An hour before leaving the Washington hotel Percy chanced to meet a Congressman whom he had seen on several occasions at the University and who had spoken at the alumni banquet at the time of Percy's graduation.
"I'm very glad you introduced yourself, Mr. Johnston," said he. "Want to get a place down here, do you? Very likely I can help you some. I've helped several friends of mine to get good places. What are you after ?"
"I am thinking of getting a place of about three hundred acres," said Percy, "and I shall certainly appreciate any assistance or information you can give me."
"Whe-e-ew. What are you up to? Want to sell us a site for the new Government insane hospital, or going to lay out another addition to the city?"
"Neither," replied Percy. "I am looking for a piece of cheap land that I can build up and make into a good farm."
"Oh, ho!" said the Congressman. "That's it, is it? Well, now let me tell you that you've struck the wrong neck of the woods to find land that you can make a good farm out of. The land about here is cheap enough all right—cheaper than the votes of some politicians, but it can't be built up into good farms. Don't attempt the impossible, my friend. If you want cheap land for town sites or insane hospitals, right here's the country to land in; but if you want a good farm, you stay right in Illinois, or else follow Horace Greeley's advice and 'go West.'. That's a good suggestion for you, too. Just go West and get three hundred and twenty acres of the richest soil lying out of doors."
"There is not much land left in the West where the rainfall is sufficient for good crops," said Percy.
"Then take irrigated land. The Government is getting under way some big irrigation projects, and you ought to get in on the ground floor on one of those tracts. It is a fact that the apples from some of those irrigated farms sometimes bring more than $500 an acre."
"I don't doubt that," said Percy. "An illustration or example can usually be found to prove almost anything. I know that the Perrine Brothers, who conduct a fruit farm down in 'Egypt,' actually received $800 per acre for the apples grown on thirteen acres one year; and there is plenty of such land in Egypt that can be bought for less than $40 an acre, and near to the great markets. I am told, however, that there are from a dozen to a hundred applicants for every farm opened to settlement in the West in these years, and it is estimated that all of the arid lands that can ever be put under irrigation in the United States will provide homes for no more than our regular increase in population in five years, and that the only other remaining rich lands—the swamp areas—will be occupied by the increase of ten years in our population. It has seemed to me that it is high time we came back to these partially worn-out Eastern lands and begin to build them up. Here the rainfall is abundant, the climate is fine, and the markets are the best, and there are millions of acres of these Eastern lands that lie as nicely for farming as the Western prairies. Why should they not be built up into good farms?"
"Now, let me give you a little fatherly advice," said the Congressman, laying his hand on Percy's shoulder. "I tell you this land never was any good. If the East and South hadn't been settled first, they never would have been settled. Poor land remains poor land, and good land remains good land; and if you want to farm good land, you better stay right in the corn belt. You can't grow anything on these Eastern lands without fertilizer and the more you fertilize the more you must, and still the land remains as poor as ever. Just leave off the fertilizer one year and your crop is not worth harvesting. These lands never were any good and they never will be."