later meet the inevitable, but for the work which is now, for the first time, being seriously undertaken no such 

 condition attaches, no such future impends. Intensive farming is the order of the day everywhere. The 

 cream of the Western prairies has been skimmed, with the demonstration that ten acres, or even five, are 

 enough; the trolley and the telephone have put an end to rural isolation; the cliff dwellers of the skyscrapers 

 of the great cities are finding more and more every year the disadvantages of their environment, and the 

 tendency to return to mother earth, to live close to nature, grows stronger. 



Apart, moreover, from the immediate and local interest in the undertaking which is to transform the 

 greater part of the Island, to change what the uninformed and the indifferent have regarded as deserts and 

 barrens to blooming and fertile fields, the movement deserves attention, both irom its economic and political 

 aspects. The difficulties of real republican government in these congested human centers, the problems of 

 administration, sanitation, education, and all that goes to make up life are the most serious, the most per- 

 plexing with which the civic administration of the present day concerns itself; and no solution has yet been 

 found to compare, in any degree, with that of distribution of the people in homes- of their own, supported by 

 their own labor upon the land. If the Long Island experiment does nothing else than to spread out among 

 the rolling, picturesque hills and dales of the north shore, the broad, inviting plains of the central Island, or 

 the breezy expanses of the southern coast, even a fraction of the people who may, in these surroundings, find 

 prosperous and happy homes, it will abundantly justify itself. The public learns only by object lessons, and 

 one like that which Long Island offers the opportunity and the reward will not long go unheeded, certainly in 

 the entire Atlantic coast chain of towns and cities. 



Another factor which should not bo overlooked in the movement is the close and direct cooperation of 

 capital. Indeed, the corporation which furnishes transportation to the Island is really the genius of the whole 

 undertaking, working out the practical details, gathering information, and prosecuting experiments at its own 

 cost, handling its trains and even extending its lines, all for the benefit and advantage of those who cooperate 

 with it and who primarily receive the benefit of the development. It has been sometimes said that it would 

 have been a good thing for the Pennsylvania if it had bought the Island when it bought the road. It may 

 turn out to be better than that if it develops the Island and so gives to the owners of its lands, both small 

 and great, share and share alike, the unearned increment, the inevitable advance in value which must come 

 from the change in the condition, the use and the product of the lands. In other words, while Congress, com- 

 missioners, and courts legislate and wrangle over railroad rates, the corporation most directly concerned sets 

 an example by lending its capital, its services, and its enthusiasm in promoting a project which must give to 

 its beneficiaries far greater and more permanent advantage than it possibly can to the railroad itself. Mr. Hill, 

 perhaps the ablest railroad administrator living, worked this all out long ago, in his Northwestern development. 

 The Long Island adopts the same principle, with methods modified to suit the conditions, and it is only reason- 

 able to anticipate that what has been done on a large scale and upon thousands of square miles of prairie may 

 be repeated, even more profitably, at our own doors and upon the plains of Long Island. 



The incident illustrates, again, the old maxim that "the Lord helps those who help themselves," and that 

 those who are looking for the chance to do something usually are able to find work close at hand. Perhaps, 

 also, there is a side light on the much discussed municipal ownership idea. If any one believes that the agri- 

 cultural development of Long Island could be accomplished in any other way than that by which it has been 

 undertaken, the experiments of municipal bridge operations, of tunnel constioiction, of street opening, and of 

 public buildings, go very far toward demonstrating a negative. The corporation and the public are abundantly 

 able to meet each other half way, at least, in their own interests, and any one who will take the trouble to 

 study the methods and the policy recognized between the railroad and the people of the Island will see an 

 excellent illustration of the practical, common sense way of doing things. Taken in its large sense, the experi- 

 ment of Long Island, though now in the day ol small things, in its verj' beginning, is one of which a great 

 deal more will be heard whicli will warrant the careful study and attention of those ,who undertake to read 

 from events and from social and industrial changes their laws and lessons, as well as of those who are merely 

 looking for a good thing, for a chance to get rich, not quick, but certainly. 



— Editorial, Brooklyn Standard Union, 



This broad gauge article written by Mr. Herbert L. Bridgman, editor, explorer, and philanthropist, 

 is assuredly a fitting finis. 



Off for the Morning Train 



