Why, even in the State of New York, with its five or six million inhabitants, there are large counties, and not in the Adirondack region either, of which not more than half the good land is under cultivation to-day. The land is not bad, the distance from rail communication and from markets is not great. Everything is more favorable to the settler than in some portions of the Western States that are filling up rapidly, and yet the immigrant passes all these localities and goes further away, and he who already is there is often dissatisfied and anxious to sell out and go somewhere apparently for no other purpose except to get a new start. The hill countries of all the older States still contain immense quantities of valuable ground which might be made to yield more profitable crops per acre than anybody’s wheat-land in the most favored sections of the United States. The ground that the State of Tennessee some years ago placed upon the market at six cents an acre so as to have it in personal instead of public possession, and with the hope of getting a little something out of it in the way of taxes, is as good as many of the more valuable portions of the Eastern States. The entire table-land of the mountain range that separates the Eastern States from the West is but sparsely inhabited. Not much of it can be utilized for large planting of staple crops, but all of it is valuable for something that might be turned to profit. It is better ground than the Switzers live well on in their native country and far better naturally than that of some of the more prosperous provinces of France. On the basis of the population of the State of New York, which State certainly is not overcrowded in its agricultural districts, this nation has room for all people who will be born in it or who by any possibility can immigrate to it for two or three centuries to come.
We need no place of overflow for any of our population that is not criminal, and this class can be trusted to find its own outlets and places of refuge without any assistance from the government or the people.
It was not very long ago that the Indian was the object of a great deal of discussion and alarm in the United States.