of all unsold federal lands within the state, not just the disputed lands under the canal grants, presumably for their distribution on a settleroriented basis.52 Accordingly, Chase introduced in Congress during 1851-55 several bills for a free grant to Ohio of the remaining federal lands. He soon discovered that he lacked support from others in Ohio's congressional delegation, for at the very time that the state was moving toward settler-oriented land policy most of Ohio's Congressmen were adopting a thoroughly conservative "eastern" position with regard to the federal lands. They regarded Chase's plan as setting a dangerous precedent that might justify similar free grants to the newer public land states of the West, and so 53 In they opposed Chase's proposed bills.5 1854, however, Congress approved the famous Graduation Act, which reduced the price of unsold federal lands commensurately with the length of time they had been on the market. This law affected nearly all the remaining federal land in Ohio except the $2.50 federal reserved land and disputed canal lands. Under its terms, nearly all such lands were "speedily taken up by speculators . . . at 122 cents an acre," as Chase had predicted. In 1855 the special bill approving cession to Ohio of all disputed canal lands was passed as a substitute for Chase's more comprehensive proposal.54

Successive changes of federal land law had done nothing, then, to reduce the price of the federal government's $2.50 reserved lands, some 60,000 acres of which remained unsold in northwestern Ohio in the mid-fifties. This was a source of great annoyance to local officials and to residents of the region, as the lands remained off the tax rolls with no prospect of their early sale since much of the acreage was wet land "impossible to improve or reclaim... without draining" and therefore badly over

Ohio's soil would soon be in the possession of a few immense corporations, and occupied and cultivated by mere tenants at will, destitute of all the essential attributes of true manhood." Ohio State Journal, quoted in Kalida Venture, Feb. 3, 1854.

52 Chase, "Speech . . . delivered at Toledo, May 30, 1851, before a Mass Convention of the Democracy of NorthWestern Ohio" (n.d.); Chase to Oran Follett, Mar. 23, 1855, "The Follett Papers," Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio Quarterly Publications 13 (Apr. 1918): 69-70.

53 Chase to Follett, Feb. 27, 1855, ibid., pp. 67-68; Chase to E. L. Pierce, Jan. 17, 1854, in Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1902, part 2, p. 253.

54 Chase to Follett, Mar. 23, 1855, "Follett Papers," p. 70. On the Graduation Act, see Gates, Public Land, pp. 186-195.

priced at $2.50 an acre.55 Under the 1850 Federal Swamp Land Act, these poorly drained tracts would have qualified for cession to the state and sale at lower prices, except that the law did not extend to such reserved lands. Therefore, more than forty years after the federal land offices had first opened in northwestern Ohio, settlement and agriculture were still being held back, to a degree, by a law ill-suited to the locale's geographic characteristics. Not until the 1860s, when land prices rose sharply, did it become economically feasible to buy the reserved lands at the $2.50 price and bring them into agricultural production.

The difficulties inherent in a state's attempting to define a rational, consistent course toward accomplishment of specified goals of public policy are well illustrated by the history of Ohio's land disposal. As in many other states which sold off substantial areas of public lands, Ohio fell far short of a coherent policy-process model. For example, the lands were never carefully classified by on-site inspection. Instead, appraisers were ordered to assign values to the land under time limitations that could not have permitted thorough field studies. 56 When appraisals were set too high, as measured by prevailing land market conditions, the legislature ordered arbitrary across-the-board reductions. Later, motivated to reduce prices in the early 1840s by a desire to raise revenues and thereby ease a fiscal crisis, the legislature made further price reductions for actual settlers only-signifying, presumably, a shift in basic

55 A. Latty to Chase, Feb. 18, 1856, swamp land records, state auditor's office, Columbus. The state's processing of applications for cession of land under the Swamp Land Act was painfully slow. Though the law was enacted in 1850, not until several years later were selections completed, and approval by the GLO took even longer. As late as 1863 certain $2.50 reserved lands, which mistakenly had been withdrawn from entry years earlier under the Swamp Land Act, were just then being reviewed by the GLO and put on sale again. (Latty to Gov. Dennison, June 26, 1860, Charles Wetmore Papers, Ohio Historical Society; the endorsement on this document indicates the course of action to 1863.) It should be noted, too, that the GLO had refused to accept military bounty land warrants as applicable to the reserved lands. Buyers offering the warrants (which had been issued to military veterans and volunteers in the Mexican War) had to pay $1.25 per acre cash in addition to the warrant. See GLO circular to registers and receivers, May 3, 1855, Wabash-Erie records, and Abner Root (register) to J. Butterfield, May 30, 1851, register's correspondence, Defiance land office, U. S. land records, Ohio State Archives. See Gates, Public Land, pp. 271-277, for a detailed treatment of the military warrants and scrip.

