or otherwise; for in truth it is in rapid progress along its lines. 

 Just twenty years ago I traversed the entire length of the State 

 horseback, meandering back and forth from the river bluffs and 

 the deltas well into the hill country covering a zone say fifty 

 miles wide from Woodville to Holly Springs; then the agricul- 

 tural value of the State probably ran about ten dollars per acre, 

 or three hundred million dollars. To-day it cannot be less than 

 twenty-five dollars an acre, or seven hundred and fifty million dol- 

 lars; and if ordinary foresight, guided by the light of scientific 

 methods now coming in and of experience in other States is 

 worth anything, in another twenty years the value will nearly 

 quadruple, and approach a hundred dollars an acre or three 

 billion dollars for agricultual Mississippi. 



Nor will this be the end, or indeed mark anything more than 

 the threshold of Mississippi's prosperity. In the past twenty 

 years the population of the State has increased steadily to the 

 present two million; but it seems probable that the greater share 

 of this increase is in urban rather than rural inhabitants. Now 

 to what ultimate population should Mississippi look forward? 

 Remembering that the capacity of a country for production and 

 population is fixed first by water supply and second by land 

 area, a rough estimate may be made. On the basis of the inten- 

 sive farming of irrigated Arizona, Mississippi's thirty million 

 acres would sustain an agricultural population of thirty million 

 i. e., a family on each five-acre lot throughout the length and 

 breadth of the commonwealth or a total equal to one-third the 

 present population of the United States. This would mean an 

 average density Of 640 inhabitants per square mile, almost exactly 

 that of Belgium on far less fertile land than this. Would the 

 area suffice for such a vast people? Undoubtedly, if the expe- 

 rience of New Mexico and Arizona and California affords a crite- 

 rion. Would the water supply suffice? Undoubtedly, provided 

 the population were primarily agricultural i. e., provided the 

 land were made productive to something approaching its limit. 



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