The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-07-07
Imperative Need for
the United States to
Act Emphasized by
Farmers Crossing
the Border

The selling company would break, fence
and seed the first crop or pay the man
wages to do this himself. With the farm
would be supplied, if desired, team, two
cows and poultry. The cost of these would
be added to the cost of land and
buildings. Or if the settler had had ex-
perience and a reliable record the COM
pany would lend him 1900 to equip his
own farm.
Perhaps the wisest feature of these
ready made farms was the location near
a market, where the demand of coal
mines, new growing city or a railroad
centre would take care of all products. In
the West they are proud of telling how
this, that or the other settler moved in on
Monday, put his stove up, got his effects
unpaeked by Tuesday, began work
Wednesday and drew his first sales check
for milk or cream or butter Saturday
night They give actual eases of settlers
who did this with an initial investment
of less than 800, and some began with
no capital but the clothes on their backs,
the scant furniture in a tented wagon
driven twenty or thirty miles across the
prairie and determination to make good.
East l. in Much Better Shape.
But how much more easily situated is
the East for the repatriation Of its re-
turned soldiers on home acres, The farms
are here all ready made. State roads,
schools, churches lie at the very door.
Land can be bought at from S. to $25 an
acre with buildings and fences.
How can it be bought by people who
have no money or only few hundred
dollars! They will need from $500 to
81 900 for equipment and the first years
expenses That is where the big men come
in with their scheme for an industrial
land company.
They could pool their capital, add S. an
acre for profit and overhead, and sell on
the instalment plan with interest at 6 per
cent. and payments extending over term
of fifteen or twenty years, and they would
have form of profitable investment as
certain and secure as that of the Jewish
Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society
or the land banks of Germany or the
ready made farms of the West. But the
thing would have to be done just as care
fully and in as big spirit as in the West
Offices would have to be opened in the
cities as clearing house to get the set
tiers. The land would have to be bought
up eheaply after the most careful selec-
ton and rejection. 1t would have to b
put in shape to yield crops without four
or five years of waiting and experimental
failure to get weeds out ard sod turned.
Purchase the First Sn.g Met.
The purchase of the land would present
the very first snag. If it were known that
the big fellows were going out to buy up
huge areas, wouldn't there be a sudden
skyroeket in valuesf Before the New
York city water system was arranged, all
sorts of wild rumors went the rounds Of
watersheds up State where a dam might
possibly be built, and have on my farm
IAN old mine; yes, real hole in the
ground, with an ancient winch to take out
gold, put there for the sole purpose Of
creating fietitiously high values along one
watershed in case the State appropriated
land for reservoirs and dams
Something similar would happen if big
went out to buy up abandoned
farms. The Jewish Aid Society got past
this difficulty by letting the individual
purchasers buy privately under guidance
of its inspectors. Canada really had the
same problem; for the ready made farm
idea came fifteen years after a wild land
boom, when values had collapsed in the
hands of paper millionaires, who would
neither improve their land nor let go at
reasonable prices, and Canada removed
that difficulty by the application of single
tax principles. Unimproved property was
taxed so severely that the owner had to
sell or cultivate. Similar pressure would
compel the selling of uneultivated areas in