late comers either stayed in the manufacturing centers at the
railways terminals or were pushed farther and farther away from the
centers. As the landowning families multiplied, the young men were
confined to the same choice. Forced off the land, the tendency has
been to crowd the brainiest blood of America into the cities. In
addition, the competition of the new Western lands, brought into use
by railway development, has exiled the youth of New England, who
found in their rocky acres no incentive to toil. They, too, joined
the ever-increasing flow to the cities, and entered into the savage
competition of our great towns.

In our time the pendulum has swung to its extreme. At every
depression of business, armies of the unemployed perish in sight of
the land they abandoned in the hope of a brighter future. Their
children have forgotten the traditions of the soil, and the energies
of our people must now be concentrated to reverse the aimless tide
of human sufferers, which under stress continues to flow city-ward,
and to send it to repeople the silent places whence it came. The
fight will not be easily won. Changes in the national land policy
are imperative. To give one generation privileges which enslave all
who succeed it, is intolerable and will not be permanently endured.

It is easy to determine upon a policy in the quiet of the study;
different is the problem of applying a comprehensive scheme to
repeople the idle land. In the first place, where is the idle land?
In all parts of our country it exists in abundance. Almost every
state in the Union has lands which either have never been alienated,
or which have reverted to the state through nonpayment of taxes. In
the East, particularly, the competition of Western lands, aided by
discriminating freight rates, now so notorious, has resulted in the