114 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



Where Agri- 

 culture is Im- 

 practicable 



Live Stock 

 Raising Will 

 Solve 

 Problem 



Now furthermore, just for the sake of illustration, suppose 

 that the entire 76 million acres were available for agriculture, 

 and suppose that we tried to get into effect that splendid ideal 

 of the government's public land policy — a family on each forty 

 acres and each family supporting itself — suppose you could 

 realize that ideal. Dividing the 76 million by 40 acres leaves you 

 1,875,000 tracts, and will anyone tell you where we will get 1,- 

 875,000 families to settle this land on a forty acre basis? It 

 would be impossible. This problem is now. We can't look 

 25 or 50 years hence when we may have a surplus of farmers. 

 Furthermore, we can't go to the cities and bring men from the 

 cities to settle on these lands. 



That brings me to another point : If there is one thing that 

 the United States is going to learn from its entrance into the war 

 it is that we are no longer provincial; we are coming to learn 

 that we have an obligation owing not only to our neighbors in 

 our country, but that we owe an obligation to the world itself. 

 We are coming to learn that we cannot take from another without 

 giving something in return. We are not getting any more immi- 

 gration ; it stopped at the beginning of the war. About a month 

 before I left Washington the statement was published by the 

 Bureau of Immigration that a large emigration from the United 

 States was expected when the war closed; that the steamship 

 agencies already are swamped with bookings for people to go 

 back to their countries and carry the atmosphere of freedom back 

 to the lands where they were born. We cannot confidently look 

 to imimigration as a source of settlers for cut-over lands. That 

 compels a line of development closely related to present available 

 labor supplies. It seems, therefore, that the development of 

 these lands on a strictly farming basis is a matter of the some- 

 what distant future. The most promising immediate develop- 

 ment is along live stock lines, particularly with beef cattle and 

 sheep. 



Now then, understand that when I make this statement I am 

 making it as an animal expert, but I have tried, as well as any 

 specialist can, to see this matter in a broad, comprehensive light; 

 but I cannot get away from the idea that the one plan for devel- 

 opment at this time, on these cut-over timber lands, is to develop 

 live stock raising on a comprehensive and broad-minded scale. This 

 territory is what you might call a virgin territory. It is closely 

 analogous to the great plains of the West fifty years ago. The 



