E state still owns about 2,000,000 acres of school lands. 

 At present the law provides for the sale of these lands 

 at auction at a minimum price of $5.00 per acre. The 

 real value of the land is unknown. The most profitable use 

 to which it can be put is also largely a matter of conjecture. 

 Some of it is fine agricultural land, but owing to distance 

 from railroads and markets cannot at present be profitably 

 used for farming. In other cases, the land is too rough or 

 stony or sandy for agriculture. Other areas must be drained. 

 It should certainly be surveyed and: classified and its present 

 and future usefulness and value determined before it is dis- 

 posed of. This is in the interest, not only of the state as a 

 whole but of the man who buys it. What is the use of grow- 

 ing crops that cannot be marketed? Why permit a man, even 

 if he is willing, to condemn himself and his family to solitary 

 confinement in a wilderness as so many have done and are 

 still doing? We admire the bravery and the endurance of 

 the pioneer, but it is a sacrifice no longer necessary. We 

 should adopt the more profitable, scientific, enlightened and 

 humane system of planting communities, providing for roads 

 and drainage, schools and churches, and people who are 

 adapted to the development and maintenance of a harmoni- 

 ous country life. 



For example, in north-central Minnesota, there are large 

 areas of sandy loam adapted to forage and root crops, but in 

 which there is only a moderate supply of the principal ele- 

 ments of fertility. Under ordinary types of farming, these 

 soils will be so depleted in a few generations that they would 

 have to be abandoned or reclaimed through expensive fer- 

 tilization. There is, however, no need of their being depleted. 

 They may be made richer every year under a system of agri- 

 culture that returns to the soil all that is removed in the 

 crops grown. Such crops as potatoes, sugar beets, clover, 

 alfalfa, corn, can be grown and utilized on the place, wholly 



