Haley Stevens: “last night at the Library of Congress I ran across this ad. I was going to talk about it later, but I wanted the Senator…”

“last night at the Library of Congress I ran across this ad. I was going to talk about it later, but I wanted the Senator to see this. This is an ad on one of the displays in the Library of Congress. Millions of acres in Iowa and Nebraska were put up for sale by the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company. I will develop later that the West was opened, really, because President Lincoln offered $1 million and every odd section of the right-of-way for the first railroad to link the east and west coasts of the United States. We don't think in terms of that now. Once those railroad companies got a hold of the land, they put it up for sale. They put it up for sale at $2.50 an acre and let people have 10 years' credit to pay for it. That is what stimulated the development of the West. That is what stimulated the expansion of the United States. What have they done in my State, one-fifth of the land mass in the United States? They have blocked us at every turn, withdrew lands with economic potential, blocked us from using our own lands that had economic potential, closed our mines, closed our pulp mills, closed our timber mills, canceled the permits of the wildcat well drillers for oil and gas. We have lost the American dream of private ownership of lands in Alaska. I thought the Senator might be interested in that. It is a very interesting exhibit at the Library of Congress.”