52 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



Homestead Act dared the new problems of 

 the Great Plains further north. Western 

 Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas enrolled 

 forty-five million acres that seemed to prom- 

 ise a livelihood in the business of manufactur- 

 ing food for a hungry people, either through 

 dry-farming or irrigation. The Pacific States 

 added another four million. The line is still 

 alternately advancing and retreating out over 

 the inhospitable plains, the region which Wash- 

 ington Irving, in 1835, whimsically pictured 

 as the habitat, the last refuge of a horde of 

 mongrels and scamps driven from fertile 

 prairies by advancing settlements. 



Thus the last of the free land available for 

 farming is gone. The great area of cut-over 

 forests in northern Michigan, Wisconsin and 

 Minnesota north of the forty-fifth parallel 

 added another four million acres for those 

 hardy souls not to be daunted by the task of 

 grubbing a soil to render it fit for the plow. 

 The South Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia 

 and Florida added another two millions in 

 cut-over lands and drained swamps. 



The money value of the products of an acre 

 of land in 1896 was only one-half what it was 



