[Footnote 28: There were three potent reasons for this migration:
financial stringency, overpopulation, and the growing rigor of the
military service. Over ten thousand processes a year were issued by
the German Government in 1872 and 1873 for evasion of military duty.
Germans who had become naturalized American citizens were arrested
when they returned to the Fatherland for a visit on the charge of
having evaded military service. A treaty between the two countries
finally adjusted this difficulty.]




CHAPTER VII

THE CALL OF THE LAND


For over a century after the Revolution the great fact in American
life was the unoccupied land, that vast stretch of expectant acreage
lying fallow in the West. It kept the American buoyant, for it was an
insurance policy against want. When his crops failed or his business
grew dull, there was the West. When panic and disaster overtook him,
there remained the West. When the family grew too large for the old
homestead, the sons went west. And land, unlimited and virtually free,
was the magnet that drew the foreign home seeker to the American
shores.

The first public domain after the formation of the Union extended from
the Alleghanies to the Mississippi. This area was enlarged and pushed
to the Rockies by the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and was again enlarged