The immigrant desiring to settle on land is constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to acquire land. The most general way of learning of such opportunity is through personal acquaintance or through correspondence with relatives and friends of the immigrant's own nationality who have previously settled on land. These sources of information are considered by the immigrant to be the most reliable, although they have certain drawbacks.

FRIENDS, AGENTS, AND ADVERTISEMENTS

First, immigrants on the land are always desirous of increasing the number of people of their own race or nationality in their particular locality, for the sake of their own advantage; for the larger their community the better their social and business opportunities. Therefore they are often prone to exaggerate the advantages of land and farming in their section and to be silent as to the disadvantages, so as to induce more people of their race to join the community.

Second, it is quite a common practice among immigrant settlers to receive from land companies certain commissions for bringing in further settlers, which induce them to exaggerate the good qualities of the land. The usual commission in the North Middle states is fifty cents per acre. The prospective buyers of land do not usually know about this.

There are also cases where a settler has secretly become a regular agent of the land company, receiving from the latter a salary in addition to a commission on each piece of land sold through him. In such cases the agent, known to the prospective buyer only as an ordinary settler, is in a position to get much higher prices for the land than a regular agent.

Still more danger for the immigrant lurks in the scheme whereby immigrant settlers already on the land, or their native-born neighbors, seeing that new people are coming in rapidly, take options on valuable land in certain desirable localities and resell it to the newcomers at a much higher price. Near Willington, Connecticut, there is a Bohemian colony, and in the days when this colony was growing rapidly a Bohemian settler looked up land available there and took a number of options on farms for which he already had would-be buyers. He took an option on one farm for its purchase at the price of $500; to the buyer he charged $1,500, and made a clear profit of $1,000. According to a report of the Immigration Commission relating to the same colony, a man who paid $1,000 in cash for a farm found that the land "agent" who sold it to him had bought the option from the original owner for $400 a few weeks before the bargain was closed.

Quite a number of land companies are employing immigrant agents, especially of those nationalities and races with which they expect to do business on a large scale. Usually these agents are sent out to the immigrant centers in industrial towns. They bring the prospective immigrant settlers to see the land and they conduct the business in cases where the immigrants do not know English. The companies consider this the most effective way of reaching immigrants who desire to settle on land.

Another way in which immigrants learn of land opportunities is through the land companies' advertisements in the foreign-language newspapers. The immigrant newspapers, depending on a nation-wide constituency, are, as a rule, careful in accepting trade advertisements. Often the editor, before accepting the advertisement from the land company, makes a personal visit to the company's main office to find out whether the advertisement is honest or put out by schemers and crooks. According to the testimony of the land companies the editors of the foreign-language newspapers, in the vast majority of cases, are honest men who refuse to be bribed. Only in a very few cases have the editors agreed to accept commissions.

Finally comes the usual method of all land companies, that of sending out agents among the immigrants, sending them folders, etc. As a rule the advertisements and folders exaggerate the good points of the land and gloss over the bad points. Quite often the exaggerations know no bounds; the land is described as the most fertile on the surface of the earth—photographs show corn, for instance, growing like a forest; a record of the yield is given, showing it to bring hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year per acre. Such exaggerations may be illustrated by the literature sent out by the New South Farm and Home Company, advertising ten-acre farms in Florida. The representations were that the farms were not swampy, were near direct water connections with New York; that every month in the year was a growing month; that the farms were surrounded by orange and citrous-fruit farms; that there were fine roads, wells, homes, schools, hotels, etc.; that the titles were perfect; that neighboring farms were doubling, trebling, and quadrupling in price; that the settlements were rapidly growing; that there was every convenience and comfort, such as Pullman cars, long-distance telephone, etc., etc. It is needless to say that many of these advantages were nonexistent. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in regard to this case was that when a proposed seller goes beyond mere exaggeration of the qualities of an article and assigns to it qualities which it does not possess, "does not simply magnify in opinion the advantages which it has, but invents advantages and falsely asserts their existence, he transcends the limit of 'puffing' and engages in false representations and pretenses." By this decision it was established that to invent advantages and falsely assert their existence in a transaction of sale is a fraud.

FEDERAL AND STATE IMMIGRATION OFFICES

The information given to immigrants by the Federal and state immigration offices is of value, because it presents certain facts needed by settlers, as, for instance, information on climatic conditions, general soil and market conditions, and so on. But these information bulletins often do not reach the immigrants because the immigrants do not know enough to ask for them; and, even supposing that they did reach the prospective settler, the bulletins are too general. They describe the conditions of large districts and sections of the country or state, while what the immigrant needs is exact, detailed knowledge about a particular piece of land in which he is interested. The government officials claim that they have not sufficient forces to undertake a detailed investigation of individual land holdings, and also that they must try to avoid any appearance of discriminating between various land companies in the sense of encouraging or discouraging the sale of land belonging to given companies.

In general, one might say that the ways open to immigrants for learning of land opportunities are defective. Misrepresentation of land conditions and actual money frauds have made them suspicious of any land dealer, so that the best land companies experience, in the immigrants' suspicion, a handicap in the development of their business. This in part explains why the various real-estate associations are trying to get some sort of public regulation for their business and why a number of states which are interested in the development of their lands have begun to talk of regulation. They reason that such regulation would be a good advertisement for the state and would increase the confidence of people in the chances of successfully settling on land in that state.

POLICIES IN CALIFORNIA AND WISCONSIN

In the states of California and Wisconsin the state departments and colleges of agriculture, through their extension service and the state immigration offices, are doing highly valuable work in disseminating correct information in regard to land opportunities among prospective settlers and in defending the latter against unscrupulous land dealers. The writer was especially impressed by the methods used by the Director of Immigration of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Mr. B. G. Packer. The following statement dictated by Mr. Packer serves as the best description of his work and methods:

The State of Wisconsin
Department of Agriculture
Immigration Division

Directing Certificate

To Whom It May Concern:

.......................... 191......
....................................
Director of Immigration.
C. P. Norgord, Commissioner. In a bulletin of information for immigrants, issued by the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California, 1920, the commission offers its assistance to the seekers of land in the state of California, in the following words:

This is the kind of public assistance which the land seekers, especially the immigrants, most urgently need, and to which they are entitled. The only questions are, will the other states follow, and how can the opportunity of such reliable public assistance be made known to the land-seeking masses?