The people of Minnesota are paying hundreds of 

 thousands of dollars every year in taxes on lands 

 which are often a menace to their very lives, and 

 always a detriment to the proper valuation of their 

 working lands. An area of barren, blowing sands, un- 

 sightly, weed-covered overflow bottoms, or cut-over, 

 burned-over, nonproductive stump land is a detriment 

 to any community. 



Why is this? Why are people content to pay pen- 

 sions to these idle lands year after year? Simply be- 

 cause they -have been taught to believe that there is 

 but one solution and that solution is working so 

 slowly that several generations will go on paying these 

 pensions before there is any preceptible change in the 

 situation. In fact it never can solve the problem for 

 many of the lands; at least not inside of a thousand 

 years or so. 



That long and loudly heralded solution heralded 

 by the many who have lands to sell and the many 

 more who want to see them do it is the agricultural 

 development of these loafing acres. 



What encouragement have the facts to offer? The 

 first settlers came to Minnesota or rather to that 

 portion of the old Wisconsin territory which is now 

 known as Minnesota in 1825. They settled in the 

 hardwood lands along the southeast border. They 

 selected that location for two reasons. First, because 

 the government had not yet completed negotiations 

 with the Indians for the other lands; second, because 

 these lands were like the ones they knew at home; 

 they were unaccustomed to the open wind-swept prai- 

 ries. Later on when the Indians had been partially 



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