FOURTH SESSION. (continued 2)

a. The idea that nearly all agricultural land is under cultivation.

b. The notion that dry farming methods are successful on almost any kind of dry land.

c. That the climate, referring to the rainfall especially, is becoming more favorable for agriculture in dry regions as the years go by. This notion, used in deceiving thousands of people, is greatly in error.

d. Advantage is taken of such fluctuations in rainfall as occur from year to year and at more or less regular periods, ten to twelve years apart. During the wet years the country is boomed; at dry times the people move out and industry wanes. These ups and downs are recurring features on certain areas not permanently suited for farming. The process works havoc with the misguided settlers, hurts a State that encourages it, and brings no lasting beneficial results to land men who manage the operation.

Apparently, Nature is no respecter of persons, especially so on the dry, sandy lands. It is coming to be known that there is no permanent change for the better in rainfall, frost belts or any thing of the kind. Some lands are better suited for grazing than for ordinary farming and should be so managed.

The speaker is pleased to be the servant of a State that stands strongly against misrepresentation of land values. Such a policy works out the greatest good in the long run. It breeds a healthy demand for a fact basis of development and minimizes the tendency to “stand up” for the home State by unwarranted “boostings.”

Land Schemes in General.—There are many other land projects. The public has invested largely in small tract propositions in Florida, Texas, and other States. Much of this promoted land has considerable value, but some of it is over-estimated, and many investors are quite apt therefore to lose all or nearly all of their money. Certain kinds of land look more inviting during one season of the year than at another. For example, there are places in Texas and Mexico to which the promoters take their victims in the dry season and to other lands during the wet season. This year the speaker heard a Texas representative declare, in a national meeting, that many of the small tract propositions, together with certain other land schemes of his State, are filled with fraud. He criticized northern people for promoting Texas. This should serve at least as a warning to unthoughtful investors. The good agricultural propositions of Texas and elsewhere are handled by responsible land agents.

The movement for the reclamation of the so-called abandoned lands of some of the older States is quite apt to be hurt by unreliable promoters.

Misrepresentation and Overvaluation.—Not only do some promoters misrepresent propositions for the purpose of receiving gain therefrom, but they often advance the sale price unduly. Many examples of this kind have come to my attention. Two weeks ago I received a prospectus from Oklahoma, advertising lead and zinc land for sale at $6.00 a block, twenty feet square, making 1,089 blocks in the tract of ten acres. This would be $6,534 for the land. I happen to know the region and own land close to the small tract. The fact is that one can purchase such a place at $10.00 or less an acre, or at not to exceed $100 for ten acres. So the difference between $100 and $6,534 is too much of an advance for those who invest. What do you think of such a deal? The persons handling it use the general statement of a geologist which recites the fact that the geological formation that contains zinc and lead in the Joplin District, some thirty miles distant, extends through the promoted land. This statement has no specific importance, but is sufficient for persons who accept the “get-rich-quick” bait. It is my judgment that Oklahoma should not permit such a clean-up. (Applause.)

The public craze for land makes it easy for promoters to do their work. Many farmers, dominated by a spirit of consideration for their children, accept the “spiel” and assurance of the “dopster,” sell in agricultural regions and move onto nearly worthless land, believing that it will become about like the old home place in time, and that each child will then have a farm and home. May we not say that he who deceives a family in this way is a mean man? (Applause.) Can you think of a worse service to a community? Certain railroads are not free from blame in that they promote this traffic. The farmer who accepts the bad “dope” is also to blame. It has taken a long time for the people to learn that mere belief, opinion, and sentiment are not strong enough forces to overcome the influence of land not suited for agriculture.

If our land seekers could realize how important and far-reaching is this matter of choosing favorable places for home building, they would be less easily led astray. They would consider soil, climate, water supplies and other necessary conditions of success, as they actually exist, and be governed less by the old arguments and slogans so often used for land development in general. They would pay less attention to deceptive literature written for the special purpose of securing emigrants and sales. They would inquire into the methods whereby this phase of the land business is carried on, and avoid being carried off of their feet, especially when on “home-seekers’” excursions and worked by a well-organized plan.

