who will interfere with the welfare of the boys getting possession of the land. TERRITORY OF THE BLACK HILLS.

His amendment being adopted he might have retired satisfied that an honored service had closed with a parting tribute to "sweet charity"; but by long association and labors, the territories had become to him children of an older growth pleading for their patrimony.
At the end of a tedious night session, on the morning of the day of adjournment, he moved to take up a bill for organizing the Territory of the Black Hills.

MR. HITCHCOCK: If I may be allowed a single moment, I wish to state that I think if we can reach a vote on the bill, no senator can particularly object to its passage through the senate. It will gratify me exceedingly if it can be passed through the senate, at least, at the close of my term as a senator.

There being no hope for it in the House, at that session, and every senator being burdened with unfinished business, its fate was to "pass over." But in view of his persistent and intelligent efforts in behalf of the territories, Mr. Hitchcock merited a monument of Colorado granite, adorned with New Mexican silver and Black Hills nuggets, decorated with garlands from tree-cultured prairies, and inscribed to an honest service closed with a parting tribute to "sweet charity."