DRY LANDS AND FORESTS 133 



called abandoned areas of the East. East of 

 the Alleghanies one-third of the population is 

 compressed within one-tenth of the area of the 

 country. Nearly eighty per cent, of this pop- 

 ulation is engaged in manufacturing, is cen- 

 tered in cities consumers of food, not pro- 

 ducers. When the rush of homestead settlers 

 started west in the middle of the last century 

 it drew a vacuum in its wake. The undreamed- 

 of fertility of the great prairies made the 

 clearing of the bleak, inhospitable hills of New 

 England seem like some bitter tragedy. Much 

 land that never should have been reclaimed 

 from its forest cover was permitted to revert 

 to second growth timber, and also much land 

 that had proved fertile rich river bottom 

 meadows, sunny slopes, and rolling pastures 

 that lay like saddle-blankets across the shoul- 

 ders of the hills were abandoned either to 

 their original forest cover or to shiftless, inter- 

 bred natives without ambition either to follow 

 their brothers west or to preserve the fertile 

 land from the inroads of hard-hack and alders. 

 Transportation and the proximity of markets 

 are tremendous factors in these days when 

 half the population is enumerated as non- 

 producers, dwellers in cities, and it is for this 



