on the part of capital and little on the part of the
general public. Class distinctions are accented by national prejudices,
and democracy is thereby invaded. But even in the dull brains of great
masses of these unfortunates from southern and eastern Europe the idea
of America as the land of freedom and of opportunity to rise, the land
of pioneer democratic ideals, has found lodgment, and if it is given
time and is not turned into revolutionary lines it will fructify.

As the American pioneer passed on in advance of this new tide of
European immigration, he found lands increasingly limited. In place of
the old lavish opportunity for the settler to set his stakes where he
would, there were frantic rushes of thousands of eager pioneers across
the line of newly opened Indian reservations. Even in 1889, when
Oklahoma was opened to settlement, twenty thousand settlers crowded at
the boundaries, like straining athletes, waiting the bugle note that
should start the race across the line. To-day great crowds gather at the
land lotteries of the government as the remaining fragments of the
public domain are flung to hungry settlers.

Hundreds of thousands of pioneers from the Middle West have crossed the
national boundary into Canadian wheat fields eager to find farms for
their children, although under an alien flag. And finally the government
has taken to itself great areas of arid land for reclamation by costly
irrigation projects whereby to furnish twenty-acre tracts in the desert
to settlers under careful regulation of water rights. The government
supplies the capital for huge irrigation dams and reservoirs and builds
them itself. It owns and operates quarries, coal mines and timber to
facilitate this work. It seeks the remotest regions of the earth for
crops suitable for these areas. It analyzes the soils and tells the
farmer what and when and how to plant. It has even considered the rental
to manufacturers of the surplus water, electrical and steam power
generated in its irrigation works and the utilization of this power to
extract nitrates from the air to replenish worn-out soils. The pioneer
of the arid regions must be both a capitalist and the protege of the
government.

Consider the contrast between the conditions of the pioneers at the
beginning and at the end of this period of development. Three hundred
years ago adventurous Englishmen on the coast of Virginia began the
attack on the wilderness. Three years ago the