THE BONANZA FARMS. 59 



conditions. He will inevitably be swallowed up. It 

 is at best but a question of time. 



Tims are vast areas, in the very heart of our coun- 

 try, barred and closed to the occupation and owner- 

 ship of our people in small tracts, and the making of 

 homes for a strong and thrifty population, but are 

 made centers of weakness that are sure, soon or late, 

 under present tendencies, to spread over the whole 

 land. 



On the large majority of these great holdings small 

 portions only of their areas are found under present 

 cultivation. During the first year one to three thou- 

 sand acres are put under the plow, and each succeed- 

 ing season an addition of one or more thousand acres 

 is made to the amount that is worked. In this man- 

 ner the proprietors declare it to be their intention to 

 increase their business to the extent desired. The 

 greatest number of acres under the plow, by one man, 

 of which I have any knowledge, is in California, near 

 Colusa, in the Sacramento valley, about one hundred 

 miles above the city of Sacramento. Upon that farm 

 fifty-seven thousand acres, or ninety square miles, are 

 under cultivation, mostly in wheat. The labor is in 

 large part Chinese. 



(The development of the large farm interest is by no 

 means confined to Kansas, Minnesota, and Dakota. 

 The sections covered in my late tour are but three 

 points where these developments have been the most 

 recent, as well as of great extent. '_ In Kansas there 

 has been a movement in the same direction of perhaps 

 unparalleled magnitude. 



James Macdonald, Esq., the travelling correspon- 



