At present when a new section becomes attractive there is a rush into
it, and then the rush slacks up with an air-brake suddenness. The
speculator has got there and pitched his tent, and his $100 to $500 acre
signs - part down, the rest at 8 per cent. - has taken possession, and
the stream is turned aside and goes elsewhere. And then the pumpkin,
with its 8 per cent. tags plastered all over it, is put aboard and
hauled through the country on its mission of deceiving the innocent.

With the land speculator out of the way, and no expenses outside of
office fees, there would be a steady increase of population wherever
there is agricultural land, until the last acre is in possession of an
actual settler, whose home would be on the place. (The principle which
allows a man living in New York, or somewhere else, to own land in
California, or somewhere else, should set every law-maker to scratching
his head to see if he cannot get an idea out of it.)

And do not plague yourselves about the numerosity of the new settler,
and where the whole of him is to find a market. We are trying to get rid
of the pauper, and whoever heard of a farm, free of the 8 per cent.
night-mare, being the breeding place of such as he? Whatever else
happens to the farmer he at least is sure of enough to eat. Wheat may be
down; cattle without buyers; eggs a drug; potatoes left to rot in the
ground, milk wasting like water, and not ten cents in money on the
premises, but the owner is not starving. The dude may not see a brother
in him, and he will be denied entrance to the Inner Circle when Major
domo McAllister sees him in the rear. But he has weight, and looks as if
trying to get away with this year's crop, to make room for the next,
agrees with him; and if he thinks now and again of the days of the
hungry tramp it must be that the undertaking has proportions he little