56 See Lima Reporter, Nov. 11, 1845.

policy that envisioned distribution of the land to people who would establish farms and contribute to the northwestern region's economic development. But there was lack of administrative follow-through. Responsibility for land sales was centralized in an official who proved unreliable, and blatant corruption permitted favoring of large-scale speculators. In addition, a manifest pattern of law evasion prevailed as hordes of petty speculators joined in a land grab that further retarded the settlement and development in northwestern Ohio. As long as valuable lands remained on sale at realistic prices, there were scandals and collusion that involved private purchasers and state officials alike. Never did Ohio undertake to manage its lands in a modern mode. There were no experiments with licensing for timber cutting or the like, and no bureaucracy was established to protect the unsold lands from intruders' depredations. Nor was anything done to assure (through inspection of claims or otherwise) that settler-oriented laws would actually benefit only bona fide settlers-except when a dramatic legislative investigation uncovered a colossal fraud.57

The complicated nature of land-disposal administration would have made orderly and sound management difficult under the best of circumstances. The cessions by Congress for canals came under several different statutes. There were conflicting laws and many vague provisions. In addition, the state had selected various "lieu lands" in northwestern Ohio under school-grant legislation, and there were several long-enduring disputes between the General Land Office and the state that made the clearing of individual titles nearly impossible in many instances. The substantive effects of federal land law were sometimes frustrating, too, especially the persisting desire of Congress to exempt the $2.50 federal reserved lands in Ohio from the operation of the new

57 When state officials did obtain thorough knowledge of the quality of lands, they used such information freely for their own purposes. For instance, in 1836 the state auditor, John Bryan, advertised himself as "extensively acquainted [with] all the lands from actual viewing." He offered himself as agent or co-investor "should any capitalist wish to avail himself of the best opportunity of ascertaining the value and important locations of the lands to be sold." Timothy Griffith (receiver, Wabash and Erie land office) to A. Bronson, Oct. 7, 1836, Bronson Papers (Griscom Collection), N.Y. Public Library.

laws of the 1850s which reduced the price of the public lands.

There was little order even in simple bookkeeping. In 1838, for example, the governor observed that selections under the canal grants were "contained in loose tabular statementssome of them in one office, some in another, and none of them in a state of proper preservation." 58 Throughout the years 1836-60, therefore, state documents reporting on public land questions included conflicting and confessedly inaccurate data. This made it impossible to expedite the resolution of controversies between the state and the General Land Office, the latter beset with administrative problems and too great a workload for its staff. 59 The Office repeatedly urged Ohio authorities to put the state's land records in order so that conflicting claims and titles might be settled. As late as 1883 this had not been accomplished, even though the 1855 congressional act ceding to Ohio all previously selected lands represented an effort to bring order out of the chaos. "For want of the settlement of those claims and lack of a set of Records, or a system of checks," one state official wrote in the late forties, "in not a few instances individuals have had to suffer severely for errors fairly chargeable to the System, or rather lack of System." 60

The historian might reasonably expect that state officials would have sought to borrow from the practices of sister states that compiled somewhat better records of land administration than Ohio's, or that at least they would have been aware of the various possibilities, illustrated by experiment elsewhere, in framing land law and in defining both policy objectives and administrative techniques.61 But references

58

Message of the Governor... February 5, 1838, pp. 1-5. 59 See Rohrbough, Land Office Business.

60 Ohio House Journal, 1883, pp. 911-913; James Riley to William Bebb, Feb. 12, 1847, Charles Wetmore Papers, Ohio Historical Society.

61 In California and Illinois, for instance, land sale administration was a function that devolved on local officials. Elsewhere a system of sales on credit was instituted, and in Wisconsin credit purchasing was permitted in a larger matrix of policy that during a short experimental period relied on cash sales. See Gerald D. Nash, State Government and Economic Development in California, 1840-1933 (Berkeley, 1964), pp. 124-129; Margaret Beattie Bogue, Patterns From the Sod: Land Use and Tenure in the Grand Prairie, 1850-1900 (Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, vol. 34: Land Series, vol. 1, Springfield, 1959), pp. 31-33; Swierenga, Pioneers and Profits, pp. 61-62; and Hurst, Law and Economic Growth, p. 72 ff.

to experience in other states were strikingly absent in both the published legislative debates and intra-agency administrative correspondence. If indeed the states served as the "laboratories of democracy," where new techniques and ideas could be tried out, there was little evidence of it in pre-1860 Ohio. Policymakers were sensitive to the realities of market forces, although mere sensitivity did not always bring rational responses to market imperatives. Yet there might as well have been a Great Wall of China along the state's borders in respect to administrative borrowing or informational exchange. That similar problems were being confronted elsewhere, or that diverse solutions were being tried, never passed the threshold of articulated consciousness.

