In 1906 the total unappropriated public lands in the 

 United States consisted of 792,000,000 acres. Of tins 

 area the divisions of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colo- 



>, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyo- 

 ming contained 1^5, 700,000 acres of surveyed and 

 509,000,000 acres m" imMirveyed land. Little of Alaska 

 is fitted for general agriculture, while practically all of 

 the rest is semi-arid land, available only for grazing or 

 irrigation. We have, subtracting these totals, 

 50,000,000 acres of surveyed and 36,500,000 acres of 



irveyed land as our actual remaining stock. And 

 21,000,000 acres were disposed of in 1907. How loo; 

 will the remainder last? No longer can we say that 

 "Uncle Sam has land enough to give us all a farm." 



Equally threatening is the change in quality. There 

 are two ways in which the productive power of the 



h is lessened; first, by erosion and the sweeping 

 away of the fertile surface into streams and thence to 

 the sea, and, second, by exhaustion through wrong 



: iods of cultivation. The former process has gone 

 far. Thousands of acres in the East and South have 

 been made unfit for tillage. North Carolina was, a 

 century ago, one of the great agricultural states of the 



try and one of the wealthiest. To-day as you ride 

 through the South you see everywhere land gullied by 

 torrential rains, red and yellow clay banks exposed 



re once were fertile fields; and agriculture reduced 

 because it< main support has been washed away. Mil- 

 lions of acres, in places to the extent of one-tenth of 

 the entire arable area, have been so injured that no 

 industry and no care can restore them. 



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