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Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 
times, the cost of clearing adds a great deal to the cost of the 
land. 
ery 
and it may take ten years or more to establish a "good" cut-over 
farm, with around 23 acres of cropland, which will support a 
half dozen cows, and furnish the settler a precarious living. To 
tide the pioneer farmer over the period before the farm is pro- 
ductive a considerable amount of capital is required — ^'on the 
average about $8,000.^ 
Pioneer regions do not customarily attract farmers with 
much capital, and this particular area, publicized by land com- 
panies and the state as a "last frontier" drew many settlers with 
resources hardly adequate to buy land, much less to develop it. 
Consequently, ni'ost of the "jack-piners" find it necessary to eke 
out their income by obtaining some work outside the farm. Many 
of them cut pulpwood, or work on the county roads, or serve as 
guides at summer resorts, or in the fall find a few weeks' work 
harvesting wild rice from the lakes. In recent years the W. P. A. 
has been another source of cash income. Too much outside em- 
ployment of this sort defeats its own purpose, however, by pre- 
venting the farmer from clearing more land, and developing his 
farm to the point where it will support him. Some of the poorest 
among the primitive farms are the homes of settlers forced by 
these circumstances (or by inclination) into becoming forest 
workers or casual laborers who are only very secondarily farmers. 
3 
Farms of these two rather different types — primitive and 
maturely-developed — are intermixed to form the intricate set- 
tlement pattern shown on the map of land in farms (Fig. 2). 
As the map indicates, there are a few areas, lying, almost 
without exception, within the southern and western halves of 
the community, where a very large proportion of the land is in 
agricultural use. In these areas most, although not all, of the 
farms are of the maturely-developed type, and there is enough 
s W. A. Hartman and J. D. Black, Economic Aspects of Land 
Settlement in the Cut-over Region of the Great Lake States, 
U.S.D.A. Circ. 160. o. 62. 1931. 