In sum, the Ohio case provides further evidence substantiating the thesis of Willard Hurst that American policy processes and administrative functions fell far short of "ideal" standards in the early nineteenth century.

62

62 See Hurst, Law and Economic Growth, and Law and the

That is, government manifestly lacked independent energy sufficient to define long-term goals that transcended immediate pressures. Administrative agencies were created on a haphazard basis, were insufficiently staffed, and did not bring expertise to bear on problems of broad social concern. They failed to make explicit, for the benefit of policymakers and the electorate, the long-range implications of what amounted to merely incremental policies. The instruments of government available for controlling development were used mainly to stimulate growth on the principle of short-run advantage. They bent easily under pressure from special interests, and administrative integrity was quickly eroded when powerful forces impinged on it from the private sector. In the day-to-day business of managing the public resources, government was merely responsive rather than truly responsible.

Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century United States (Madison, 1964).

Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences.

NASA, created from an existing organization, was at first ill prepared to meet the nation's demand for a large space science program. Its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, had been established in 1915 to deal with technological problems in the field of aeronautics. Following World War II, NACA had expanded its activities, and by 1958 they included research on propulsion, aerodynamic structures, and operating problems of aircraft and spacecraft. Just prior to the conversion of NACA into NASA, Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, the director of NACA, envisioned the new space program as an extension of the old one, which would center upon research in technological problems and the development and use of manned and unmanned vehicles. Dryden was determined to use available funds to obtain basic scientific information rather than to perform spectacular circus stunts. He proposed development of a satellite with an astronomical telescope that would provide an unspecified "wealth of new information." "10 The major areas of space research that he listed for NACA's expanded mission, however, were concerned far more with technology than with science.11 He anticipated that proposals for such projects would come from industry and from the military, 12

That NACA was not prepared to undertake space research on anything approaching a large scale was the impression gained from a talk with Dryden by Dr. Fred L. Whipple, the director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. 13 Another space scientist, Dr. James Van Allen of the State University of Iowa, shared Whipple's opinion. At the April 1958

congressional hearings on the creation of NASA, Van Allen characterized NACA as basically a service agency to the aircraft industry. He argued that there should be a basic investigation of geophysical and astronomical phenomena and stated that NACA had relatively little work under way that was directly pertinent to space research. In reply to a leading question, Van Allen agreed that new minds were needed. 14

One of the new minds chosen to furnish NASA with science capability was Homer E. Newell, who transferred to NASA from the Naval Research Laboratory where he had led the rocket upper-air research work as superintendent of the Atmosphere and Astrophysics Division and had been science program coordinator for Project Vanguard, a satellite project carried out in conjunction with the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year. 15 Not only Newell but all of the personnel, property, equipment, supplies, and unexpended funds for Vanguard were transferred to NASA, as was the army's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.1

16

Besides transfer of entire programs to NASA, there were many individuals transferred because Newell was very active during his first few months with NASA, recruiting staff members who could initiate and supervise research programs. By December he had enlisted the head of the Research Staff Office of the Langley Research Center and the deputy director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and had held exploratory talks with key people at the Ballistic Measurements Laboratory and at the Naval Research Laboratory. 17 Late in December about fifty scientists were transferred from the Naval Research Laboratory to NASA's Space Science Division, and Newell anticipated that the division would build up to ninety people by the end of the fiscal year.

18

The intensity and effectiveness of Newell's recruitment effort are attested to by objections

14 U. S. Congress, House, Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, statement of James A. Van Allen, Hearings on H.R. 11881, 85 Cong., 2 sess. (1958).

15 Homer E. Newell, "Career Highlights," July 22, 1959, in Newell Reading File, NASA, Washington, D. C. (cited hereafter as Newell Papers).

16 Rosholt, Administrative History, pp. 44-47.

17 Newell to Abe Silverstein, NASA director of space flight development, Dec. 11, 1958 (letters cited are from the Newell Papers unless noted otherwise).

18 Memo, Newell to T. Keith Glennan, NASA administrator, Jan. 6, 1959 (memos cited are from the Newell Papers).