Formerly, the newer States encouraged the work of grafting land men. Time has shown, however, that this was bad business and really a drawback to permanent development. The present trend is to conserve the interests of those who go onto and manage the land, making it easier for them to succeed. They are assisted by the publicity of useful facts and the censure of fraud. Furthermore, it is coming to be recognized that State emigrant agents, agricultural experiment stations, soil surveys and Conservation Commissions should not lend their support to any interest other than that which brings the best results to the people of the State. They should stand for the policies that insure permanent development and do so as their plain duty. Do you know how public men are urged and tempted to further the interests of promotion concerns and that there are plenty of opportunities to sell one’s influence? That it requires diligence and courage to rightly serve the State? Happily, our public-spirited citizens who have at heart the best and largest interests of their States, stand strongly against misrepresentation whether unintentional or not. They claim that doubtful promotion serves only in closing deals, and in directing settlers to the land, but that in the long run the process works a positive harm to the misguided people and to the State as well, if the land is not suited for habitation. Fortunately, most States are coming to this viewpoint. They have learned that it pays to tell the truth when transplanting a population and directing the permanent development of a State.

Where do you delegates stand on this proposition, and what is to be the attitude of your States?

Promoters’ Methods.—Do you know the signs of fraud? They are exposed in the method used in securing money from the community. The plan is about as follows: A selling scheme is perfected. It is constructed in a way that leaves no flaws, apparently. Each agent learns the scheme; he becomes skilled in applying it to the different types of individuals. Too often it is of little concern whether the project has merit or not. The chief object is to get money. Extravagant claims are made in which returns of 100 per cent. or more a year are said to be a sure thing. The influence of nationality, church, and fraternal orders are brought to bear in securing sales. The support of persons with good standing in the community is secured. Those who assist the promoter are given a reduction for their influence. The dope is given them often and systematically. So they soon realize the greatness of the project. This is promotion psychology. The land is offered at high enough price to permit reduction for quick sale, which bait works in many cases. Persons filled with greed for money are easy victims. The above kind of thing, though less common than formerly, is practiced in most States, and the wonder of it is that it can continue and why it is permitted to continue. It is fraudulent and should be stopped entirely if we are to conserve the interests of good people.

Effects of Land Fraud on Local Business.—Many families lose enough through fraudulent entanglements to give a college education to the son, a piano to the girls, and general improvements for the home or farmstead. The drain is away from home and school. Perhaps the greatest loss is the people who are lured to places where in many cases they are less well off than in the old home. Persons who lose in bad deals become suspicious of real business done by reliable men in the community. They refuse to invest in local developments in which the returns are sure, though smaller than those promised by promoters. Many are put out of business entirely by land frauds.

Do you agree with me in that it is not good business to farm the land, cash in its fertility and then scatter the proceeds among grafters? Let us quit chasing the ends of the rainbow, and turn our attention more towards the right use of the fruits of our labor in education and home building. (Applause.)

Regulation.—There are many laws for the conservation of business. The Federal Government prosecutes persons who make fraudulent use of the mails. There is opportunity under the law to recover on account of misrepresentation; but these laws are not sufficient. Public sentiment is now ripe for the enactment of special laws to conserve business against land frauds. Nebraska has made a special study of the subject, reduced fraudulent procedure by the force of publicity and public opinion, and will pass special conservation laws in its next Legislature. Kansas has gained distinction by the enactment of the well-known “Blue Sky Law.” This is good so far as it goes. It provides for registration, reports, supervision and penalties. Many States, as, for example, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Texas, are to undertake legislation of this kind at the next sessions of their Legislatures.

Provision should be made in the special act against land frauds for field examination and report upon properties offered for sale. This field work might be done by the State Soil Survey, or the State Conservation Commission.

An essential feature of the act will be the registration of realty agents and the furnishing of proof that they are competent and reliable. This will reduce the number of land agents and insure the responsibility of those permitted to do business. The Western realty men are now framing a law of this kind to meet the needs of the various States.

Apparently there is no opposition to the proposed legislation for it is to conserve business and eliminate fraud. It is sure to receive the support of all unless we except those who make gain through doubtful promotion. If opposition appears before the various Legislatures it will have the embarrassing position of being on the side of fraud.

Summary.—Let me close this report with the following statements:

1. This discussion, though favorable to reliable land agents is against doubtful promoters.

2. Realty agents should have a practical knowledge of land classification, soil types and the land business.

3. Reliable and competent real estate agents have an important place in the State. They are against promoters and promotion values.

4. No one should deal with an agent who is not favorably known and is not good at the bank.

5. See the land you purchase. Also get a reliable report upon it from a competent, disinterested party. Base your transaction on facts—not on opinions. Get a good title and not a mere promise to deliver.

