reed
will be given exactly the same chance; where no person can "exert
influence" to bring about his personal ends; where no man or woman's
past can ever rise up to defeat them; where no crime goes unpunished;
where every debt is paid; where no prejudice is allowed to masquerade
as a reason; where honest toil will insure an honest living; where the
man who works receives the reward of his labor.

It would seem reasonable, too, that such a condition might be brought
about in a new country, and in a country as big as ours, where there is
room for everyone and to spare. Look out upon our rolling prairies,
carpeted with wild flowers, and clotted over with poplar groves, where
wild birds sing and chatter, and it does not seem too ideal or
visionary that these broad sunlit spaces may be the homes of countless
thousands of happy and contented people. The great wide uncultivated
prairie seems to open its welcoming arms to the land-hungry, homeless
dwellers of the cities, saying: "Come and try me. Forget the past, if
it makes you sad. Come to me, for I am the Land of the Second Chance.
I am the Land of Beginning Again. I will not ask who your ancestors
were. I want you--nothing matters now but just you and me, and we will
make good together." This is the invitation of the prairie to the
discouraged and weary ones of the older lands, whose dreams have
failed, whose plans have gone wrong, and who are ready to fall out of
the race. The blue skies and green slopes beckon to them to come out
and begin again. The prairie, with its peace and silence, calls to the
troubled nations of Middle Europe, whose people are caught in the cruel
tangle of war. When it is all over and the smoke has cleared away, and
they who are left look around at the blackened ruins and desolated
farms and the shallow graves of their beloved dead, they will come away
from the scenes of such bitter memories. Then it is that this far
country will make its appeal to them, and they will come to us in large
numbers, come with their sad hearts and their sad traditions. What
will we have for them? We have the fertility of soil; we have the
natural resources; we have coal; we have gas; we have wheat land and
pasture land and fruit land. Nature has done her share with a
prodigality that shames our little human narrowness. Now if we had men
to match our mountains, if we had men to match our plains, if our
thoughts were as clear as our sunlight, we would be a