As long as good land lasted, our Government stimulated agriculture by presenting a quarter-section to whoever would undertake to farm wild land. This bounty overdid farming, until, in the middle of the nineties, the cost of living had reached a minimum. With the ending of free land, the upward turn was bound to come, but the change was made more dramatic by the inpouring of ten millions of immigrants without the knowledge, the means, or the inclination to engage in farming. Among us there is one American white farmer for fourteen American whites, one Scandinavian farmer for eight Scandinavians, one German farmer for eleven Germans, one Irish farmer for forty Irish; but it takes 130 Poles, Hungarians, or Italians in this country to furnish one farmer. Failing to contribute their due quota to the production of food, these late-comers have ruptured the equilibrium between field and mill, and made the high cost of living a burning question. Just as the homestead policy overstimulated the growth of farms, the new immigration has overstimulated the growth of factories. IMMIGRANTS AND AGRICULTURE Nevertheless, certain of the South Europeans who are upon the soil have something to show American farmers facing the problems of intensive agriculture. Italians are teaching their neighbors how to extract three crops a year from a soil already nourishing orchard or vineyard. The Portuguese raise vegetables in their walnut groves, grow currants between the rows of trees in the orchard, and beans between the currant rows. They know how to prevent the splitting of their laden fruit-trees by inducing a living brace to grow between opposite branches. The blackbeetle problem they solve by planting tomato slips inclosed in paper. From the slopes looking out on the Adriatic the Dalmatian brings a horticultural cunning which the American fruit-grower should be eager to acquire. The conversion of New Jersey barrens into berry farms, vineyards, and pepper fields, the reclamation of muck soil in western New York, which Americans were not willing to touch, the transmutation of wild Ozark lands into apples and peaches, are Italian exploits which constitute clear gain for the country. But there are other immigrant farmers whose labors count on the wrong side of the national ledger. Not a few Slav colonies are clearing and tilling land so poor or so steep that it ought never to have been brought under the plow. The soil they have deforested will presently wash into the rivers, leaving stripped rocky slopes to grin, like a Death's-head, in the landscape. The nation will have to pay for it, just as France paid for the reckless ax work that went on under the First Republic. HELPING THE IMMIGRANT TO GET UPON THE SOIL