HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 83 



the result of worthlessness, sometimes in the land, 

 often in the promoters of the enterprises,, who too 

 often failed to warn the purchaser that it usually takes 

 high-priced land a long time to pay for itself and the 

 improvements needed. In a greater number of 

 instances, disappointments and failures accrued from 

 unpreparedness to meet the requirements. This 

 included, on the part of promoters, lack of water, of 

 adequate capital, of wisdom and foresight; while to 

 the purchasers for home-making, all the effects of 

 the unpreparedness of the promoters were added to 

 their own deficiencies in knowledge, thrift and rea- 

 sonable anticipation. The results were naturally large 

 failures on the part of colony organizers and devel- 

 opers and small widely distributed failures among 

 those who purchased from them, involving loss, suf- 

 fering and forfeiture to such an extent that there 

 came to be a saying that subdivisions yield profit and 

 support only to the third or fourth purchaser in suc- 

 cession, the last having the advantage of the improve- 

 ments forfeited by his predecessors. 



This state of affairs in land subdivision and sale 

 'engendered the wide conviction that enterprises of 

 this kind were too often a discredit to the State and 

 an imposition on those who desired to make farm 

 homes. In 1915 Elwood Mead was recalled to the 

 University of California from very successful design 

 and leadership of colonization in Victoria and New 

 South Wales, to serve as head of the Division of 

 Rural Institutions. As the result of his experiment 

 in Australia and his study of government land set- 



