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Show LAND IS TOO HIGIIHE SAYS As the Cirnni.-le has often stated i we need several hundred more farm-1 ers in this district The towns are over-deveioped, tin farming lands Ere not su'l.ciently developed; we could get along with fewer business houses, bif. we can t get along and prosper without more farmers. How-to How-to get thc-m is (lie question. What inducements in-ducements should be offered to attract at-tract them . The inducement that brought the first settlers into the district was cheap land. They were men of modest mo-dest means and' could not afford to buy the high priced lands in order sections. Land with ample water 'was ;ood to them, and as it went up to $100 or so an acre with the settlement settle-ment of the country it .still looked good. We cannot hope lo get new settlers in except that it can be bought at somewhere near its real value. With good roads, schools, a sugar factory and other conveniences of an older community they can hardly expect to get land1 at the old price. Neither will they come and buy if the land is held at the price to which it has advanced within the last three years. Is the best farm in the district worth $200 per acre? I doubt it. though some of the owners own-ers may differ from me. But they would have to show me the production produc-tion of their farm for the past three years, and the price at which their products sell today. Consider what $200 per acre means. It must first produce $16 per acre to pay 8 per cent on the investment. A man can put his money into safe stocks that will pay eight per cent, and if he spends a little time investigating ' can find stocks that will pay ten per cent and the price of his stock is as likely to advance as the value of his farm. $16 per acre means about r ton and a half of hay, or 16 bushels of wheat, or 100 pounds of alfalfa seed, and between two and three tons of sugar beets per acre at present prices. Figured in another way he must produce $640 worth of stuff from a 40-acre farm before he begins be-gins to get anything for his labor with which to pay his taxes and living liv-ing expenses. With the deflation of prices in all farm nroducts. as well as In manu factured goods, there must be a decided de-cided deflation in the price of farm lands. With high wages and high prices pri-ces Induced by unnatural war conditions con-ditions the country got on a jamboree. jambo-ree. The farmer was touched as well as everybody else, and he thought1 everything would continue to come his way. This is the morning after and almost everybody has a bad ache But the farmer will have to f:ice 1 $100 an acre land as he has had to face $1 wheat. $10 hay and 15c alfalfa al-falfa seed. Unimproved land must be exceptionally excep-tionally good and well located to be worth $75 per acre today. It takes two or three years for a farm to produce pro-duce a paying crop, as is the case in most other irrigated districts. If I 'had the management of a company that had any unimproved land in this district I thinK I would offer every alternate 40 aeres at about 5"p0 per acre, f woi:M rell only 40 acres unless un-less the pureh.isPT- had enough to pay half down on 80 acres. What with water tpy. co.;nty lax and drainage tax the company will realize no more from a higher price in two. thr-e. or five years from now. and it is doubtful doubt-ful if a higher price can be had within even the latter period. If we cannot offer cheap lands all j of our other advantages count for i nothing. I doubt whether it hits been Kood policy to so widely advertise the high j (continued on page r, j |