6. Keep out of the “get-rich-quick” schemes. Quit chasing the ends of the rainbow. If your fever gets too high, consult a banker.

7. As a rule, it is best to avoid the “home seekers’” excursions and “boom” literature, unless you are sure of your footing.

8. Consult disinterested old-time residents whose places show that they are actual, successful tillers of the soil in the locality where you are to buy. They will give you the farm value, and not the promotion value.

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to support in this important movement? (Applause.)

Chairman Wallace—I am sorry we haven’t half an hour longer to give Dr. Condra to skin those skunks.

We will hear from Mr. Charles S. Barrett, President of the Farmers’ Union, and finally from Mrs. Lund, of California. I want these speakers to show their appreciation, their gallantry, by giving her the last five minutes, and I am going to call them down unless they do.

Dr. Condra—It has been suggested that we close this discussion in one minute. I am very sorry that neither Mr. Barrett, or Dr. Bateman can be heard.

My friends, when a State puts upon its statute book an adequate law, no fake concerns will seek to do business in that State. That is true. Now, we ask that your committee be continued to the end that we may report the conditions of the soil and the development of the soil. I thank you and give ten minutes additional time to the lady.

Chairman Wallace—It is my great pleasure to introduce Mrs. Haviland H. Lund, of California, whose subject is the “Conservation of Land and the Man.”

Address, “Conservation of Land and the Man”

Mrs. Lund—It is a great pleasure to follow Dr. Condra, because his speech is such a good precedent for what I have to say.

If the masses of the American people knew what one man could accomplish for himself, physically and financially, upon from one to five acres of land, this knowledge would revolutionize the life of the Nation. The congestion in our cities is more than a country-wide menace. It is an unnecessary outrage. There is land, good, health-giving land, enough for all the people.

The conservation of the man has been too long overlooked. The commercial policy of the Nation could scarcely be called far-sighted—so wasteful have we been of all natural resources.

We have despoiled our forests, impoverished our soil, given away the public domain. Our labor conditions in many respects shame us in comparison with other nations. Looking about today, it would seem that our thought has been “Get all we can, no matter how, and waste it as we will, for after us, the deluge!” But a new commercial and political spirit is being born; a renaissance of righteousness is setting in, and the commercial leaders of the country are taking stock, as it were, of the actual situation.

Big business men are realizing that a healthy man is worth more in dollars and cents than a half sick one; it is recognizing that sanitation is a good investment. It is beginning to wake up to the fact that the children are more valuable producing machines when they are well protected, housed, fed and educated. The cry of the philanthropist to give because it was right and necessary that these conditions be ameliorated, has met with only sporadic response, but this new call to do the right thing because it pays in dollars to do it, is meeting a greater answer from the people.

Little Farms Magazine found it impossible to evade the responsibility imposed upon it by its readers. We roused them to a desire to go out upon the land—to try the new condition. They came to us for information. We could not go into the land business. We decided to form “Forward-to-the-Land Leagues” in all principal cities.

Moneyed men are not asked to contribute alms but only to invest their money at a nominal rate of interest, which the workingman with his own home and garden, with health and a living assured, is willing and able to pay. This has been proved where the experiment has been tried in the manufacturing cities in England, and in such communities as San Ysidro, Southern California, in our own country.

The work of the Little Farms Magazine in the founding of these Forward-to-the-Land Leagues has been unique and necessary. And its purposes two fold.

In the first place, it was of the utmost importance in meeting the grave problems confronting the nation, particularly that of the bringing our ratio of agricultural production where it safely balances the ratio of population, to have a medium by which knowledge of the intensive methods of agriculture could be brought to the individual.

The widespread interest in the forward-to-the-land movement, which has been taken up alike by press and magazine, has created a hunger for specific information which occasional columns of general news can not satisfy. Little Farms Magazine tells, specifically, how a small acreage will yield and has yielded, industrial independence. It quotes stories of those who have made good after leaving the old work of bookkeeping and clerking and taken a “little farm.”

The problem which the farm presents today is not the same as that of yesterday. The loneliness and isolation no longer obtains. The message that the Little Farms Magazine takes to the world today is that scientific agriculture makes the acreage necessary for individual maintenance so small that social life can be developed on the farm in the most ideal manner. The magazine advocates the upbuilding of the social center, with its library, its clubhouse and gymnasium, its moving pictures and mechanical music.

