132 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



as tobacco, melons, small fruits and vegetables 

 for canning, and clover, alfalfa, sugar beets 

 and the cereals respond readily to cultivation. 



The big woods of the North in the corn-belt 

 region are detailed here merely because they 

 represent in a mass the opportunities of the 

 Gleaner who is electing this means of provid- 

 ing himself with a plant for producing food. 

 The South counts upward of 30,000,000 acres 

 of cut-over forests that can be cleared and 

 worked profitably as farms. The South has 

 been backward in its drainage projects. One 

 does not have to go back of statistics of malaria 

 to ascertain that. Also, the South has been 

 backward in clearing, yet the opportunities it 

 presents to the Gleaner are no less rosy. In 

 the long run it is the price of improved land 

 that must determine the speed with which we 

 set about conquering waste land. So long 

 as it is cheaper to buy prime land than to 

 glean among waste acres, the movement will 

 proceed slowly, and in this regard each town- 

 ship, each county, will measure its own 

 conditions. 



By far the most peculiar phase of the move- 

 ment of reclamation is the tide of immigration 

 that has set in out of the West to the so- 



