Читать книгу A Stake in the Land - Peter A. Speek - Страница 18

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The information given to immigrants by the Federal and state immigration offices is of value, because it presents certain facts needed by settlers, as, for instance, information on climatic conditions, general soil and market conditions, and so on. But these information bulletins often do not reach the immigrants because the immigrants do not know enough to ask for them; and, even supposing that they did reach the prospective settler, the bulletins are too general. They describe the conditions of large districts and sections of the country or state, while what the immigrant needs is exact, detailed knowledge about a particular piece of land in which he is interested. The government officials claim that they have not sufficient forces to undertake a detailed investigation of individual land holdings, and also that they must try to avoid any appearance of discriminating between various land companies in the sense of encouraging or discouraging the sale of land belonging to given companies.

In general, one might say that the ways open to immigrants for learning of land opportunities are defective. Misrepresentation of land conditions and actual money frauds have made them suspicious of any land dealer, so that the best land companies experience, in the immigrants' suspicion, a handicap in the development of their business. This in part explains why the various real-estate associations are trying to get some sort of public regulation for their business and why a number of states which are interested in the development of their lands have begun to talk of regulation. They reason that such regulation would be a good advertisement for the state and would increase the confidence of people in the chances of successfully settling on land in that state.