MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 203 



and upon the economic wastes involved in wildcat industry, or the results of 

 stock-watering by corporations, but there are only reluctant and usually 

 inadvertent admissions concerning pauperized agriculture. Probably the expla- 

 nation of the matter is the continued prevalence of the idea that all land must 

 be in some manner of agricultural character; that it must be suital)le for some 

 farm crop, or at worst, for grazing. Back of, and with that idea, goes the 

 feeling that if land is not suitable for agriculture of some sort, it must be 

 worthless and therefore a perpetual liability, making of the community so 

 afflicted an economic cripple before all the world. It is felt that to exhibit 

 such a situation must be unkind if not malevolent. 



The census, however, has no qualms. Thirteen states east of the Missis- 

 sippi showed an actual decrease in thearea of their improved lands between 

 1900 and 1910. 



Through the census one may trace the blasting of the labors of tens of 

 thousands of farmers and their families ; the wrecking of their hopes and 

 homes; the slow and painful degeneration of their social status, generation 

 after generation, county by county, year by year. Why dissemble concerning 

 these things? 



Specific instances of variegated and unmitigated fraud In connection with 

 "agricultural" lands are too common to attract attention. They are notorious 

 and principally notable, in this connection, for their immunity from interfer- 

 ence. It is strictly against the code to complain concerning an unfortunate 

 investment, or to admit a faulty judgment concerning soil or climate ; the local 

 people must put as good a face upon their situation as is possible, insisting 

 before the world that theirs is truly the g?irden-spot of the world, and that 

 it makes no difference whether their Eden is eight thousand feet high on the 

 "Wyoming plains or in the swamps of the Everglades ; whether it is in the flint 

 of the Ozarks or the sand of the lake states. Save that of the prospector, 

 there is no optimism greater than that of the settler who enters into a new 

 region. 



Nowadays, most new settlement is aided and abetted, not to say promoted 

 and induced, by professional colonizers. These colonizers may be upright and 

 conservative people intelligently building up profitable agriculture, or they 

 may be the most reprehensible of the land-shark tribe. In either case it is 

 obviously to their interest to expatiate \ipon the advantages of their project 

 and to minimize the disadvantages. Up to the point where there is actual 

 misrepresentation, business ethics are not offended. Beyond that point it is 

 the function of the blue-sky laws to operate. Such laws are, for the most 

 part, recent and experimental. They do not seem to apply, even indirectly, 

 to land exploitation ; here caviat emptor is still good law. 



With local interests and the professional colonizers at least temporarily 

 in accord, it is certain that the local politicians will be in line. Perhaps that 

 may in a measure explain the failure of the blue-sky laws to reach this field. 



