The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 209 



acre are advertised and thoroughly known ; the facts as to Ar- loi^a Piofit- 



kansas are unadvertised and wholly unknown. The valuation of ing by Intelli- 



the Iowa acre is living tribute to the importance of intelligent 5'^"^ Advertis- 



publicity. '"^ 



The time is coming inevitably when the neglected lands of 

 the South, and not the lands of the Corn Belt, will be the center 

 of production of the staple foodstuffs. Why? Because acre- 

 production in the South is greater and production-cost almost 

 incomparably less. 



The good Iowa acre produces in a season only 500 pounds of 

 pork, at a cost of 4 to 5 cents a pound. The Arkansas acre, in the 

 longer season of the South, produces 1,000 pounds of pork at a 

 cost of 2 to 23^ cents a pound. The Arkansas Experiment Sta- 

 tion has produced 1,252 pounds per acre at a cost of 134 cents. 

 On my own farm in the highlands of Northwest Arkansas the 

 average production-cost of Irish potatoes is from 10 to 12 cents 

 a bushel. An acre of well-established southern Bermuda grass 

 pasture will carry six head of grazing cattle over a period of 6 to 

 8 months, whereas in Iowa an acre of pasture will hardly carry 

 one grazing animal through the shortest summer season. 



These are suggestive and typical items. I wish I had time for 

 dwelling more fully upon the comparison. 



The key to the solution of this cut-over land problem is a 

 consistent campaign of the right sort of publicity — not for the 

 fact that low land-prices offer the speculator a stunning oppor- 

 tunity, but for the bigger fact of producing power. Let that 

 power become known, and settlement and development will fol- 

 low with absolute certainty. 



About the worst thing that might happen to the South would 

 be to have the exploitation of these lands fall into the hands of 

 the speculator or the professional promoter. The best thing that 

 might happen would be the beginning of intelligent publicity of 

 the sort which will make its appeal to farmers rather than to mere South Should 

 adventurers. With such publicity we shall open a plain, straight Make Its 

 way for the soundest of all development, a development which Advantages 

 will be free of all the insanity of "booming," a development which 

 will with absolute certainty convert this burden of millions of 

 acres of unused land into a producing asset of incalculable worth. 

 In such publicity I see the South's chief hope for a future whose 

 soundness will be impregnable. 



Known 



