The condition in which private land titles were found at the time of the American occupation was very distressing. It had been a difficult matter to secure title under the Spanish régime and the very large majority of the common people had accordingly put it off until a mythical to-morrow which never came. Even those who had succeeded in obtaining formal documents had in many instances lost them as a result of the vicissitudes of war. The Public Land Act of the Philippine Commission, passed under the provisions of the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, became effective on July 26, 1904. It contained liberal provisions relative to Spanish grants and unperfected titles. Any citizen of the Philippine Islands or of the United States or of any insular possession thereof over the age of twenty-one years or the head of a family can obtain a forty-acre homestead by five years of cultivation, two years of occupancy and the payment of $10. The Public Land Act also provided for the issuance of a free patent to a tract not exceeding forty acres in extent to any native of the Philippine Islands then an occupant and cultivator of unreserved, unappropriated, agricultural public land who had continuously occupied and cultivated such land either by himself or through his ancestors since August 1, 1898; or who prior to August 1, 1898, continuously occupied and cultivated such land for three years immediately prior to such date, and who had been continuously since July 4, 1902, until the date of the taking effect of the Public Land Act, an occupier and cultivator of such land. Most liberal provision was thus made for the small landowner, or would-be landowner, but neither Congress nor the commission reckoned with the ignorance of the common people nor with the opposition to the acquisition of land by poor Filipinos which developed on the part of their richer and more intelligent fellow-countrymen. This latter difficulty has proved to be a quite serious one. The cacique does not wish his labourers to acquire land in their own right, for he knows well enough that if they did so they would become self-supporting, and it would cease to be possible for him to hold them as peons, as is commonly done at present. Serious obstacles are therefore frequently thrown in the way of poor people who desire to become owners of land, and if this does not suffice, active opposition is often made by municipal officers or other influential Filipinos, who claim as their own private property land which poor men are trying to get. [158] The Bureau of Lands now interests itself actively and directly in protecting the public lands against such spurious claims, and thus keeps large areas open to claim by the common people.