As I came through the country from the Pacific Coast and saw the empty acres of farm land waiting, and then entered the big eastern cities, and looked into the hopeless, pallid faces of its people, I could think that the earth, if it had a voice, would cry aloud with the cry of Him of long ago, who said: “How often would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens, but ye would not.”

Chairman Wallace—There are fifteen minutes left. If Mr. Barrett, President of the Farmers’ Union, is here we would be glad to give it to him.

Address, “Farmers’ Union”

Mr. Barrett—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Speaking for approximately three million American farmers, I can say with absolute accuracy that the primary article in the creed of Conservation should be the conservation of the man on the land.

In volume and variety of resources, the United States is the mightiest nation in the world. It is true that the British Empire may, through its dependencies, have a greater territorial reach, but from the standpoint of a continuous stretch of land and the body of acres cultivated and susceptible to cultivation, America admittedly leads the world.

The effect of this handicap is indicated not only in the present breadth of our domestic and international commerce, but to a greater extent in the promise of its more wonderful commercial conquests yet to come. The Nation is barely on the threshold of its destiny. That fact should not mislead us as to the difficulties in the way of making the destiny real, and not merely a boastful prophecy.

In the process of transmuting our possibilities into assets—what is the dominant factor? The American farmer. I challenge any of my distinguished audience to mention a single phase of commerce, one feature of trade, the smallest detail of actual subsistence that does not eventually trace back to the man plodding out there on the acres.

Napoleon said an army traveled on its belly. He could have said, with equal truth, that civilization travels on its belly. And the farmer is the factor that fills the Great American Stomach, and that keeps full every dinner pail, regarding which we have heard so much during political campaigns. More than that, he also clothes the armies of development. Nor must we forget that with the South’s cotton as the lever, he keeps the international trade balance on the American side of the ledger. You tell me the manufacturer plays a large part in our current and our probable development. This is true. You tell me also, that what might be called trade-strategy, pure and simple—the proverbial “Yankee shrewdness”—is going to win for America the bulk of the world’s business.

I do not dispute these assertions. But I answer: That back of trade-strategy and of dollar-diplomacy is—the American farmer. Without him, all would be in vain; without him, all of those resources we agree ought to be conserved would melt into impalpable air.

Let us admit, then, that the farmer is the keystone in the arch not only of national advance, but of sheer national existence. His problems, then, are the Nation’s problems and his welfare, the Nation’s welfare. No nation is stronger than its farmers. If the farmer is poorly nourished, if the Government is negligent of his rights, indifferent to his mental development and moral soundness, the way will be surely blocked to our national march forward.

It is to the vital interest of America to cultivate intensively not only the farm, but—what is more important—to cultivate intensively the farmer. What use to conserve our resources, unless we conserve the man behind the resources? The stability of national progress and of government itself is dependent upon conserving the farmer.

All of you within hearing of my voice may say: “We concede these facts. Are we not, right now, trying to aid the farmer, to conserve him, to intensively cultivate his possibilities and safeguard his rights?” And I answer: “Probably you are. But you can not help—you can not conserve—you can not cultivate the farmer unless you mix and mingle with him in the first person—not for twenty-four hours, but more likely for twenty-four months or twenty-four years.” I give full credit to the splendid intentions of the men who have tried and who now are trying to aid the farmer. But you can not adequately grasp his problem by using field-glasses from the convention hall or interviewing him over a long distance telephone, so to speak.

The scientists who are searching for secrets, the missionaries who are looking for converts, use neither of these methods. They go straight to the scene of battle. And so must all persons do, my friends, if they expect intelligently to conserve, to cultivate the American element which is the pivot of all other elements in this country. Study him at first hand, then your sympathies will be practical, not theoretic; your suggestions based on conditions, not on conjecture. Fight with him, side by side, in the ranks, day by day. That is the only way you can learn of the foes—not the least of which is his own weakness—which he has to combat, and what his victory means to the weal or woe of this common country of ours.

At this point President White reassumed the Chair.

President White—The ex-President of this Congress, familiarly called “Uncle Henry,” and, in dignified circles, Dr. Henry Wallace, but who doesn’t like the name and prefers “Uncle Henry,” will speak tonight, as will Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver, Colo., the children’s friend.

The morning session is now at an end. We hope you will get back here at 2 o’clock, because we have a very full program.

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