27 



Since the year 1869 the extension of railroad lines into sparsely settled 

 or wholly uninhabited territories of the United States has opened to 

 settlement an area so vast as to distribute thinly the great tide of immi- 

 gration which annually overflows from the more densely populated por- 

 tions of this country and Europe. The railroad extension referred to 

 opened vast areas of sparsely settled and uninhabited territory and 

 brought these into competition with each other in the field of invitation 

 to settlement. Since that period the State of Kansas received a million 

 of inhabitants, Texas 1,600,000, Minnesota 70,000, Dakota 600,000, Ne- 

 braska 500,000, Wyoming 300,000, Washington 100,000, Montana 100,000, 

 Arizona 50,000, Colorado 400,000, and California, according to the census 

 report, about 500,000. Of all these, the growth of Kansas has been the 

 most phenomenal. The reason for this is not far to seek. Kansas was 

 more accessible than any of the Pacific Territories, and lands there were 

 cheap. In estimating the obstacles to settlement of a distant region the 

 cost of reaching that region must occupy a prominent place. It has cost 

 more money in the past to remove a body of population aggregating 

 100,000 men from the more densely populated and overflowing sections 

 of our country to California than to remove 1,000,000 from the same sec- 

 tions to Kansas and Nebraska. The value of land superficially in Cali- 

 fornia received a high development in advance of the density of popula- 

 tion. In common observation, good agricultural land is deemed to have 

 reached its highest point of value at from $30 to $50 an acre. A greater 

 density of population, of which we have had no experience in California, 

 will urge these prices up from $60 to $75 an acre, and if the lands are 

 fertile as in Belgium, and the population equally dense with that country, 

 the}' will reach the value of $1,000 to $1,500 an acre. Under these cir- 

 cumstances they become garden lands with immediate home market, but 

 lands in California were sold for from $30 to $50 an acre when lands in 

 Kansas and Nebraska could be obtained at the single minimum of $1.25. 

 an acre, or within railroad limits at $2.50 an acre. When, therefore, the 

 immigrants had their choice between Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Min- 

 nesota and Dakota, where lands could be obtained at $1.^25 an acre at 

 first hand from the Government, or at from $5 to $10 an acre at second 

 hand, as against laud in California, which was held at from $15 to $30 an 

 acre, the immigrant chose the former location, under the somewhat 

 justifiable but mistaken belief that lands in California had reached their 

 full development. I beg to introduce the statement of fact that the 

 average value of agricultural lands in the Sacramento valley have not 

 yet reached $25 an acre. The more fertile alluvial lands, suitable for 

 growing fruits, and in the localities where the fruit is early, and where 

 the environment is peculiarly favorable to fruit growing, lauds are held 

 at a valuation of from $50 to $75 an acre. In the pamphlet literature 

 which is distributed at the East the statement is made that good fruit 

 land can be obtained in California for from $75 to $150 an acre. 



I am painfully conscious, from personal observation, of the effect this 

 produces on the mind of the Eastern agriculturist. Let us illustrate this : 



