THE FARMER'S MEANS OF ACQUIRING LAND 221 



helps to maintain the percentage of landownership in the United 

 States as a whole. 



That this movement to cheaper lands in order to acquire 

 landownership may have the best results for the farmers and 

 for the country as a whole, the movement must be guided by 

 people who know the possibilities of the land and who have no 

 personal interest in any particular piece or kind of land. The 

 dishonest real estate agent does much to retard this movement 

 by levying a heavy tax upon the farmers who are so unfortunate 

 as to fall into his hands. The honest, intelligent real estate 

 agent who takes a professional interest in the upbuilding of his 

 community is rendering a valuable service. Several states, 

 through their immigration bureaus, are doing much to encourage 

 the settlement of their sparsely settled regions by carrying on 

 an educational campaign among those people who wish to 

 move to newer and cheaper lands. Much more work needs 

 to be done by these states in the way of establishing well- 

 worked-out plans for settling the land on a basis profitable to 

 the settler and to the state as a whole. This will not only in- 

 crease the wealth of the country but facilitate the maintenance 

 of the landowning farmer as the dominant class in American 

 agriculture. 



Gift and inheritance. A vast amount of wealth passes on 

 from generation to generation by gift and inheritance. Hence 

 it is not necessary, in order to maintain the class of landowning 

 farmers in a country where this class is already established, 

 that each succeeding generation of farmers should save from the 

 profits of their industry sufficient wealth to purchase their 

 farms, and to hand this accumulated wealth over to the preced- 

 ing generation of landowners. This would be necessary, 

 however, in order to reestablish a class of landowning farmers 

 in one generation in a country where landlordism has become 

 universal. In England, where most of the land is owned by a 

 comparatively small number of landlords, the estates are handed 

 down from generation to generation and thus remain the 

 property of the landlord class ; and in that country it is un- 

 usual indeed for a tenant farmer to undertake to purchase 



