120 NOTICES RELATING TO AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



Relatively few of the men engaged in this business were knowingly 

 dishonest but the majority of them were unthinking and ignorant. They 

 did not know, and apparently did not care to know, how settlers were to 

 obtain mone}' to improve and equip the farms sold to them or how they 

 were to earn a living income. The prosperity of the settler was his own 

 affair. The land agent's business was to make money out of him rather 

 than to make money for him. 



An instance of the extent to which the land agent inflated prices is the 

 case of a wheat ranch which was bought for seven dollars an acre. The 

 buyer organized a syndicate composed of himself and his typist to which 

 he sold the land for § loo an acre. Then as a syndicate he subdivided 

 it and sold it to settlers for S 200 an acre. No settler who paid this outra- 

 geous price could earn either its amount or the interest on it out of the soil. 

 Yet sales of this character were made with ease. In part this was due to 

 the fact that many of the buyers were also speculators. The}' were given 

 evidence that land bought for seven dollars an acre was selling for § 200 an 

 acre ; the prediction was made — and did not seem incredible — that next 

 year it would sell for S 400 an acre. The air was full of stories of the mil- 

 lions made b}'' subdividing land. 



This speculative colonization, which began about 1900 and culmina- 

 ted about fifteen years later, has now run its course. It worked infinite 

 harm to many honest and industrious but over-sanguine and credulous set- 

 tlers. It interrupted and changed the conservative and successful develop- 

 ment which was in process when it began. It has enabled non-resident 

 speculators to take away from the State millions of dollars as the profits 

 of the unwarranted inflation of prices ; and it has caused or will cause anx- 

 iety and heavy losses to man}^ landowners who depend on the paying off 

 of mortgages b)^ settlers having neither capital nor experience. A legacy 

 of high land prices has been left to the State ; and it threatens to be a heavy 

 economic burden, for practical and experienced farmers wiU not come to 

 California if land of equal productive value in other States be cheaper. 



RUGGERI ALFREDO, gerente responsabile 



