settlers to
receive from land companies certain commissions for bringing in further
settlers, which induce them to exaggerate the good qualities of the
land. The usual commission in the North Middle states is fifty cents per
acre. The prospective buyers of land do not usually know about this.

There are also cases where a settler has secretly become a regular agent
of the land company, receiving from the latter a salary in addition to a
commission on each piece of land sold through him. In such cases the
agent, known to the prospective buyer only as an ordinary settler, is in
a position to get much higher prices for the land than a regular agent.

Still more danger for the immigrant lurks in the scheme whereby
immigrant settlers already on the land, or their native-born neighbors,
seeing that new people are coming in rapidly, take options on valuable
land in certain desirable localities and resell it to the newcomers at a
much higher price. Near Willington, Connecticut, there is a Bohemian
colony, and in the days when this colony was growing rapidly a Bohemian
settler looked up land available there and took a number of options on
farms for which he already had would-be buyers. He took an option on one
farm for its purchase at the price of $500; to the buyer he charged
$1,500, and made a clear profit of $1,000. According to a report of the
Immigration Commission relating to the same colony, a man who paid
$1,000 in cash for a farm found that the land "agent" who sold it to him
had bought the option from the original owner for $400 a few weeks
before the bargain was closed.

Quite a number of land companies are employing immigrant agents,
especially of those nationalities and races with which they expect to do
business on a large scale. Usually these agents are sent out to the
immigrant centers in industrial towns. They bring the prospective immigrant
settlers to see the land and they conduct the business in cases where the
immigrants do not know English. The companies consider this the most
effective way of reaching immigrants who desire to settle on land.

Another way in which immigrants learn of land opportunities is through the
land companies' advertisements in the foreign-language newspapers. The
immigrant newspapers, depending on a nation-wide constituency, are, as a
rule, careful in accepting trade advertisements. Often the editor, before
accepting the advertisement from the land company, makes a personal visit