"I don't doubt that," said Percy. "An illustration or example can
usually be found to prove almost anything. I know that the Perrine
Brothers, who conduct a fruit farm down in 'Egypt,' actually
received $800 per acre for the apples grown on thirteen acres one
year; and there is plenty of such land in Egypt that can be bought
for less than $40 an acre, and near to the great markets. I am told,
however, that there are from a dozen to a hundred applicants for
every farm opened to settlement in the West in these years, and it
is estimated that all of the arid lands that can ever be put under
irrigation in the United States will provide homes for no more than
our regular increase in population in five years, and that the only
other remaining rich lands--the swamp areas--will be occupied by the
increase of ten years in our population. It has seemed to me that it
is high time we came back to these partially worn-out Eastern lands
and begin to build them up. Here the rainfall is abundant, the
climate is fine, and the markets are the best, and there are
millions of acres of these Eastern lands that lie as nicely for
farming as the Western prairies. Why should they not be built up
into good farms?"

"Now, let me give you a little fatherly advice," said the
Congressman, laying his hand on Percy's shoulder. "I tell you this
land never was any good. If the East and South hadn't been settled
first, they never would have been settled. Poor land remains poor
land, and good land remains good land; and if you want to farm good
land, you better stay right in the corn belt. You can't grow
anything on these Eastern lands without fertilizer and the more you
fertilize the more you must, and still the land remains as poor as
ever. Just leave off the fertilizer one year and your crop is not
worth harvesting. These lands never were any good and they never