We ought not to be too hasty in deprecating, as we are often inclined to do, the periodical outbursts of speculation in land in this country. This is a healthful symptom of a growing nation's strong vitality, which, impatient of expanding normally, attempts to spread out with leaps and bounds.

While it may be true that trying to forge ahead faster than our resources permit brings exhaustion as a penalty until we can again take breath to catch up with the fast pace set, the benefits of a permanent character resulting from extensive speculation in land are beyond computation. Without the speculation it is seriously to be questioned whether this country would have grown as rapidly as it has in the last fifty years or the Great West have become so densely populated.

There is always the strongest sort of incentive for the development of new agricultural resources behind every boom in land. The people who participate in them are largely farmers who are not satisfied, in the purchase of new farm lands, to hold them for an increase in their value. They intend to operate and to make their profits out of the larger crops they expect to raise from the new soil, more prolific because it has not been worked over and over again. Moreover, where men flock, there the railroad follows, and other conveniences necessary to a growing community. New towns spring up and a demand for new industries develops, which capital is always prepared to support when it sees there is a necessity for them. Considering the general benefits arising from land booms, we can, broadly speaking, well afford to suffer what temporary ill effects follow in their wake.

Universal Interest In Booms

Nor is it a racial instinct peculiar to us that we become occasionally obsessed with a blind belief in the possibility of making a great deal of money quickly out of land through an immediate increase in values. The same trait may be detected in the people of most of the other nations whose agricultural resources have not been fully developed.

It is true that the Pilgrims who came over in the Mayflower sought our Massachusetts shores to escape religious persecution, but those who followed them in a steady and constantly growing stream, were impelled by a wholly different reason. The letters the Pilgrims sent back home telling of the bounteous returns their farms in the new world brought forth, inspired others to tempt fortune in the larger opportunities the New World had to offer. The same was true of the Dutch who settled in New Amsterdam, and of the Cavaliers who established themselves in new homes in Virginia and other neighboring southern states skirting the Atlantic Ocean.

The farmer is as instinctively human as are his brethren in the large cities. He wants to make money. If he can dispose of his farm at a good profit, there is a strong inclination in him to take advantage of such an opportunity. Such chances, farmers in our more densely populated states have had in plenty. In comparing the statistics with respect to the value of farm lands in the central and western states east of the Rocky Mountains, shortly after the Civil War, with those of present values, we are struck with the phenomenal increase that has taken place within this comparatively short period. Farms which in the early seventies could have been purchased for from $10 to $15 an acre, are now not obtainable at less than $100 to $125 an acre.

Even within the memory of the rising generation startling increases in land values have taken place. The opening of the Sioux Reservation in South Dakota is a case in point. The settlers who flocked to this reservation when the Government opened it, were able to buy the land for a trifling sum per acre. This very same land, now cultivated, changes hands at $60 and upward an acre, while lots in the new towns which grew up in what was then only a grazing country, which might have been had for a few dollars, have increased in value from 100 to 1,000 per cent.

Thus it was also with Oklahoma and Indian Territory. When these new territories were opened for settlement, land was extremely cheap, but the pioneer farmers who located there have become rich from the soil's fertility and the rise in values.

Within the last few years, however, we have witnessed a remarkable change in land speculation. There has been a steady migration of American farmers into the new wheat belts of Canada. Those who have watched this movement estimate, and their estimate is considered conservative, that at least 300,000 American farmers have gone into Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, to establish new homes for themselves, having heard of the possibilities of raising large crops in these lands. Rapid extension in railroad building has followed in their footsteps to provide adequate transportation facilities for the movement of their crops.

But this migration to a neighboring country embodies no unusual aspects. There is a good reason for it. Most of the natural arable soil in the United States has already been taken up and exploited; there remains but very little new land available, that is, adaptable to the money-making opportunities associated with new and virgin lands. What will be the result? Henceforth we are less likely to witness such widespread land booms as marked so conspicuously that period of our growth between the seventies and the early nineties. The value of our arable lands will, of course, continue to increase, but this increase will be on a more uniform and conservative scale because of the restricted opportunities.

Within recent years speculations on a large scale have taken place in irrigated lands. Where water has been plentiful this form of farming has proved very profitable. In some districts crops are being raised in proportions impossible on arable farm lands. The Government and private capital are working hand in hand to reclaim a great many millions of acres of arid land capable of being properly irrigated. In connection with the development of these arid regions, there has been considerable speculation. Some of the investments have proved profitable, while others were nothing more than wild cat schemes.

In a great many sections of the country, swamp lands are being drained to meet the cry for more land. Some of the gigantic undertakings in the Red River Valley, Florida, and other regions have been very successful. This work has opened large areas to profitable use and consequently has stimulated a speculative interest in such lands. The demand is constantly for more land to raise the common necessities of life for a continually increasing population.