CHAPTER XXI 

 OPENING UP THE LAND TO AGRICULTURE 



Agriculture waits on a constructive policy. 

 Not of education but of economic change. And 

 the lion in the pathway of the production of food 

 and the distribution of people from the city is land 

 monopoly, the holding of land out of use and the 

 indifferent utilization of much of the land that is 

 under cultivation. This is the great obstacle to 

 farming. 



How can this obstacle be overcome? How can 

 idle landholding be ended? How can we limit 

 the amount of land a man may own to that which 

 he actually needs and cultivates? How can we 

 break up the 200,000,000 acres held in great estates 

 and throw open to use the 400,000,000 acres en- 

 closed in farms but not cultivated by the owners? 

 How can the would-be farmer be placed on the 

 land and a system of ownership be substituted for 

 tenancy? There is land enough for millions of 

 workers and homes for tens of millions of people in 

 this rich country of ours if means were devised for 

 bringing the landless man and the manless land to- 

 gether. 



These are problems of practical statesmanship. 

 They are no more difficult than the problems al- 



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