. PRESENT CONDITIONS 13 



ing industrial system, and bent their energies to secure the 

 chief sources of supply. From the nature of their work the 

 men who built railways first became aware of the riches of 

 nature, and aided by an enormous public sympathy with 

 their efforts, monopolized all the natural opportunities of 

 value. Coupled with industrial development was the grad- 

 ual appropriation of the land. The time soon arrived when 

 the late comers either stayed in the manufacturing centers 

 at the railways terminals or were pushed farther and farther 

 away from the centers. As the landowning families multi- 

 plied, the young men were confined to the same choice. 

 Forced off the land, the tendency has been to crowd the brain- 

 iest blood of America into the cities. In addition, the compe- 

 tition of the new Western lands, brought into use by railway 

 development, has exiled the youth of New England, who 

 found in their rocky acres no incentive to toil. They, too, 

 joined the ever-increasing flow to the cities, and entered into 

 the savage competition of our great towns. 



In our time the pendulum has swung to its extreme. At 

 every depression of business, armies of the unemployed perish 

 in sight of the land they abandoned in the hope of a brighter 

 future. Their children have forgotten the traditions of the 

 soil, and the energies of our people must now be concentrated 

 to reverse the aimless tide of human sufferers, which under 

 stress continues to flow city-ward, and to send it to repeople 

 the silent places whence it came. The fight will not be easily 

 won. Changes in the national land policy are imperative. 

 To give one generation privileges which enslave all who 

 succeed it, is intolerable and will not be permanently endured. 



It is easy to determine upon a policy in the quiet of the 

 study ; different is the problem of applying a comprehensive 

 scheme to repeople the idle land. In the first place, where 



