The Delta independent., 1907-02-22
1.-THE NATIONS FUTURE"
AN INTERESTING PAPER READ BY JAMES J. HILL
At MINNESOTA STATE FAIR LAST SEPTEM-
BER--FULl OF HOPE AND PROMISES.

tramping hateful streets in hope of
food and shelter.
LABOR SCARCE.
We cannot adapt conditions to the
future by restricting the growth of
population. The natural increase by
trth will continue. We may not. did
Nc wish it, interfere with the immigra-
ION movement. except to enforce
more careful scrutiny of the moral and
n1ustrial fitness of these newcomers.
Notwithstanding the addition of more
,ran million people year from a
uroad nearly all of them men and
""men who must work for a living,
labor outside of the cities was never as
scarce or wages as high as at the pres
ent time. immigration fingers in the
great centers and adds to the difficulties
attending employment.
I he farms stretch out their hands in
ya!n. Railroads in making extensions
have to get help at the highest market
price, and find large percent age of
those whom they employ mere hobo es
who desert as soon as they have sue
ceeded in getting transportation from
one part of the country to another.
Farmers besiege the employment
agencies in vain. and offer the lazy
tramp sum for day S work in the field
unheard of in any other country in the
world. The situation grows more en-
barrassing yearly. Hours of labor are
beng reduced in some of the states for
farm as well as shop hands. Men are
scarcer as the movement of population
to the cities grows more pronounced.
A considerable portion of this years
magnificent crop will be either reduced
IN quality or altogether lost by reason
of the impossibility of getting labor to
handle it properly. Discouraged small
'brmers are now selling their land to
larger proprietors who can profitably
substitute machinery for men.
The country needs more workers on
the soil. Not to turn the stranger away,
but to direct him to the farm instead
of the city: not to watch with fear a
possible increase of the birth rate. but
to use every means to keep the boys on
the farm and to send youth from the
city to swell the depleted ranks of agri-
cultural industry is the necessary task
of wcll-advised political economy and
an intelligent patriotism.
NO LAND LEFT.
The United States has been able
easily to take care of the great increase
of populat ion in the past because it had
a vast area of unoccupied land. This
was the main asset in its natural in
heritance. Within practically the last
half of the last century the whole
country from the Mississippi River to
the Rocky Mountains was occupied.
No pressure of population could make
itself severely felt when it might be
turned loose in such an empire. In
those fifty years there were added
547, $40. 9S2 acres to the agricultural
area, an increase of nearly two hundred
per cent. and the increase in the act
ually improved acreage was nearly
three hundred per cent. This is cut off
from the list of our resources. Within
the last six years there have been trans
ferred from public toprivate ownership
more than 100. 900. 600 acres Of govern
ment land. an area twice the size of
Minnesota. The entire area of surveyed
and unappropSiatcd land within the
United States is only two and half
times that amount.
At the present rate. therefore. every
acre of public land would disappear
within the next fifteen years. but As a
large percentage of the lands included
in this estimate are wholly or partially
unfit for tillagc, it is literally true to
say that our arabic public lands have
almost disappeared. And where are
our children to find standing room and
the tens of millions of the future a
place for wholesome industry? This is
An intensely practical question. 1t is
immediate. For within twenty years
we must house and employ in some
fashion fifty millions of additional pop
ulation: and 10y the middle Of this cen
tury, at time when the child now born
will be in the prime of life. there will
he approximately two and half times
~ many people in the United States as
there are to-day.
No nation in history was ever so con.
fronted with sterner question than
this certain prospect sets before us.
What are we to do with our brother.
whose keeper we are? How are we to
provide our own children with shelter
and their daily bread?