“Back to the Land!” Is Cry of Nation” – Unknown, 1/6/1910

It is the instinctive cry of the whole United States. For that reason the time is particularly fit for launching Dul
-uth’s market garden proposition. Only a few years ago the rush was all to the cities. “How shall we keep the
young men on the farms?” was the question. Now the tide turns to the country. Men of means are picking up
little farmsteads. Clerks and mechanics are saving to own a bit of land. People are turning from other pursuits
to win their living from the soil. “Back to the land” is the expression of a veritable hunger. Hunger it is. Stung
by the high cost of living, spurred by the increasing difficulty of raising a family in comfort, disillusioned by the
poor prospects that old age holds before the wage worker in the cities, thousands are looking eagerly to the
land. Rural conditions also have changed. It was the fearful loneliness of the farm that was its worst dread.
But now the farmer gets his daily mail at his door. The farmer’s wife chats with her neighbors over the tele
-phone. The farmer’s young folks come to town by trolley for school and for pleasuring. It is some fun being
a farmer now; there is some sociability for the farmer’s wife; there is the opportunity for gregariousness that
the farmer’s young folks crave. No Longer An Exile Back to the land is no longer going out into exile from all
the social instincts. Back to the land—men have gone by thousands into irrigation belts, where they pay $400
and $600 and $1,000 an acre for fruitful farms. They engage in market gardening on the edges of cities, paying
cheerfully $300 to $500 an acre for their freeholds. They sweep in great tides over the Dakotas, Saskatchewan,
Alberta. They answer the advertisements of dry farming lands and semi-arid tracts. Cattle ranges and sheep
runs are broken up to give room for the husbandman. Back to the land—there is no fair opportunity that is not
eagerly grasped. The recent land congress in Chicago was thronged day after day by crowds that astonished
the promoters of the gathering.

In Duluth letters are received almost daily from experienced gardeners, from tenants who wish to get on their
own footing, from young graduates of Minnesota and Wisconsin and Illinois schools of agriculture who are see
-king a place to apply their skill and knowledge and industry. There never was a time when this project could
have been put forward so hopefully. The appetite has been created, whetted. Living conditions force on the
attention of every head of a family the hope and happiness of having a home and a bit of land on which to
live with a degree of comfort that the mass of people in the cities cannot dare expect. Flock to the Land Ten
years ago such a project would have to be dragged through by the heels. Today it is only necessary to prepare
the ground, provide means of transportation and declare, “The door is open.” Even under conditions which
were essentially unfair—without roads, without markets, without clearing, with only a wilderness for neighbor
-hood, with soil that must be won inch by inch from the trees and stumps and roots that forbade progressive
husbandry—even so people have flocked to the land and even so, many have conquered and established
their fortunes. It was a sin—only in our ignorance we did not know it—to invite a farmer to tackle such a pro
-position. It set before him a heart-breaking job before he could begin farming which was his trade. He might
wear his life out before he reduced his land to productiveness. That, as we know now, is needless. A crew
of men with proper direction and proper tools can clear a tract in one spring season, making it ready for the
farmer to apply his energies to the best advantage. By such methods Duluth can take a short cut and save
the farmer a year, two years, five years of the work which he may be wholly unfitted to perform. The farmer
can afford to pay for having land cleared where he cannot afford to clear it himself. Just as a business man
can afford to pay his fare from Duluth to St. Paul where he cannot afford to walk it.

Unrivaled Soil The demand is present; the land lies around Duluth in unrivaled productiveness. Hitherto,
because the conditions were not well understood, it was not set before the purchaser in such form that
the skilled market gardener, the alert graduate of the agricultural school, the thrifty farmer, the city man
with small means and a great hankering for the soil, could take it except at a cost of labor and grief that
was too high to pay. Under former conditions some have succeeded, many have been disheartened,
others have made their estate after years of toil that should have been spared them. Now, for the first
time a proposition is offered under which the man of average intelligence, average industry, average
determination, average strength, and good fortune in health and age is going to succeed—a plan under
which the skilled gardener of good business ability is sure of high success. Chance is eliminated as
nearly as chance is eliminated from any human undertaking. Adversity is eliminated as nearly as
adversity can be left out of the reckoning of human life. Reward of industry, safety of old age are
assured as certainly as they can be in any scheme of things. Back to the land is the great cry of the
human family today. In its own way each community must satisfy that land hunger. Duluth has an
opportunity to create almost ideal conditions.