the farmer out. But they're coming. They can't be
stopped. It's only a case of education--of advertising.

"I tell you, Dave, the movement is on now, and before long it'll hit us
like a tidal wave. I've been a bit of a gambler all my life, but this
is the biggest jack-pot ever was, and I'm going to sit in. How about
you?"

"I'd like to think it over. Promotion doesn't come very fast on this
job, that's sure."

"Yes, and while you are thinking it over chances are slipping by.
Don't think it over--put it over. I tell you, Dave, there are big
things in the air. They are beginning to move already. Have you
noticed the strangers in town of late? That's the advance guard--"

"Advance guard of a real estate boom?"

"Hish! That's a bad word. Get away from it. Say 'Industrial
development.'"

"All right,--industrial development. And do we have to have an advance
guard of strangers to bring about 'industrial development?'"

"Sure. That's the only way. You never heard of the old-timers in a
town booming it--the term goes between us--did you? Never. The old
resident is always deader than the town, no matter how dead the town
may be. And this business is a science. The right gang can spring it
anywhere, and almost any time.

"Let me elaborate. We'll say Alkali Lake is a railway station where
lots go begging at a hundred dollars each. In drops a well dressed
stranger--buys ten lots at a hundred and fifty each--and the old-timers
are chuckling over sticking him. But in drops another stranger and
buys a block of lots at two hundred each. Then the old timers begin to
wonder if they didn't sell too soon. By the time the fourth or fifth
stranger has dropped in they are dead sure of it, and they are trying
to buy their lots back. All sorts of rumours get started, nobody knows
how. New railways are coming, big factories are to be started,
minerals have been located, there's a secret war on between great
monied interests. The town council meets and changes the name to
Silver City--having regard, no doubt, to the alkali in the sleugh
water. The old-timers, and all that great, innocent public which is
forever hoping to get something for nothing, are now glad to buy the
lots at five hundred to ten thousand dollars each, and by the time
they've bought it up the gang moves on. It's the smoothest game in the
world, and every community will fall for it at least twice. . . Well,
they're here.

"Of course, i