dea of the production of any given
section is to examine a particular farm in detail. Within
well-recognized limits, all the farms thereabouts will be found of
similar character. Before spending money to look at land, learn all
you can by correspondence. Whether it is more profitable in the long
run to buy that good plot of land in a high state of cultivation
with good buildings on it, at a high price, than to buy this
exhausted piece of land with poor buildings or none at all, is a
question for the individual to decide. It depends on your energy,
grit, age, and how much money you have. It is much easier to take
advantage of what the other fellow has done, than it is to build
from the stump. You must bear in mind, however, that well kept land
in a high state of cultivation seldom goes begging in the market. On
the whole, if you have the capital to do it, you can make the
biggest wages by buying rough or neglected land, and hewing it into
shape.

If you have a knowledge of soils, you may be able to find land that
will grow something that no one supposes it will grow. This will be
particularly useful in the case of land thought to be valueless. The
lands about Miles, Michigan, were considered sterile until some one
found out that they would grow mint, a valuable crop, which made the
land salable at high prices.

Get hold of a desirable bit of the earth. All that men wear or eat
or use; everything--shelter, food, tools, and toys comes from the
land by labor. Even the capital used to make more of those things is
taken from the land. The employer and the capitalist are, at bottom,
only men who control the land or its products, who own rights of
way, mining rights, or the fee of valuable lands. Thousands have
"made" money by finding unexpected products in their land or of
their lands, oil, coal, mineral, plants; thousands more because
their land was needed by some one else, and they were paid to get
out of the way.

To speculate on these chances is risky business; to keep land that
enables you to make good pay while you wait, is profitable.

CHAPTER IV

VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION

In this book, necessarily, we have to take much upon the reports of
others, checking them by our own judgment and experience. The
startling accounts of what has been done and is being done on plots
of about a quarter acre to each family, however, can be easily
re-verified by any one who will go or write to Philadelphia, or
examine