The foregoing instances indicate that companies formed for the purpose of exploiting and deceiving land settlers have succeeded. With the increasing tide of new immigration, it may be possible to ensnare even more unwary persons. But there have been a sufficient number of exposés, as well as court decisions, to make the business of fraudulent land promotion a dangerous one. All types of real-estate dealers are increasingly realizing the need for making their transactions aboveboard and honest. Steps to this end are being taken by the better class of dealer.
[6] _California Commission on Land Colonization and Rural Credits_, 1916. pp. 50-53.
Except for government land grants and homestead acts, land dealing and colonization in the United States have, up to very recent times, been entirely in private hands. Land is one of the necessities of life; land dealing, consequently, is one of the most important features in social and economic relations. Yet it has been left unregulated, with the result that land dealing is now the most chaotic sort of business, one which has not worked out its own definite methods, rules, and traditions, as banking and other branches of commerce and business have done. It may even be said that people who deal in land have fallen, in the eyes of the public, into the ranks of those open to suspicion.
In the field investigation for this study, land dealing was considered to be an important phase of the problem of Americanization in rural districts. Based upon the experiences and facts collected, the picture may be drawn as follows:
According to their methods, private land dealers may be classified as follows:
(1) Land "sharks," divided between those acting outside the law and those acting within the law; (2) the ordinary real-estate dealer--of two types--the lower, selfish, narrow-minded, the higher, public-spirited; (3) "realtors"; (4) land-colonizing companies.
Land sharks are of two distinct varieties. One type is composed of men of a criminal character. The words "lawful" and "unlawful" have no meaning for them. They often sell land as their own which they do not own, or sell land other than they have promised or even shown to the buyer. Their only aim is to cheat the latter out of his money and to escape the penalty of the law.