80 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



and, while we are tracing the opportunities and 

 problems of the late-comers, the Farmers of 

 To-morrow, we will arrive at an estimate of 

 what the cultivated farm area of the nation 

 must eventually number in acres to feed the 

 hordes of another hundred or another five 

 hundred years. 



Let us take a specific instance of how the 

 problem of cheap land was actually worked 

 out by one division of the army of Gleaners. 



Several years ago some Illinois farmers 

 (homesteaders or fire-sale investors of a gen- 

 eration ago) found that the pace of their fat 

 prime acres was growing too hot for them; 

 so they sold out and pocketed their unearned 

 increment which had increased 118 per cent, 

 in ten years without any effort on their part. 

 They might have gone to Canada and got a 

 quarter-section at $1.25 per acre and another 

 thrown in for good measure. But they didn't 

 go to Canada. They had an idea that oppor- 

 tunity lay just outside their door. And they 

 found it in an embryonic stage. 



It was just across the river from them, on 

 the west bank of the Mississippi. It was the 

 far-famed Iowa Slough. 



