Norwich bulletin., 1911-10-26

rent issue Of Survey.
 Recent agricultural immigrants to southern New England, though not nu- merous, represent three rather dis tinct economic types, says Alexander E Cairce.
 First are the laborers. Portuguese, Finnish, Italians, and Polish, chiefly employed in gangs on the cranberry bogs of Cape Cod or on market gard- chs near Providence and Boston.
 The second class are the rural com- munities of land owning foreigners who occupy fertile soils, such as those in the Connecticut valley, and who are engaged in the production of special CT ops-onions. tobacco, fruit or market garden produce.
 Slavic Jewish Immigrants.
 The Slavic and Jewist immigrants on the Connecticut highlands, with whom this article deals must be re- garded in an economic light as diff ferent from those just mentioned. There are few sections of Connecticut rougher, stonier, or less adapted to general farming than the upland towns lying between the eastern wall of the Connecticut valley and the Willimantic river, from New London and Saybrook northward to the Massachusetts line. For many years this section has been agriculturally decadent, and the rural population has declined stead fly. Communities that f1ourished hundred years ago would now be we'll nigh depopulated were it not for the recent ingress of foreigners; thousands of acres of land formerly in tillage have been allowed to grow up chest nut sprouts and extensive areas of pasture land are now producing little but brush and briers.
 The restoration of these lands is a grave problem. Conserva tionists have recommended white pine, agricultural e hava advised the mt of sheep husbandTy, while with the same purpose in view-that of re- populating the worn-out ridges and restoring their facility-pllilanthr pists, humanitarians. and real es- tate agents have urged immigrant oc- equation.
 < The soil must be constantly and con sistently coaxed and stimulated Con- Sequently the foreign occupant, who frequently comes from a New York factory where he has been earning s15 to S25 a week. and who has invested nearly all his spare cash in land. with little capital and small knowledge of farming, is likely to meet discourage ment or disaster in his first encounter with the exhausted farm. which the owner probably sold because he could not earn & living upon it.
 Holland Country Case.
 One typical case may be mentioned. O1 the top or one or the fouShest ridges in Holland county Slavic family, in 1905, bought an old farm Of sixty acres. About half of the land had once been in tillage and $1,200 did not seem an exhorbitant rice to pay for land and buildings. The fam fly consists of a man and wife, about fftynine years of age, two daughters employed in New York, and two sons about twenty-two and nineteen years of age, respectfully. Despite the fact that the younger son worked very steadily in a neighboring pearl but ton factory, the family have not been able to support themselves and have been obliged to call on the daughters for aid more than once. They are neat, careful, hard-working farmers, but the rock -streW, infertile fields give meagre returns. careful ac- counting showed that scarcely S20 worth of produce had been sold from the farm in 1909.
 Adequate apital and expert know ledge of fruit-raising would probably make the farm profitable after a few years.
 This instance is rather type than an exception in the particular neigh bornood
 Land Sharks.
 But the obstacles are not all of the same nature Even with infertile soil the foreigner accustomed to the rent ridden fields of Europe might be able to coax lean return from the SO land were he able to purchase his land at a fair valua ton. But this is reckoning without the land shark" The movement of Slavs to Holland country dates back but a few years -tS 1902 or 1903. The greater nu- Der have arrived since 1905. The first corners, who dealt with original own CTS, fared very we'll buying land at it's real vaIue-about $4 to $8 per acre. Later the available tracts were grabbed up by real estate speculators. who gathered in the bargains, sold the timber to lumbermen fOr the pur- chase price of the land, and, stocking the farm with a few old cows and some second hand tools, disposed of the denuded acres to the credulous and unsophisticated newcomer for more than the original sale price Some of the agents are Americans, some are foreigners who advertise extensively in Bohemian and Polish newspapers.
 The testimony in regard to sharp practices is specific and ampl"
 Tt is 8 shame" said an intelligent officer. that such Darefaced raScallity should go on. 1 have known farms that were bought for $1.000 to be sold by the buying speculator within a month for s5,000 timber rights re- served. The price asked is ordinarily limited only By the size of the land seekers pocketbook
 One man who paid $1 900 cash for place found that the agent had bought the option on it from the American owner a few days previous for $400. Another who boukrht seventy-fve acres in 1908 for $1.850, found on sur vey that the farm had shrunk to ffy acres and the anened value to $4ee.
 In Holland county more than one half the foreigners interviewed by the author for the immigra tion commis sion related tales of exploitation of one sort or another The reservation of-timber clause in deeds to immi grants is so common that it may be called universal
 Bohemians Most Prosperous.
 Exclusive of Jews, who have settled in comparatively large numbers near Chesterfield and Colchester, in New London county. perhaps 125 families of Poles, Bohemians, and other Slavic people have purchased farms on the upper Connecticut highland chiefly in Holland county. The Bohemians are perhaps the most numerous, the most prosperous, and, on the whole, the most discontented. Nearly all the for eigners migrated from New York city, but the Bohemians came from skilled occupations and brought more money with them than the Poles and SiovakS. The Slovaks are tlfe most recent com CTS. they afe poor. occupy rough, stony and barren land for the most part; and their hopeless attempts to clear and put in cultivation little patches of rock-strewn soil are pathetic.