FOOD AND LAND TENURE. 573 



as can be seen by the average size of farms in the twelve States. In 

 1890, this was 86 acres in Michigan, 93 in Oliio, 103 in Indiana, 115 

 in Wisconsin, 127 in Illinois, 139 in Missouri, 151 in Iowa, 160 in 

 Minnesota, 181 in Kansas, 190 in Nebraska, 237 in South Dakota and 

 277 in North Dakota. Ohio and Michigan have been the longest 

 settled, while the two Dakotas are not yet wholly occupied by farmers. 



On the frontier, the wild land from the government has a value 

 of $1.35 per acre. The railroad grant lands have been usually pur- 

 chased by farmers at from $4 to $7 per acre and are now being sold at 

 these figures. The average value of farms with improvements in the 

 old settled States, such as Ohio, is not far from $50 per acre. The 

 difference measures the improvements made to the land. To open up 

 new land and make these improvements requires capital. The original 

 settlers, being without capital, were under the necessity of securing 

 credit, either from the railroad companies from whom they pur- 

 chjised the land or from money lenders; hence there grew up in these 

 western States a very extensive system of borrowing on mortgages, 

 beneficial both to borrower and lender, until the speculative mortgage 

 companies promoted the taking up of great areas of land in the semi- 

 arid regions, negotiating mortgages thereon, and thus brought disaster 

 to many lenders, culminating in bankruptcy of many mortgage com- 

 panies. 



The average term of mortgages made for land improvements, as 

 above outlined, has been in the past from three to nine years, and that 

 period of time has usually, except in the semi-arid lands, sufficed to 

 enable the settlers to pay off their debts and to acquire valuable farms 

 from their neighbors. 



These figures are sustained by the judgment of the experts now 

 occupied in compiling the census of the year 1900, in which the de- 

 partments of agriculture and of wealth, debt and taxation are imder 

 the supervision of the most competent man in the United States, Mr. L. 

 G. Powers. 



It will be plain to any Englishman that unless this land had been 

 free land, bought, sold and conveyed with the least amount of expense 

 and difficulty, and free of any conditions as to the kind of crop to be 

 planted or the disposal of the product, no such great economic revolu- 

 tion could have occurred. Yet the conveyance of land is now being 

 made more simple than ever before by the adoption, in State after 

 State, of a reform which we owe to our intelligent and progressive 

 kindred in Australasia, the registry of titles known as the Torrens 

 System, in place of the registry of deeds. Under this system convey- 

 ance of a title to land under absolutely safe conditions has become as 

 simple and as easy as an assignment of a note of hand or a share of 

 stock. 



