There is one subject of the greatest importance to Colored Americans, because the opportunities are enormous, but they will be lost in the course of time, and can never be regained. That subject is the land question; the farm problem. It is almost like sounding a tocsin to repeat what everybody is saying, every economist urging, and every civic reformer giving as the remedy for overcrowded cities, and a cure for vice and crime: “Back to the farm.” In the “Wise man’s philosophy,” every Colored American is advised to become a land owner. Get an acre, two acres, ten acres, twenty acres, forty acres, and so on. Why? There are two good reasons why: 1. Every man must have a home of some kind unless he prefers to be a tramp or a beggar with his hand held out for pennies. 2. There is no possible uplift without being a producer of something, and land offers the easiest solution of the production problem. FORTUNES TO BE MADE The enormous markets of the country in our great cities, make such a heavy demand upon production, that the commonest vegetables and fruit are brought from great distances at a high cost of transportation. Within reach of every populous center, there is to be found vacant land that could be made productive with very little labor, and the result would be profitable, for the supply must keep up with the demand. But out in the vast territories of the Mississippi Valley, there are fortunes to be made in producing cereals, cotton, tobacco, live stock, butter, poultry, and fruit. There is an unlimited field, and every one who has ventured into it finds a large reward in a good bank account. A man cannot begin and then, when he gets tired, lie down in the furrow and expect nature to pull him out. It never has and it never will as many know to their cost. It is estimated, that in the Mississippi Valley and its adjoining territory, outside of mountain tops and rivers and lakes, there are in the markets, four hundred million acres of land as fertile as the valley of the river Nile. It is beyond the reach of present railroad transportation and therefore it has been left untilled. It matters little whether this enormous quantity of land exists or whether it is exaggerated by one-half, it is a fact that millions upon millions of acres of land are left untilled and can be had for small sums of money. There are lands in Texas as an illustration, which can be purchased for from one to four dollars an acre, with forty years to pay for it in. This is not only the case in Texas, but cheap land can be had even in the State of Illinois, or New York. In the great corn belt, the farmers raise corn only, and even buy and bring their butter, eggs and fresh vegetables from Chicago or St. Louis. Whoever heard of such a thriftless condition? It is true, corn pays, but there is such a thing as getting too much of one thing and not enough of another.