and entered into the savage
competition of our great towns.

In our time the pendulum has swung to its extreme. At every
depression of business, armies of the unemployed perish in sight of
the land they abandoned in the hope of a brighter future. Their
children have forgotten the traditions of the soil, and the energies
of our people must now be concentrated to reverse the aimless tide
of human sufferers, which under stress continues to flow city-ward,
and to send it to repeople the silent places whence it came. The
fight will not be easily won. Changes in the national land policy
are imperative. To give one generation privileges which enslave all
who succeed it, is intolerable and will not be permanently endured.

It is easy to determine upon a policy in the quiet of the study;
different is the problem of applying a comprehensive scheme to
repeople the idle land. In the first place, where is the idle land?
In all parts of our country it exists in abundance. Almost every
state in the Union has lands which either have never been alienated,
or which have reverted to the state through nonpayment of taxes. In
the East, particularly, the competition of Western lands, aided by
discriminating freight rates, now so notorious, has resulted in the
abandonment to the mortgagee of vast areas in New York, Connecticut,
New Hampshire, Maine, and to some extent in New Jersey. These are
now largely resold.

Declining fertility and exorbitant and oppressive transportation
charges have helped to keep these lands out of use, and some still
lie idle and neglected, to excite the wonder of the social and
economic student. To use the abandoned lands of the East, equal
rates on agricultural products is a basic necessity.

The first step, now well under way, is railroad control by the
Government. Equal access to transportation is as essential as equal
access to land, for transportation is indeed an attribute of land.

Extending the inquiry westward, the coal and oil areas of
Pennsylvania and Ohio are all controlled by a few hands. The
original fertility of the farming areas of these states, together
with the fact that they have been producing for only about a
century, has enabled them to hold their own until recently, but now
only the best located tracts are in maximum production, and this can
be maintained only by the most advanced agricultural science. In
spite of greater advantages, the crowded cities and deserted country
districts ar