oil and
market conditions, and so on. But these information bulletins often do not
reach the immigrants because the immigrants do not know enough to ask for
them; and, even supposing that they did reach the prospective settler, the
bulletins are too general. They describe the conditions of large districts
and sections of the country or state, while what the immigrant needs is
exact, detailed knowledge about a particular piece of land in which he is
interested. The government officials claim that they have not sufficient
forces to undertake a detailed investigation of individual land holdings,
and also that they must try to avoid any appearance of discriminating
between various land companies in the sense of encouraging or discouraging
the sale of land belonging to given companies.

In general, one might say that the ways open to immigrants for learning
of land opportunities are defective. Misrepresentation of land
conditions and actual money frauds have made them suspicious of any land
dealer, so that the best land companies experience, in the immigrants'
suspicion, a handicap in the development of their business. This in part
explains why the various real-estate associations are trying to get some
sort of public regulation for their business and why a number of states
which are interested in the development of their lands have begun to
talk of regulation. They reason that such regulation would be a good
advertisement for the state and would increase the confidence of people
in the chances of successfully settling on land in that state.

POLICIES IN CALIFORNIA AND WISCONSIN

In the states of California and Wisconsin the state departments and
colleges of agriculture, through their extension service and the state
immigration offices, are doing highly valuable work in disseminating
correct information in regard to land opportunities among prospective
settlers and in defending the latter against unscrupulous land dealers.
The writer was especially impressed by the methods used by the Director
of Immigration of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Mr. B. G.
Packer. The following statement dictated by Mr. Packer serves as the
best description of his work and methods:

Four years ago, at the invitation of the Department of Labor, in
Chicago, I began going down and meeting people by appointment
there--immigrants who wanted to come to Wisconsin. In order to
reach them, we advertised in Chicago papers